What happened to Missouri

[Motorcity]

Here are the results for Missouri (in million)

                 R                              D
2000       1.189                        1.111
2004       1.455                        1.259
2008       1.455                        1.41
2012       1.482                        1.223
2016       1.594                        1.071
2020       1.718                        1.253



Between 2008 and 2012, Democrats lost 213k votes while Republicans only gained 27k. I can't think of any other state that Democrats collapsed so fast in that period. Where did all those voters go? I know St. Louis has had hard times and people are leaving the city, but the metro area has stayed the same.

Between 2008 and 2016, Republicans gained 139k votes. Democrats lost 339k votes. Even if we assume thousands of Obama-Trump voters, that's still 200k that just stopped voting. Maybe it was a one time thing for African American voters? Even than, black support stayed even or increased in most other states between 2008 and 2012

And here was the 2012 Missouri Senate Race

D got 1.494 million and R got 1.066 million. (The Lib Party got 165k). So Democrats won on the back of 200k Romney-McCaskill voters

[Neptunium]

Seriously we don’t know how exactly those vote go unless we have exit poll which question it.

[TML]

If I had to guess, I would say many voters simply stopped voting Democratic altogether due to disagreements with them on social issues. In fact, in some states which register voters by party, there are many voters who are registered to the Democratic party (out of convenience and/or tradition) but vote Republican at nearly every level (with the possible exception of some local races).

[pbrower2a]

Missouri used to have much more manufacturing industry which could be organized. Organized labor (except perhaps police unions) has tended to be much more D than the local community. Much of the aviation industry (remember: Charles Lindbergh flew a plane named the Spirit of St. Louis) left the area.

St. Louis used to be the seventh-largest city in the USA (1930 Census, population  821,960); as of 2010 its population had plummeted to 319,294, or 59th. Between 2010 and 2019 it has lost an estimated 20,000 more people.

Population loss in an American city indicates people moving out, and people did not move out of "Detroit on the Mississippi" without good cause. That St. Louis is a dreadful place to live for reasons other than economics has long been well known. It is almost on the average temperature of freezing water in January and 80 F in July. It is typically on the rain-snow line in January and the 80F is definitely not a "dry heat". The industrial jobs have disappeared due to the moving out of industries and the mechanization of the chemical and brewing industries (among others).

Greater St. Louis is not a growth area. It's not where one reasonably expects to go to find work -- and incomes are low. In most respects it is a city to avoid. Kansas City isn't quite as bad... so where is the growth? For Missourians it is not in Missouri. Texas, perhaps. Maybe housing costs are low, but los housing costs may come with high crime rates and few job opportunities.

Springfield is supposedly a growth area, but it is also a place of high rates of violent crime. It is about halfway to Dallas from St. Louis, and the drive is still fairly pretty.

[Sol]

Places like the Lead Belt were competitive or even Democratic through 2008, and since have moved hard R. The Lead Belt, at the risk of using an overused comparison, is a bit like West Virginia or Eastern Kentucky--a rural ex-mining area where Democrats have cratered but where party loyalty to Republicans is low and a lot of former voters have just tuned out.

[Red Wall]

Flipped R in the Bootheel, the Lead Belt and Southern Missouri in general, left the state or died in St Louis

[Chips]

If I had to guess, I would say many voters simply stopped voting Democratic altogether due to disagreements with them on social issues. In fact, in some states which register voters by party, there are many voters who are registered to the Democratic party (out of convenience and/or tradition) but vote Republican at nearly every level (with the possible exception of some local races).

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

AA moved out of KC and St Louis and moved to IL or Cali, the 2/3 largest metros and mostly wealthy AA farmers stayed in  MO, that's what happened. In the 1990s there were alot more AA.

Also alot moved to Detroit too

[ultraviolet]

AA moved out of KC and St Louis and moved to IL or Cali, the 2/3 largest metros and mostly wealthy AA farmers stayed in  MO, that's what happened. In the 1990s there were alot more AA.

Also alot moved to Detroit too

People moving to Detroit? That’s a good one

[allenwfm9000]

St Louis is cringe

[kwabbit]

Conservative Democrats moving to the Republican party. An interesting aspect of Missouri is that almost the entire state has shifted against the Democrats. Boone is the only county in the state where the Dems have clearly improved over the last 20 years. Even the typical affluent, educated places that have trended strongly against the GOP in recent years, such as St. Charles, St. Louis County, or Jackson have remained even or even become less Democrat.

Perhaps the Dem decline among WWC voters was large enough in these counties to counterbalance college-educated white movement towards Democrats. Perhaps the Democratic party has become so unpopular in general in Missouri that it has slowed the migration of educated whites to the party.

Overall, WWC rural voters moved en masse to the Republican party like elsewhere, but there was simply no counterbalance to those trends in the suburbs or the cities. St. Louis city is declining in population, and its suburbs have not been as receptive to the Democrats or unreceptive to Trump as other metro counties.