Since 1968, every United States presidential election which resulted in a party switch in the White House saw at least one state flip for a pickup winning Republican or Democrat. The party which lost a given state, to a Republican or Democratic pickup winner, has since not won that state again.
In the first map—using red for Republican and blue for Democratic—are a timeline:
• 1968 Republican (Richard Nixon): *Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska [statewide and the
1st and
3rd Congressional Districts], North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming
[Note: *Alaska, with the vote since 1960, carried Democratic only with Lyndon Johnson’s 44-state landslide in 1964] • 1976 Democratic (Jimmy Carter): Minnesota
• 1980 Republican (Ronald Reagan): Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas
• 1992 Democratic (Bill Clinton): California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine [statewide and the
1st Congressional District], Maryland, New Jersey, and Vermont
• 2000 Republican (George W. Bush): Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
• 2008 Democratic (Barack Obama): Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Virginia.
The last two party switches, with the pickups, were as follows:
• 2016 Republican (Donald Trump): Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as well as
Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
• 2020 Democratic (Joe Biden): Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as well as
Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
The first map does not count any of the 2016 Republican and the 2020 Democratic pickups.
The second map is my estimation of
Realigning States for the ones which were applicable with the Republican and Democratic presidential pickup years of 2016 and 2020. I suspect Florida, Iowa,
Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, and Ohio may have realigned Republican. I also suspect Arizona, Georgia, and Nebraska’s
2nd Congressional District may have realigned Democratic.
The Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are the only states which carried with all the last four election cycles—three of them won by the Democrats (2008, 2012, and 2020); one by the Republicans (2016)—and I suspect they are nowadays the nation’s most reliable bellwether states. This is why they are highlighted, in the second map, in purple.
(
Worth consideration: With the next United States presidential election which switches the White House to the Republicans, what may be their newly realigned states?)