When did the Democrats lose the Obama - Trump Voters?

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Many Obama-Trump voters in, especially in the upper midwest, might better be described as "Bush-Obama-Trump" voters. Clearly Trump won enough Gore/Kerry voters to swing the states he did, but it should be noted that Gore and Kerry only narrowly won the blue midwestern states (except for Illinois which is unique for obvious reasons). In states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and even Indiana in '08, Obama won a large number of conservative-inclined voters who wanted to punish the GOP in 2008, and kept enough of them in 2012, probably because Romney did little to counter his image of an out-of-touch elite.

As for the Gore/Kerry-Obama-Trump voters, as much as the Democrats lost them, Trump won them. In the Bush era, cultural conservatism was very tied to religiosity. Wisconsin, for example, has a lower-than-average rate of weekly church attendance and people identifying as evangelical. So it's likely that there was a certain percentage of lapsed catholics and mainline protestants, who weren't that religious, and found the GOP's religious focus off-putting - but the same people had more conservative views on things like immigration and globalism/-ization, and that's what Trump's conservatism emphasized more of. Basically, Trump appealed more to these naturally conservative people who didn't identify with earlier iterations with the GOP, but did with Trump.