What do these two potential winning pathways yield for Democrats in 2028?

[Virginiá]

2028 is around the time I would consider Democrats to be peaking, or even slightly past their peak of political power due to the changing of the guard between boomers/silents -> millennials/gen z

I'm not convinced the path we are on right now can be substantially changed, and perhaps the best that can be done is limit how far the party goes in any one direction. Therefor, I think major inroads in suburbia and white college graduates is a given right now, and perhaps stopping the bleeding with WCWs. Minority growth and expanding educational attainment will help Democrats offset losses among losing demos in some areas. Democrats would be wise not to push too hard for wealthy voters at the expense of the working class, as liberal policies are not naturally compatible with the goals of wealthy people. Eventually, there will be a split, and it is better the party not rely too heavily on them by the time that comes to fruition.

A few state-by-states:

Virginia: The growth of NOVA, Millennial political power and minority vote share will continue this state's shift into the D column, and in the semi-short-term I think this path is set no matter what (unless Democrats become rabidly anti-government and more socially conservative, maybe)
Georgia: Is it really possible for Democrats to push this state off its current course at this point? Their support among the rising generation(s) of GA is almost as deep as the hyper-polarized older Southern whites. I don't see how this can be stopped before the state starts leaning more towards Democrats.
North Carolina: This state has been on a slow drift towards Democrats for a long time, and while I'm not convinced it'll ever become "Virginia-ized," I do think it will eventually lean our way, even if only for a short while.
Texas: Lots of conservatives love to argue that TX won't go blue for decades, but I think that ignores readily apparent political trends. I could easily see it being in a 2008/2012 NC-type position in 2028, where it still leans towards the GOP but can be won under the right circumstances. Eventually it will flip entirely.


This is something I can envision, but I'm not entirely sold on it. My thoughts are incomplete in the rust belt and while I usually believe Florida will probably be leans Democratic by 2028, I'm not ready to commit to it just yet for a couple reasons:

* I didn't edit all parts of the map, so it isn't my complete view of the future US electoral landscape


Obviously this map is very Democrat-friendly, and not really because I'm being hackish but because I believe we are transitioning between political systems, and the electorate has been realigning in that direction for years now. The 2020s and early 2030s would be a time of strong Democratic power.

After that, I'm not sure what the landscape will look like. It's hard to see that far ahead.

[Virginiá]

I don't see how it is so hard to see the Democratic Party making even temporary inroads with affluent white voters. The Republican Party is increasingly narrowing its appeal to these voters along economic lines, while Democrats appeal via social policy. It's perfectly reasonable for me to see the GOP continuing to erode among this group, at which point Democrats will do well until they actually start enacting policy that begins substantially impacting the finances of these voters. At that point, a slow erosion back to the GOP seems likely. Right now, there doesn't seem to be a penalty for these voters to vote for Democrats - at least in their eyes, while supporting Republicans is like a mine field.

Also worth noting that a lot of these suburban districts are diversifying, which is helping Democrats make up for whatever they continue to lack with upscale white voters. Further, I'd remind the RINO Tom's of Atlas that white Millennials who are increasingly well-educated compared to older generations will continue to skew that demographic towards Democrats. Even among Millennials there is a divide among educational attainment in terms of Democratic support, and last I recall it's pretty steep. These young voters are already spreading outas migratory trends swing away from cities, as they seem to have for a number of years now.

[Virginiá]

I don't see the traditional sunbelt D, rustbelt R trends holding steady in that kind of election. And if they do, it'll be much, much smaller than the ones we saw in 2016. These kind of voters could very well form a short term alliance with the Democrats, but keep in mind that Clinton-GOP representative districts still voted for their GOP representative. And in many cases, the results had very high disparities.

I guess that depends on how you'd define 'short term.' To me, I can see the leftwards drift continuing for even a decade more, at which point it may slowly start shifting back to the GOP if Democrats start raising taxes a lot and enacting a lot of new regulations, which would weaken the alliance enough for the GOP to win them back. How effectively the GOP can perform then I think would also depend on whether or not they have addressed their party's own issues that caused the defection in the first place.

I really do think that any shifts back and forth will be gradual, though. After all, it's not like affluent voters just randomly swung towards Democrats. This has been an ongoing trend over the past generation.

CA-48 had Hillary winning 48-46% while our GOP rep won by nearly 17 points. It is quite common in a lot of these districts as well to see these kind of disparities. That shows that while there's strong animosity towards Trump, these voters may not be keen on breaking their Party alliance in a hyper partisan environment. And if they do, there's a very strong chance that they'll come back home when Trump is out.

I think it's like you said somewhere else (iirc), everyone thought Clinton would win and felt more comfortable voting for Republicans as a check. However, I'm a bit skeptical of the "check and balances" idea - not that it doesn't exist, but to what degree. The Democratic brand was weak after 8 years of Obama, and Clinton wasn't helping, so I think incumbency + weak challengers (even just 'Some Dudes') + "check" argument + a weak brand made voters' downballot choices stick with their regular habits, this is on top of the fact that presidential results tends to take a while to trickle downballot. I think it's safe to say that there is a correlation though - 538 even did some stuff on this. I don't recall their figures, but there was a correlation to how a district would vote downballot compared to recent presidential results.

[Virginiá]

Source (the article I linked)

Anywho, I think I've stated my thoughts on this so I don't have much more to add, other to summarize: Current trends do show a shift of affluent and white college grads towards Democrats (relative to past levels of support), but that over the long run those trends will likely reverse to some degree whenever the Democrats are able to actually implement their economic ideas, which almost definitely will involve substantial tax increases on higher-income citizens. At that point, I expect partisan allegiances to begin re-sorting themselves to the way common sense might dictate. My main point was to say that this will take a long time to unfold, as such macro-scale trends usually do.

For now, though, there is simply more pressure on these voters to shift away from Republicans, as the economic disincentives these voters might have against voting for Democrats is basically just theory, as Democrats have not had real power to implement their ideas for a long time, and the brief window they did have it in, the party composition was simply not such that would actively want to jack up taxes significantly on those voters.