In terms of the last time each state voted more R/D than the nation as a whole than it did in 2016 and what it would look like in a 50-50 vote in 2020 if it does half of its 2016 swing:
I will list those that are
not all-time records for the state in question, but are since 1944 or before:
- Maryland: Most Democratic since 1924
- Ohio: Most Republican since 1932
- Minnesota: Most Republican since 1944
- Washington: Most Democratic since 1896
- Colorado: Most Democratic since 1916
- Virginia: Most Democratic since 1944
California is most Democratic on record relative to the nation. The following states are most Republican ever relative to the nation:
- Indiana
- North Dakota (although 1904 comes very close)
- South Dakota (although 1904 comes very close)
- Wyoming
- Missouri
- Arkansas
- Tennessee
- Kentucky
- West Virginia
It is notable that all these states except Wyoming and the Dakotas form the core of what Colin Woodard (
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America) calls
“Greater Appalachia” and what James Löwen (
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism) calls the
“nontraditional South” (I prefer the term
“nonplantation South” because the region is just as traditional as what Löwen calls the
“traditional South”.) In 1969’s
The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Philips predicted the disappearance of Civil War-based rural Democratic tradition in the nonplantation South to occur within the decade of the book’s publication, rather than in the 2000s and 2010s as actually observed.
Of the others,
South Carolina really surprises me. I imagined it voted more relatively Republican in 2000 and 1988 than in 2016.
