More likely in next decade: Minnesota going R or South Carolina going D

[King of Kensington]

We've heard (though less lately) that Minnesota is trending R (Midwestern, noncoastal, white, Trump came close in 2016!) while South Carolina (coastal, New South!) is trending D - which is more likely in the next decade or so?

[THG]

Neither is likely, but Minnesota (which can be close for the GOP in a good year, such as 2016) going Republican is more likely than SC (which has been safe Republican consistently since 2000) going blue.

[Schiff for Senate]

What the Tar Heel Gent said - neither is likely to happen, but MN is more likely. A blue SC is the latest rumour. But you should remember: MN voted for Clinton in 2016 by less than 2%, while SC went red by 14%. Yes, both trended leftward in 2020, but still. SC may gradually bluen, but it's not going to suddenly flip blue. MN, though it would certainly be an uphill fight, could go red with the right GOP candidate and the wrong Democratic candidate. SC might do the opposite under the opposite circumstances in a while, once it is (hypothetically) a bluer state, but for now, it's red. And it's not liberalizing rapidly or anything either - it shifted 3.8 points to the right in 2016, and 2.6 points leftward in 2020: so it shifted 1.2 points to the right from 2012 to 2020. While one could argue that that's because Obama boosted African-American turnout, if it really were liberalizing, the state would have at least stayed roughly the same from 2012 to 2020, not shifted rightward. Most majority-black counties (the backbone of Democratic support in the state) have shfited rightward from 2012 to 2020, and some have even flipped. If Democrats want to have even an outside shot at winning the state, they need to bring those votes back and boost votes and support in Charleston and other big cities.

[DS0816]

Actually, the next two occurrences in which the White House experiences party switches—from [the incumbent] Democratic to Republican; from Republican to Democratic—can see both Minnesota and South Carolina as pickups.

Look at them from the perspective of each party.

Since 1992, the average number of carried states by presidential-election winners have been 29 with the range between 25 (a 2020 Joe Biden) and 32 (a 1992 Bill Clinton).

Imagining—and there is no harm in imagining—scenarios in which that maximum number of 32 are reached in carried states, that may very be enough with both major parties with regard for both Minnesota and South Carolina.

In both 2016 and 2020, when the Republicans won with 30 and then lost with 25 states, their No. 32 best-performed state was Minnesota.

In 2016 and 2020, when the Democrats lost with 20 and then won with 25 states, their Nos. 31 and 32 best-performed state was South Carolina.

South Carolina, for the time being, appears to be tougher. Of its Top 10 populous counties, Republicans routinely carry at least seven. And the margins in those Top 10 populous counties—won by either party—are typically carried by at least +15 percentage points.

Encouraging for the Democrats is that South Carolina has voted the same as Texas since 1972. So, from 1972 to 2020, the two states have voted the same in the last 13 consecutive election cycles. Also encouraging is that they are no so far apart in spread for where they rank. For the 2016 and 2020 Democrats, Texas and South Carolina were two and four states apart. If they were nearly ten states, that would not be encouraging. (That has me thinking of Colorado vs. Montana. They voted the same in the 15 consecutive cycles of 1948 to 2004. That stopped in 2008. In 2020, they were more than twenty states apart for where they ranked.)

Also worth consider: Ohio and Iowa, Nos. 29 and 30 for the 2020 Democrats, and two states realigned to the Republicans (beginning in 2016), may both slide further down from where their most recent rank…while South Carolina moves up. (A similar situation can happen with the post-2020 Republicans as Arizona and Georgia realign to the Democrats while Minnesota moves up.)

[TML]

What the Tar Heel Gent said - neither is likely to happen, but MN is more likely. A blue SC is the latest rumour. But you should remember: MN voted for Clinton in 2016 by less than 2%, while SC went red by 14%. Yes, both trended leftward in 2020, but still. SC may gradually bluen, but it's not going to suddenly flip blue. MN, though it would certainly be an uphill fight, could go red with the right GOP candidate and the wrong Democratic candidate. SC might do the opposite under the opposite circumstances in a while, once it is (hypothetically) a bluer state, but for now, it's red. And it's not liberalizing rapidly or anything either - it shifted 3.8 points to the right in 2016, and 2.6 points leftward in 2020: so it shifted 1.2 points to the right from 2012 to 2020. While one could argue that that's because Obama boosted African-American turnout, if it really were liberalizing, the state would have at least stayed roughly the same from 2012 to 2020, not shifted rightward. Most majority-black counties (the backbone of Democratic support in the state) have shfited rightward from 2012 to 2020, and some have even flipped. If Democrats want to have even an outside shot at winning the state, they need to bring those votes back and boost votes and support in Charleston and other big cities.

Most southern counties which have flipped like this over the past several decades or so did so because many blacks moved away from such counties, thereby making the remaining population majority- or plurality-white.

[Schiff for Senate]

What the Tar Heel Gent said - neither is likely to happen, but MN is more likely. A blue SC is the latest rumour. But you should remember: MN voted for Clinton in 2016 by less than 2%, while SC went red by 14%. Yes, both trended leftward in 2020, but still. SC may gradually bluen, but it's not going to suddenly flip blue. MN, though it would certainly be an uphill fight, could go red with the right GOP candidate and the wrong Democratic candidate. SC might do the opposite under the opposite circumstances in a while, once it is (hypothetically) a bluer state, but for now, it's red. And it's not liberalizing rapidly or anything either - it shifted 3.8 points to the right in 2016, and 2.6 points leftward in 2020: so it shifted 1.2 points to the right from 2012 to 2020. While one could argue that that's because Obama boosted African-American turnout, if it really were liberalizing, the state would have at least stayed roughly the same from 2012 to 2020, not shifted rightward. Most majority-black counties (the backbone of Democratic support in the state) have shfited rightward from 2012 to 2020, and some have even flipped. If Democrats want to have even an outside shot at winning the state, they need to bring those votes back and boost votes and support in Charleston and other big cities.

Most southern counties which have flipped like this over the past several decades or so did so because many blacks moved away from such counties, thereby making the remaining population majority- or plurality-white.

Whatever the cause, and either way, it's a problem for South Carolina Democrats if African-American Democratic votes are decreasing (whether because a few more African-Americans are voting Republican or because they are leaving the state), and historically African-American, and Democratic counties, are going Republican. They are a key component of Democratic support in the state. If African-Americans are indeed leaving SC (which seems true, and as you indicate), there's no way SC is going blue, and in that case it will be difficult for Democrats to break even 40% of the vote after a while. If African-Americans are leaving the state, then liberalization of cities doesn't matter at all, and the South Carolina Democrats will be very lucky to maintain their current margins of loss (10-15%). African-Americans, as I already said, are key to any Democratic success, or even progress, whatsoever, and if they are leaving the state and/or voting the Republican, I honestly don't see how this poll could even be asking a serious question.