More Surprising : WV being a solid GOP state or VT being a Solid Dem State

[OSR stands with Israel]

What would be more surprising , someone in 1980 telling you Vermont would be a solid Democratic State in the future or someone in 1992 telling you West Virginia would be a solid Republican state in the future

[RINO Tom]

WV would obviously be more surprising and still is.  VT literally had a generation of lifelong Republicans neatly replaced with a generation largely born in more liberal states.  Throw in a few, "the party left me" folks, and a flip was almost inevitable.  WV likely would have voted for Hillary Clinton 8 years ago and just handed her a 42% defeat margin, LOL.

[catographer]

WV would obviously be more surprising and still is.  VT literally had a generation of lifelong Republicans neatly replaced with a generation largely born in more liberal states.  Throw in a few, "the party left me" folks, and a flip was almost inevitable.  WV likely would have voted for Hillary Clinton 8 years ago and just handed her a 42% defeat margin, LOL.

Yeah imagine a working-class whites Clinton campaign in 2008, where she won the WV primary 67-26. Bush won it in 2004 by 13 pts, Obama virtually unchanged in 2008. Clinton definitely would've done better than -13, maybe under -10.

[Figueira]

WV, because it was moving towards the Democrats at that moment. VT was pretty much destined to become a Democratic state when Johnson won it easily in 1964.

[Virginiá]

Today, VA is even less competitive at the statewide level than WV. At least Democrats can win the governor's office easily in WV.

I don't mean any offense by this, but don't you ever think you get too confident about particular trend(s)? You almost got burned by your NH fascination last year, and given the extremely close margins, indicating things could have easily gone the other way, I'd say it punched a hole in your theory anyway but I won't get into that. You rolled your eyes at me when I once said last year that Virginia was rapidly moving away from a purple status to a Leans/Likely D state and was already practically non-competitive in certain races.

Wouldn't it be better to wait until VA Democrats at least get their first double digit (or near double digits) gubernatorial win before making these claims?

[McGovernForPrez]

West virginia is definitely more surprising. From '96 to '00 the state swung somewhere around 20 points towards the Republican party. West Virginia had been largely isolated from the Republican trending south. Only voted for Nixon once and Reagan once. The swing was truly out of nowhere.

[Virginiá]

3.) It's really something that you are accusing me of being overconfident of trends. I mean, I've said several times that Republicans have a red state problem because they continue to lose federal and statewide races in supposedly "red" states like MT, WV, ND, etc. while Democratic states are no longer willing to elect Republican Senators. This is a big problem for the Republican Party in the Senate right now and the reason why the GOP advantage in the Senate only exists on paper. Gubernatorial races are less partisan, but even in those races Republicans are struggling in states like CT (and they will probably lose IL and a few others in 2018 as well).

EDIT: Regarding the NH thing... well, Republicans lost both federal races (which they should have won if NH were truly a competitive swing state) and only won the gubernatorial race by 2 despite the fact that their nominee was well-known statewide, pro-choice and running against an awful Democrat - Phil Scott in neighboring VT did much better than Sununu. And IIRC, I wasn't the only one who was/is convinced that NH is trending D in the long term.

Well of course I am very confident in generational trends and things like that, I can't deny that. I consider these more general trends that are constantly in motion, and decently well-studied. State-level trends like NH and VA seem trickier to call right off the bat. It's not that I don't share your opinion long-term of NH and VA, but I still see them as competitive at least at the state level in certain instances. In fact I think I was too confident in NH as Trump almost won that. Nonetheless, Democrats have done well in say, Virginia, but they haven't really blown Republicans out yet. Their wins have been marginal, but consistent. It still seems like the GOP has some time to rack up a couple wins here and there before the state drifts further away from them. Whether they actually do that is another story, though.