Pennsylvania in 2016

[Comrade Funk]

Pennsylvania is fool's gold for Republicans.

Not only that, but barring unforeseen circumstances, I think people are about to have their minds blown by how hard to the left Pennsylvania turns in the next 10 years. According to a study by Tufts University, the youth vote in Pennsylvania has "tilted far more to the left" than the older age brackets in recent elections. And the drift to the right in western Pennsylvania won't even matter for three reasons:


1. It doesn't include Allegheny County, which Barack Obama still would have won in 2012 even without the city of Pittsburgh.

2. Outside of Allegheny, Butler and Washington Counties, every other county in western Pennsylvania has lost population since 2010.

3. At the same time, the population in left-drifting eastern Pennsylvania has continued growing.


It's also worth noting that you can overlay a map of all the coal fields and gas wells in Pennsylvania on top of a map of recent political trends by county, and discover a near-perfect correlation between the presence of hydrocarbons in the ground and a drift to the right.

And going back to what was said about younger Pennsylvanians being far to the left of older Pennsylvanians, the only reason anybody still considers Pennsylvania a "swing" state is because it has a high percentage of elderly residents. But those elderly residents won't get older forever; eventually they're going to die, and they'll leave behind a younger population that votes far to the left of them. In fact, the die-off of elderly Pennsylvanians has probably begun already. This is why Pennsylvania is projected to have the slowest rate of elderly population growth of all states between now and 2030.

Another factor to consider is that Pennsylvania is very quietly becoming more diverse. If trends between the 2010 Census and the 2014 estimates are accurate, then Pennsylvania by 2020 will have more than 1,500,000 black residents, more than 1,000,000 Hispanic residents, and more than 500,000 Asian residents. It still won't be quite the melting pot that New York and New Jersey are, but it won't be nearly as "white bread" as its reputation either. And until Republicans make in-roads with racial/ethnic minorities, you can expect the growing number of non-white Pennsylvanians to vote primarily for Democrats.

Plain and simple, expect Pennsylvania to become a "safe" Democrat state by the middle of next decade, barring unforeseen circumstances.

Okay, then how can the GOP ever win another election again?

Wait another 10-20 years. Eventually the Democrats will wear out their welcome. There's also data suggesting that the post-Millennial generation (born in 1996 or afterward) is already trending more conservative than the Millennials, and it's likely that Millennials themselves will become more conservative after a while, considering it's very difficult to be more liberal than they already are. It could happen in 10 years, or it could happen in 20 years, but it will happen.

The post-Millennial generation ahahahaha. What a dumb post. Sad you are relying on the possible vote of Beliebers and Directioners.