Elections Shuffler

[Devils30]

https://elections-daily.com/the-election-shuffler/

Really enjoying this along with everyone here. It brings some interesting hypotheticals for 2024 for sure. Things I've noticed

1) In Ohio the Dems are f***ed. Dems can win Franklin by 51, Delaware by 13, Hamilton by 35, Cuyahoga by 50 and if nothing else changes they are still over 2% and 115K short. If Mahoning keeps moving red its simply not going to be a winnable state.

2) Georgia is very easy to get Dems to that 2.5-4% win many expect in 2024 with simple shifts left in already Dem trending suburbs.

3) North Carolina has been frustrating for a decade for Dems but might finally shift in 2024 and on. Even a 3% shift in the 10 or so most D trending counties flips the state without accounting for population growth. If the GOP ends up maxing out in rural areas soon, they could have long awaited trouble finally come to the forefront. Most of the GOP's gains in eastern NC have to be with non-whites going forward. GOP still has some potential in western NC but Henderson, Transylvania have 32-33% with a college degree. Many of these college whites are a spillover of liberal Asheville.

4) Without getting back to 18-20% in Dade, its really hard to see Dems winning again in Florida. Getting only 12-15% in Dade means they can get double digits in Seminole, Duval and still lose.

5) Texas looks fairly daunting for a 2020-24 shift that makes it blue but you can see the outlines of a blue Texas 2028 map.

6) Giving Rs a 10% shift in the rural counties outside Dane, WOW and part of NE WI/Eau Claire/La Crosse only gets them to around 3% without accounting for a Dem shift around Milwaukee. Promising trends for Rs but hardly a sure thing here if their rural gains are a lower 5-6% instead.

7) Michigan is not going to be a walk in the park for the GOP, plenty of high population R places trending D like Ottawa, Kent, Grand Traverse, Livingston make their math daunting.

8. PA you can give 10% R gains to most of the sharpest GOP trending counties, Erie and Lackawanna and only get them to about 2% ahead. A fairly modest shift in Philly burbs, Lancaster, Cumberland, Allegheny combined with conservative population growth estimates offsets this.

[Devils30]

To make it truly good you need census figures from 2021-24 to adjust the turnout for counties. Clearly places like Gwinnett will go up in that category much more than south GA, another reason I think it's staying blue and getting deeper blue.

[Devils30]

I've developed a bit of a fascination with Idaho recently, after learning of the unusual Superintendent of Public Instruction election in 2018, in which the Republican won by only 17489 votes out of 594465 cast, a margin of 3 points.

This is not an AL-2017-type turnout-difference election. In Ada County (Boise), there were 190502 votes cast in the gubernatorial race, in which the county voted D+1, and 186605 cast in the superintendent race, in which the county voted D+19. This was true and extensive ticket-splitting.

So, based on that 2018 map, I created this. It's a hypothetical D victory map in Idaho, created by adding a bit of #trends to that race. This hypothetical Democrat wins by a 0.2 point margin.




It should be noted that the shift was exceptionally strong in the eastern part of the state (most of those counties had their margins copied verbatim from the 2018 results):



So it's clear that Mormons will be an integral part of any future D coalition in Idaho.

It should also be noted that the Republican candidate got the most raw votes by far out of Canyon (Nampa and Caldwell) and Kootenai (suburban Spokane and resort town of Coeur d'Alene). However, these seem like places likely to trend left strongly during the 2020s.

Looking back, that is an interesting map!

I think my point #4 in the original post is exactly how Demings would have to win in 2022. She would need a super surge around Orlando, 10% in Duval and like 13% in Hillsborough along with modest gains in the exurbs like Pasco, Lake, Polk. Rubio is not losing Dade by more than 12-15% maximum.

[Devils30]

So I used the Shuffler to shift the counties with the strongest Trump trends back to Hillary 2016 margins

So, some interesting results, first it only shaves around a point off of Trump's margin in Texas, more importantly, the vast majority of said shaving off comes from three counties: Cameron, Hidalgo, Webb, the rest of the counties only shave around 0.2 off of Trump's margin, Hidalgo is the largest of the bunch, shaving off 0.45 off of Trump's margin. Cameron is the next largest, shaving off around 0.2, and Webb is the smallest, shaving off around 0.17.

So, thus three conclusions:

1. The RGV is not going to stop Blexas, it may delay it, but it alone won't prevent it.

2. It is a waste to spend time anywhere in the RGV except Hidalgo, Cameron, or Webb, the other counties simply don't have enough people to matter.

3. In the long term, the only people the RGV trend should affect is Gonzales and Cuellar.

(and a bonus one)

4. People were too quick to doom and gloom on Blexas following the RGV trend, forgot that is mostly rural and has few urbanized parts (and unsurprisingly, said urbanized places still gave double digit margins to Biden).

Yep...Zapata and Starr counties are interesting on this board but they might look more like Buchanan and Dickenson counties in SW VA in the long run. If the 4 big metros start trending the same way as we've seen in Atlanta, DC, Denver the GOP is screwed.

For 2022 you wonder if the GOP will protect its incumbents or try to maximize. They probably should try to protect incumbents but they might see the Dems new maps in NY, IL, MD, NM and draw something that eventually becomes a dummymander. GOP should take 25-13, which will help them all decade but not eat into the Ds 5 seat House majority. A 28-10 map would probably leave Crenshaw, McCaul, Roy and Taylor in big trouble very soon.

[Devils30]

Looking at Virginia. Youngkin has two options. He either has to drastically cut some of the GOP losses in NOVA or he must have a monster showing in downstate VA. Do better than Trump by 20+ points in some of the counties down there and win Chesterfield, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake by double digits along with Montgomery and the state bellwether of Radford. No easy task but it's not completely outside the realm of possibility.

The counties in SE VA are heavily African-American, not at all likely Youngkin runs better than Trump by 20%, much less 2-3%.