Since Ohio is a likely Republican state now, what's the new bellwether?

[Coolface Sock #42069]

I'm saying Florida, but don't count out Pennsylvania.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

It's been two months, waaaaay too early to say that Ohio is a likely Republican state forever.

You could make the case that it's been a lean R state for a while now and Obama only won it twice because he won solid victories both times (+7 and +4). It was closer to the center during Bush's tenure.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Minnesota.  It was the state that voted closest to the nation as a whole in 2016.  Pennsylvania, Florida, and (especially) Ohio were significantly more Republican than the nation as a whole.

But I'm inclined to believe that's more of a coincidence. Minnesota isn't much of a demographic or ideological cross-section of the country.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

I love how when Democrats won Ohio, it was because there were just too many cosmopolitan areas and Ohio was just too enlightened to fall for the GOP's anti-intellectualism, but how you'd think the entire state is a distressed factory neighborhood in Youngstown.  Maybe neither are true.

Yeah, this forum's opinion of states can basically be boiled down to:

This state voted for my party? FF state. Everyone's so smart and enlightened.
This state didn't vote for my party? HP state. Literally just like Mordor and filled with demons and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Nothing good happens in or comes out of this state.

BRTD gets a lot of crap for this, but look how many Republicans suddenly started caring about unemployed people from abandoned industrial towns after they voted for Trump. Now, they're "people facing economic anxiety since their high-paying jobs have disappeared and incomes haven't gone up for 40 years" instead of "freeloaders who want more welfare" like they were in 2012 when they voted Democrat.