Elections Shuffler

[ProgressiveModerate]

Minnesota's looking pretty tough for the GOP. The GOP could improve by five points in Hennepin, Ramsey and all the surrounding counties and still lose the state. The GOP really needs to get the rurals in the state to MI and PA levels in order to have a real fighting shot.

The problem for the GOP in MN is just that MSP seems to be taking over the state politically and their rural gains haven't been enough to offset it due to MN rurals being a lot less dense than many of the other midwestern states MN is often associated with. It's why MN shifted so left compared to WI, MI, PA, or OH.

[ProgressiveModerate]

This shows why Nevada will be no easy feat for Republicans. Even if they improve more in the rurals and flip Washoe, they pretty much need to bring Clark within 8.5% to have a chance at winning the state, and within 6.5% if Washoe keeps voting Democratic by a few points. And that's assuming that rural turnout stays high and Republicans don't lose ground there.

By improving by 10 points or so in rural counties, the Dems could win Washoe by under a point and win Clark by 9 points and the GOP could still eek out a narrow win.

A 10-point improvement throughout the rurals is also a very heavy lift, especially in counties where Republicans are already over 80%. It just shows that the path is very narrow, and many things have to go just right for them.

True but nowhere near impossible. I do suspect Clark County will slowly grow more GOP over time. Trump did improve in the county by a couple points compared to his 2016 margin. 1% in Clark County is equal to about 9,500 votes. If the margin in Clark drops down to exactly six points and nothing else changes, the GOP wins the state by 160 votes.

I think that Trump came pretty close to the Republican ceiling in Clark, and given how young and diverse it is, it’s not going to keep trending Republican.

Similar things were said about Miami-Dade before 2020. It’s foolish to assume that a county can’t possibly trend R just because it’s populous, diverse, and unionized, and the very few people on this forum who assume that Nevada's R trend will continue this decade largely expect R inroads into Clark (more so than further gains in the rural/small-town areas or even significant R gains in Washoe County) to constitute the foundation/prerequisite for any Republican statewide victory.

It's harder to see a hard right shift in Clark in the way we saw in Miami-Dade because Miami-Dade while diverse has a clear Cuban dominance whereas there really isn't any singular dominant group in Clark. If either side is getting a massive swing out of Clark, they're likely universally improving with a lot of groups that would be indicating a landslide nationally. Obama 2008 is a great example of this.

Anyone who says that Clark County outright CAN'T trend R is wrong though cause using Pres results since 2008 it literally has been shifting right, though many can make the argument that 2008 and 2020 may have yielded some abnormal results due to national crisises disproportionately affecting Las Vegas economy.

The ironic thing about Miami-Dade is from 2004 up until 2016, the County was having a pretty consistent leftwards trend but that obviously reversed very hard in 2020. Biden still did do better than both Kerry and Gore in the County but that isn't saying much. That same sort of whiplash that bucks national shifts is physically very difficult to happen in Clark for the reasons stated above.

Finally, Clark County or specific communities within it shifting right isn't neccessarily bad for Dems if turnout increase is high enough to cancel it out. The Hispanic and Black parts of the county have some of the lowest turnout rates in the Country, especially for a heavily-invested swing state

My guess is things will fluctuate left and right a bit but NV will remain a swing state throughout the decade on the federal level (while Dems mostly have an iron-grip on state level politics).

[ProgressiveModerate]

Based on the shuffler, if I had to guess how swing states generally shift throughout the next decade these would be my guesses:

Arizona: Likely continues to shift moderately left due to how urban the state is and the rise of Pheonix. Likely not hard left though due to the fact liberal Tucson's growth is nothing to brag home about and the growth amongst Hispanics isn't particularly crazy either. A lot of AZ's future will have to due with if Hispanic turnout is continuing to be disproportionately low relative to white turnout as more resources are invested in the state. According to my calculations, an AZ with equalized turnout would've voted closer to something along the lines of Biden + 4.

Colorado: Gone for the GOP. Growth is almost exclusively in already very liberal areas or areas rapidly shifting left. The state is becoming too dominated by liberal cities and Republicans won't be able to get the margins out of Colorado Springs they once did

Florida: A lot of it will depend on if 2020 Miami-Dade performance was fluke or is going to be the norm going forwards. A reminder that post-2016, a lot of Dems were actually very optimistic about Florida due to Clinton's insane performance in Miami-Dade lol. Other parts that would be key to a Dem win would be continuing to gain a lot of net votes out of Orlando and cutting pretty deeply into Rs margins in Jacksonville suburbs which have historically net the GOP a lot of votes. For the GOP to hold the state, growth patterns alone should be enough.

Georgia: Likely continues to shift D; basically all growth is contained in greater Atlanta with a few specs of growth in places like Savannah and Augusta. The state's minority population is also rapidly growing. I think it'll become a situation where by the end of the decade it'll be very hard for the GOP to outvote Atlanta on exclusively rural votes, simillar to a state like Minnesota or Illinois

Iowa: I think it continues to shift right just because of how much Dems can still fall in a lot of rural communities though there are some positive shifts for Dems in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines giving them a pretty good distribution in the legislature to possibly keep the GOP out of a supermajority.

Maine: Evidence suggests generational turnover should actually help Rs here, and they obviously have a lot more room to grow in northern Maine. However, growth is almost exclusively concentrated to Dem areas along the coast. Maybe a slight R shift

Michigan: I actually think the state stablilizes a bit politically and maybe even shifts slightly D. Detroit is losing a lot less badly than before and some of that is made up for in the diversification of many suburban communities and Dearborn. Furthermore, most of Michigan's rural communities are losing population, and the GOP has been losing support in the Greater Grand Rapids area which was once a GOP stronghold that net them a lot of votes. While places like Flint and Saginaw are shrinking, Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor pretty much cancel them out. It's also worth noting that MI rurals are a lot less dense than a place like OH or IN.

Minnesota: As I explained in the post above, I think it becomes a pretty reliable D state due to the growing influence of MSP. They def have a lot of room to gain in certain rural communities but once again, most are shrinking and are already collectively less populous than the MSP metro.

Nevada: This is one I'm unsure about, but I think Clark County's diversity probably stabilizes the state to continue voting around how it is. Low education levels def hurt Dems in the state, but then again, the state is becoming far more urban to the point where rural areas mean less and less.

New Hampshire: My guess is it becomes a pretty reliable D state. The state ranks highly in terms of education, plus MA's influence seems to be spreading to many communities in the SW part of the state which used to be a lot more R.

New Mexico: I think the state shifts a bit right because of the very strong growth in the conservative SW corner in large part thanks to oil. Ironically, much of greater ALBQ actually shrunk this past decade and the city is pretty geographically confined.

North Carolina: The state was able to be remarkably stable politically this past decade largely due to R gains in very dense parts of Appalachia cancelling out D gains in urban areas (though overall the state did still have a small but notable shift left). Republicans are def getting pretty close to their maximum performance in many of these appalachian communities whereas growth in places like Raliegh and Charlotte has been pretty insane (especially relative to most rural areas which are shrinking). My guess is the cities begin to dominate more and more enough to pull the state left.

Ohio: The rural communities are too dense to relatically outvote at this point and I think it's unlikely there's a sudden return in Dem strength in places like Youngstown and Warren which allowed Obama to win the state. Even if Dems do NUTs in Columbus, the state won't flip without making inroads elsewhere. Also Cinci has really not been doing well in terms of population. With all that being said, the cities should keep Dems above 40% in the state in a normal election; Ohio is never going to be an R + 25 state or smtg as long as coalitions even remotely resemble what we know today.

Pennslvania: Most of the growth is in SEPA both in liberal Philly suburbs but also in some more conservative areas around Lancaster and Harrisburg. While Republicans seem to be close to their max in many rural parts of the state, especially central PA, they def still have potential to gain in NEPA. I'd say a pretty regular and perhaps the ultimate tossup state of the decade

Texas: Growth def favors Dems and the state will shift left, the question is how fast? Can Republicans stall the state for a few years with further gains amonst Hispanics? Can Republicans hold down traditionally more conservative and well developd suburbs in places like Tarrant County? As long as the GOP remains toxic for cities, they're on track to lose the state sooner or later

Virginia: VA-Gov 2021 shows the GOP can still win statewide at least on the state level, but that was probably close to their maximum realistic performance. VA isn't going to be a state seriously contested on the Pres or Senate level going forwards. It will be interesting to see how much more Dems have to squeeze out of NOVA though cause it's pretty blue at this point

Wisconsin: Of the big 3, def the most likely to go a simillar way to Ohio and Iowa. A lot of pretty dense rural communities where the GOP "only" wins by like 20 or 30%. And many of these rural areas  have actually been gaining population unlike MI, PA, or MN. Furthermore, Milwaukee proper has been shrinking pretty rapidly. The one good thing for Dems is their growth in Madison but Madison is still a relatively small city at this point and only about 1/10th of Wisconsin. My guess is it continues to be a swing state but one that votes to the right of the tipping point.