Your maps look good, but they do strike me as bit too much rooted in the 20th century. For example I don't think Washington would be more democratic than California at this point with the dramatic changes that have occurred in the state.
Also I doubt that a state like Mississippi would be more republican than states like Arkansa and Tennessee. The days of the whiter southern states being relatively unaffected by racial polarisation are over.
I based a large part of my predictions off of where each state lies on the political spectrum. Washington is definitely still to the left of California on economic issues, and in such a situation I would expect the GOP to make inroads into California. The same situation applies for Louisiana and Arkansas - I think they would respond well to left-wing populism, but Mississippi and Alabama would not.
You are right in saying that this map is like that of the 20th century, however. I think that may be what happens; a sort of political redux into the New Deal era.
Also, Louisiana has the 2nd highest black population, after Mississippi.
Is it though? Sure the California of 1988 may be more economically right wing than the Washington of today, but the California of 2017 is a very different place. Large numbers of the white suburbanites that voted for Nixon/Reagan have left the state after the Cold War which led to the shrinkage of the defence industry causing them to move over to places like Arizona and Idaho. Meanwhile there has been a huge influx of Hispanics into the state and which has definitely pushed the state to left economically.
Washington meanwhile, is a state that doesn't even have a state income tax and is not exactly a social democratic paradise.
Overall I would personally switch California and Washington on that map.
As for Mississippi and Alabama, I assumed that the whites in those states would somewhat less hostile to the democrats in this alignment, just enough to make them competitive, after all you don't need to flip that many whites in the Deep South for the democrats to win those states.
