I apologize if this is in the wrong forum, but since it has to do with trends, I thought it belonged here.
So I did the math and found out how Democratic/Republican each state was compared to the nation as a whole in 2012 by subtracting 3.86% from the Democratic margin, because Obama won nationwide by 3.86%. That is what I call the 2012 "basemap".
I would've done this myself, but fortunately Dave saved me the trouble by including a "trend" map in the presidential elections, which shows how much more Democratic/Republican each state became since the "basemap" of the last election, or in this case, from 2008 to 2012. I added each state's trend to its 2012 margins, and created what I expect the 2016 "basemap" to look something like.
DC: D+80.89%
HI: D+39.70%
VT: D+33.74%
NY: D+29.05%
RI: D+26.66%
MD: D+26.26%
CA: D+21.73%
MA: D+20.02%
NJ: D+19.57%
ME: D+12.80%
WA: D+12.10%
CT: D+11.84%
DE: D+11.82%
IL: D+8.15%
OR: D+7.38%
NM: D+4.72%
MN: D+4.69%
MI: D+2.07%
IA: D+1.63%
CO: D+1.32%
NH: D+1.10%
VA: D+0.99%
OH: D+0.92%
NV: D+0.41%
PA: D+0.01%
WI: R+0.48%
FL: R+1.51%
NC: R+4.86%
AK: R+6.90%
AZ: R+10.07%
MS: R+10.28%
GA: R+10.87%
SC: R+12.42%
LA: R+16.24%
MO: R+19.06%
TX: R+20.25%
IN: R+21.88%
AL: R+23.25%
MT: R+25.37%
TN: R+26.18%
AR: R+27.98%
SD: R+28.09%
KS: R+28.84%
NE: R+29.08%
KY: R+29.60%
ND: R+31.06%
OK: R+36.25%
ID: R+38.76%
WV: R+40.81%
WY: R+49.86%
UT: R+68.39%
Of course, this is assuming that the trends remain the same from 2012-2016 as they were from 2008-2012, which is extremely unlikely. Still, I find it interesting how, from the 2012 basemap, Michigan and New Mexico go from being Democratic-leaning states to swing states, and North Carolina goes from being a Republican-leaning state to a swing state.
