The Republicans' Southern Problem

[hopper]

They have an urban Southern problem - not a rural Southern problem.

Louisville, Lexington, and Frankfort are trending Democratic. But not, say, Letcher County. How will the electoral map look once Louisville reaches a certain percentage of the state's population?

Kentucky is not trending Dem. Lexington, and Louisville are college towns so the Dems are always gonna win them.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Kentucky is not trending Dem. Lexington, and Louisville are college towns so the Dems are always gonna always gonna win them.

They only recently started winning Lexington.

[hopper]

The GOP has Texas and will probably gain the Rust Belt and Minnesota and maybe even Pennsylvania around the same time Arizona and the coastal South switch.

Not the same time. Arizona will become more competitive for the democrats and the rust belt states more competitive for republicans at the same time. A switch however in the lower coastal south will take much much longer to happen.

With all this said about the urban/rural split, will Tennessee soon become the next North Carolina? Tennessee actually has pretty many big cities.

No.


https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/compare.php?year=1992&fips=47&f=0&off=0&elect=0&type=state


Romney won there by 20%.


Tennessee doesn't have the large black+Hispanic population that North Carolina did to make it competitive.  

NC has had a big black population for decades now but the growing Hispanic and Asian population which votes Dem by 30-35% over Republican Presidential Candidates pushes the Dems over the top in both NC and VA.

[hopper]

With all this said about the urban/rural split, will Tennessee soon become the next North Carolina? Tennessee actually has pretty many big cities.

No.


https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/compare.php?year=1992&fips=47&f=0&off=0&elect=0&type=state


Romney won there by 20%.


Tennessee doesn't have the large black+Hispanic population that North Carolina did to make it competitive.

In 1988, the county with Columbus OH went Republican by 21 points. In 2012, it went Democratic by 23 points - a 44-point shift. That's the future America is looking at.

Nashville isn't getting any smaller.

Franklin County(I just checked.) Well Ohio State University is in Columbus.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

With all this said about the urban/rural split, will Tennessee soon become the next North Carolina? Tennessee actually has pretty many big cities.

No.


https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/compare.php?year=1992&fips=47&f=0&off=0&elect=0&type=state


Romney won there by 20%.


Tennessee doesn't have the large black+Hispanic population that North Carolina did to make it competitive.

In 1988, the county with Columbus OH went Republican by 21 points. In 2012, it went Democratic by 23 points - a 44-point shift. That's the future America is looking at.

Nashville isn't getting any smaller.

Franklin County(I just checked.) Well Ohio State University is in Columbus.

Columbus has other things besides OSU, just like any other big city.

[hopper]

The main Southern problem is that the states are so safe, the only competitive election is the Republican primary.

I don't think that's true. Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, heck even Mississippi (Obama lost it only by 11 points while losing white voters by roughly 80 points!) are trending D. Mississippi and Georgia may seem safe right now, but the fact that the Republicans had to fight for Georgia in 2014 is really bad news for them. And that is understating the case. Hillary Clinton is even with Republicans in Georgia. It won't be long (maybe 2016) until Georgia will be Virginianized (Atlanta voters will outvote the rurals). And then the GOP desperately needs to find EVs somewhere else, not that it would be easy.

The GOP is slowly losing its grip on the Atlantic South (Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida), but they have little to fear from states further inland.  

Well, the problem for them is that these states have fewer electoral votes. You can't win a Presidential Election just by winning Texas, the Upper South (with the exception of Virginia) and the Great Plains States.

Also, the Republicans' problem is kind of two-fold and ironic.

On the one hand they have a southern problem, in that they are too associated with southern culture which default makes them lose the Northeast and California... on the other hand they can't even run the table in this region.  Though perhaps that's because the parts of the region they are losing aren't really all that southern (Virginia, Florida).

That's also what I thought. It really seems like we have reached a point in history where Democrats are winning Presidential Elections and Republicans are winning Midterm elections. However, all of these Southern states will be winnable for them if African-American turnout is down or if the GOP does significantly better among Blacks (up to 25%). However, I don't see that happen in the near future, especially not in the South.

No Mississippi's PVI hasn't changed very much at all since 1996 at R+9. Florida and Virginia the GOP can still be competitive. North Carolina might be lost totally(The Research Triangle) is liberal. Georgia keeps getting more and more diverse but its not budging towards Dems in terms of PVI.

[Xing]

As has already been said, Democrats are gaining among minorities and urban voters in the South, but the fact that Southern whites are voting so heavily Republican means that most Southern states are out of reach for Democrats. While VA and NC are now swing states, FL still is, and GA might eventually become one, most other states will be solidly Republican for a long time. The only reason why states like SC, MS and AL trended Democratic in 2012 is because they're fairly inelastic. That's why they trended Republican in 2008. AR, KY, TN, and WV are quickly becoming some of the most Republican-leaning states in the country.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Inner-city whites are trending Democratic as well.