Which State Will Go D First?

[H. Ross Peron]

West Virginia if only due to potential growth in DC exurbs.

[TJ in Oregon]

If you mean by long term trends, WY, if you mean by some fluke blowout WV.

WV still has enough populist types who could vote for the Democrats under the right circumstances that they could win it if they win a presidential election by 25 points with the right candidate. That's harder to see happening in WY.

Alternatively, WY could be gentrified at some point in the coming decades, if say, Cheyenne becomes the next Boise or something. The headwinds for the Democrats in WV are going to continue to be brutal in basically every fathomable scenario.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I think WV will begin to trend back to the Dems in the 2030s due to growth in the DC suburbs and coal becoming more and more distant memory.

Its hard to see WY ever flipping and I very much could see WY breaking VT streak as well

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

WVA can swing back Dem in 2024, if Ojeda runs for Manchin seat and Bernie is Prez and does very well in VA and OH, with Kaine and Brown winning again.SMC ended any chances of Dems winning the Senate when she came into office

[Non Swing Voter]

What is all this talk of DC suburbs in West Virginia?  Do people honestly commute from WV to DC?  It can take over an hour to get to DC from Fairfax County during rush hour (or more).  West Virginia is all the way past Loudoun, which itself is clogged with traffic due to explosive population growth.  Who is commuting 70 miles in traffic to work?  There's a slight bit of it in the DC region, but are these really classified as DC suburbs?

[Agonized-Statism]

West Virginia. D.C. exurbs and whatever industries move in post-coal starting in the 2030s. The Plains and the Mountain West have been the Republican Party's most consistent base since the party was founded. Pure speculation, but West Virginians are about to come on even harder times in the future, and if the GOP continues to be laissez-faire about the economy (or at least less interventionist than the Democrats) while following Democrats closely on social issues, a Democrat might have an opening around the (distant) time they pick up states like Mississippi and Louisiana.

[Lord Halifax]

I think WV will begin to trend back to the Dems in the 2030s due to growth in the DC suburbs and coal becoming more and more distant memory.

Its hard to see WY ever flipping and I very much could see WY breaking VT streak as well

WY has a small population and it's capital is located in the SE corner of the state close to the CO border. There is an urban growth corridor along the Colorado Front Range with a string of contiguous metro areas and in time Cheyenne could become more liberal and big enough to dominate the state. It's easier to flip WY than WV simply because it has a smaller population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_Range_Urban_Corridor

[Orser67]

I think WV will begin to trend back to the Dems in the 2030s due to growth in the DC suburbs and coal becoming more and more distant memory.

Its hard to see WY ever flipping and I very much could see WY breaking VT streak as well

WY has a small population and it's capital is located in the SE corner of the state close to the CO border. There is an urban growth corridor along the Colorado Front Range with a string of contiguous metro areas and in time Cheyenne could become more liberal and big enough to dominate the state. It's easier to flip WY than WV simply because it has a smaller population.

It's interesting to hear someone say this about a metro area that has all of 90k people, but I guess it makes sense when we're talking about a state with a population of just 575k people.

If I was a rich liberal megadonor, I'd look into the possibility of a (voluntary) settlement program in states like WY, MT, and NH in the hopes of winning/holding those Senate seats.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

In 2024, Manchin, if he retires and Richard Ojeda runs for the seat, in a Bernie Sanders reelection,  the state could be in play. Along with WI, AZ, VA, and OH, and NV, they will be heavily contested by both parties

[SingingAnalyst]

I voted WY. If liberals and Hispanics move there in large numbers from CO, NM, and AZ (not to mention CA), it could happen. In WV I see little potential for left-wing immigration, and of the few remaining conservative Democrats, many are dying off.

[MT Treasurer]

Yeah, people have done a good job outlining what it would take for either state to flip, so it all boils down to which state you believe will first become a magnet for left-wing migration and explosive urban (or additionally—in the case of WV—exurban) growth. I think either scenario is plausible (although it would almost certainly take some pretty significant shifts in Morgantown and Charleston too as even a dramatic collapse in R support/rapid growth in Jefferson/Berkeley alone wouldn’t cut it in WV), but I voted WY in this poll because I thought the results were too imbalanced and because it would take far fewer additional Democratic votes to flip WY than WV. However, I don’t expect either state to become competitive before the 2040s.

[brucejoel99]

WY

[ElectionsGuy]

Wyoming has more potential if it explodes in population down the line like Nevada did after 1950-60. I think the whole idea of the DC metro creeping into WV is overrated, it's not gonna get that big and it's at least an hour and a half from DC to the easternmost border of WV.

[Esteemed Jimmy]

Wyoming

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Wyoming has more potential if it explodes in population down the line like Nevada did after 1950-60. I think the whole idea of the DC metro creeping into WV is overrated, it's not gonna get that big and it's at least an hour and a half from DC to the easternmost border of WV.

Yeah. DC-Baltimore is easily 18 million people before growth seriously jumps into WV, and even then, it would be a far-flung exurb that is a small portion of the state's overall population. Hell, DC could add a couple million people inside the Beltway before everything is built out to Front Royal. Cheyenne is WAY more likely to blow up into a 400k city at the end of the Front Range Urban Corridor.

[Epaminondas]

All it would take is a handful of large IT corporation moving its heaquarters to Cheyenne, and Wyoming politics could be upended for the better.