What does this 2040 county map say about the country?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Shelby County, Alabama what the ing
Albany County, New York??? Especially compared with Erie County?

I guess there must have been some horrendous form of suburban sprawl provoked by a relocation of universities like U. of Oregon, U. of Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, U. of Florida etc. to places like the DC metropolitan area or the Lake Michigan conurbation.

For the rest, mostly 2016 trends brought about forever.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Somehow Tennessee was spared from urban/suburban trends so strong that Shelby County, Alabama voted Democratic.  Knox, Hamilton, and Rutherford would all flip long before Shelby, AL.

Williamson?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Somehow Tennessee was spared from urban/suburban trends so strong that Shelby County, Alabama voted Democratic.  Knox, Hamilton, and Rutherford would all flip long before Shelby, AL.

To be fair, 2040 is far enough away that (by then) Birmingham could have become the Deep South's Silicon Valley or something (+5M in the metro, +$50k median personal income) while Nashville and East TN shrivel-up into a mid-century Rust Belt for some reason.

Who knows?

5 million people in metro Birmingham? How are you defining it?

[Battista Minola 1616]

I find it hard to see Suffolk going Democratic with all the white blue collar Roman Catholic Italian Back the Blue types.

A lot of Italian-American millennials are pro-cop, a lot of them are in the NYPD

Suffolk County "with all the white blue collar Roman Catholic Italian Back the Blue types" voted Obama in 2012.