The Suburban Purge

[pbrower2a]

Thank you sir it will be "the college educated white suburbanite expulsion"

I think this is a good term for this phenomenon. It is rather tragic for Republicans, but we are making up for these losses with non college whites and certain non-white groups. I also don’t believe that the Romney strategy of pandering to rapidly left-trending white college suburbanites was one that was ever going to be built to last.

But -- college education is becoming more the norm among adults as older people without degrees are dying off. Republicans have been intensifying the anti-intellectual appeal to ignoramuses who resent learning and expertise.

Well-educated people are less amenable to demagoguery of any kind, including Trumpism. 

[pbrower2a]

I posted this soon after Barack Obama was re-elected President. Electoral votes shown are for 2008.

When all is said and done, I think that the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress. To compare ISIS to Fidel Castro is completely unfair to Fidel Castro, a gentleman by contrast to ISIS.

The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.

 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red.

Electoral votes are for a time now passed and can be ignored.

Some President must be most like Obama in political skills and temperament... and regional appeals. Obama is not a perfect match for Ike, as Obama did not win in farm-and-ranch country in the Rocky Mountain States and the High Plains as did Eisenhower. Political cultures rarely change starkly over sixty years or so in states (although demographics and economic bases can). Many Obama supporters considered Ike the last really-good Republican President.   This said, I can much more easily connect Eisenhower in behavior to Obama than to Trump. I can't speak for Ike, but I think he would find Obama an expression of most of what is best in America and Trump a disgrace.

The Parties can change when the political culture does not.Can you imagine any Republican winning Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island together... twice? Republicans have had only five wins of those states altogether  by Presidential nominees since 1960. Ike must have been doing something right to win those three states... twice! His six wins in those three states in two elections is more than all Republican nominees from Nixon to Trump. Four of those come from near-sweeps of the USA.     

Eisenhower and Obama did very well among the well-educated. Both did poorly in the South, except, oddly, they were  the first to win Virginia in a long time (24 years for Ike, 44 years for Obama) for their Parties. Coincidence? Aside from Virginia not being easy pickings for a populist I see nothing obvious. 

The most obvious cross-Party comparisons involve the winners winning 45 or more states, so of course Nixon 1972 and Reagan 1984 are obvious comparisons to FDR in 1936. This said, when someone wins 325 electoral votes that the nominee of the other Party won twice and the other seven come from places not voting for President in the previous time, then there must be some marked similarities. 

Obviously, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico are very different from what they were in the 1950's.

[pbrower2a]

Thank you sir it will be "the college educated white suburbanite expulsion"

I think this is a good term for this phenomenon. It is rather tragic for Republicans, but we are making up for these losses with non college whites and certain non-white groups. I also don’t believe that the Romney strategy of pandering to rapidly left-trending white college suburbanites was one that was ever going to be built to last.

But -- college education is becoming more the norm among adults as older people without degrees are dying off. Republicans have been intensifying the anti-intellectual appeal to ignoramuses who resent learning and expertise.

Well-educated people are less amenable to demagoguery of any kind, including Trumpism. 

College education is not getting more prevalent after COVID, especially among men of all races. It is however getting more prominent among women of all races.

I remember reading an interesting article akin to this!

I see possible permanent changes from COVID-19.

First, much of the Hard Right that rode the anti-vaxx bandwagon discredits itself.
Second, the depressed wages of the neoliberal era rise as a share of national income.

Declines in college education may relate to higher wages... that people are more likely to wait out the mess that COVID-19 has made of the educational system, perhaps only to return to the old norm. People had a very strong incentive to get formal education, especially in business-friendly courses, when wages were low.