Why are GOP swings more intense than Dem swings

[ProgressiveModerate]

Oftentimes when the GOP has a favorable shift in their favor, it is very sudden and quite extreme. In 2016 for example the entirety of the rural midwest had 30+ point swings towards Trump and in 2020, RGV and Miami Swings were very insane.

Even in the Obama years this same Phenomenon was true. Look at rural Arkansas in 2008 or WV/KY in 2012.

On the Dem side, we haven't seen many swings over about 15 points the past few cycles, but it seems like their gains have been more consistent than the GOP's with them often improving in the same community for several cycles in a row.

Why is this the case?

[kwabbit]

Democratic communities are typically diverse and populated while GOP communities are homogenous and rural.

In the rural Midwest, some of these rural counties are 75% Whites w/o college degrees, so if that demographic is swinging massively, those counties will swing massively. Even in Franklin County, where Democrats have made strong gains, the potential Democratic coalition includes educated suburban Whites, Black and Hispanic voters, young urbanites, etc. A huge Democratic swing would require large gains among all of these groups.

The RGV is among the most homogenous areas in the country. If Trump was gaining massively among non-major metro Hispanics, the swing in the RGV would nearly be one-to-one. There are no countertrends to mute it.

Miami-Dade is diverse and Trump made gains among most populations, including Jewish voters and Caribbean voters, but the real cause was a massive gain among a group that forms about half the population: Latin American immigrants/refugees from socialist nations.

Democrats have huge swings too, it's just harder to notice on a county map. If you go on the precinct 2012-2020 swing setting for Kansas in DRA, you'll see big swings in 25k areas in Johnson County (which is about the size of these rural Midwest counties). I wish DRA could reupload 2012 data for other states. I bet you could find a 25k chunk on the Upper East Side in Manhattan that would've swung 50pts from 2012 to 2020.

To your point, in the last two presidential election cycles, Democrats have gained among the same demographic in college-educated Whites. So you have two 8pt swings. While Trump had big gains among WWC in 2016 and then big gains among Hispanics in 2020, two entirely different groups.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

As kwabbit said, the D coalition is more pluralist (racially, ethnically, religiously, socioeconomically, etc. diverse) than the R coalition. Also there are more right-leaning Dem voters than there are left-leaning GOP voters.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-typology-comparison-2021/

I also enjoy the (probably correct) observation that more people in the Democratic coalition have essentially Republican orientations than the reverse, so there is still more low-hanging persuasion fruit for the Republicans to pick, on net. (Also, interesting to note that Republicans with Democratic orientations are an overwhelmingly young group -- likelier in every younger age group, and the effect is really strong -- while Democrats with Republican orientations seem to have virtually no demographic characteristics that mark them apart. A little likelier to be Hispanic than a different race, but even that's only a small effect.)

[Skill and Chance]

A major city going from 55%D to 75%D in one cycle like some rural counties went from 55%R to 75%R under Trump could mean over a million people changing sides.  That's just not realistic. 

[Tekken_Guy]

The wealthy and educate suburbs had some pretty massive swings from 2012 to 2016.

[Schiff for Senate]

Agree with Kwabbit, Tekken Guy and Skill and Chance.

The wealthy and educate suburbs had some pretty massive swings from 2012 to 2016.

A major city going from 55%D to 75%D in one cycle like some rural counties went from 55%R to 75%R under Trump could mean over a million people changing sides.  That's just not realistic. 

Democratic communities are typically diverse and populated while GOP communities are homogenous and rural.

In the rural Midwest, some of these rural counties are 75% Whites w/o college degrees, so if that demographic is swinging massively, those counties will swing massively. Even in Franklin County, where Democrats have made strong gains, the potential Democratic coalition includes educated suburban Whites, Black and Hispanic voters, young urbanites, etc. A huge Democratic swing would require large gains among all of these groups.

The RGV is among the most homogenous areas in the country. If Trump was gaining massively among non-major metro Hispanics, the swing in the RGV would nearly be one-to-one. There are no countertrends to mute it.

Miami-Dade is diverse and Trump made gains among most populations, including Jewish voters and Caribbean voters, but the real cause was a massive gain among a group that forms about half the population: Latin American immigrants/refugees from socialist nations.

Democrats have huge swings too, it's just harder to notice on a county map. If you go on the precinct 2012-2020 swing setting for Kansas in DRA, you'll see big swings in 25k areas in Johnson County (which is about the size of these rural Midwest counties). I wish DRA could reupload 2012 data for other states. I bet you could find a 25k chunk on the Upper East Side in Manhattan that would've swung 50pts from 2012 to 2020.

To your point, in the last two presidential election cycles, Democrats have gained among the same demographic in college-educated Whites. So you have two 8pt swings. While Trump had big gains among WWC in 2016 and then big gains among Hispanics in 2020, two entirely different groups.

Kwabbit's analysis about demographics is nothing short of excellent, but he and Skill and Chance also touched upon another important point: urban counties are much larger than rural ones population wise, so an equivalent swing is pretty much unfeasible, or at least much harder to happen. If you divided up populous suburban and urban counties into many different counties so each had, say, 20,000-30,000 people (the size of many rural counties), some would have truly monstrous swings. Combining all of them makes it less visible. Which is why CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS are better - they're about equal in population, so it's a better comparison. When it comes to urban areas, sometimes congressional districts are actually smaller than counties, whereas with rural areas, you have to combine all the tiny rural counties as well as some small urban areas to get districts. GA06 is a good example. It swung over 30 points leftward from 2012 to 2020. There are only a few districts that swung as much to the right from 2012-2020.

[Del Tachi]

Nothing novel to add here:  Democratic gains have been mostly contained to cities/suburbs, which would require a very large numeric shift to produce an equivalent swing to what we've seen in less populous rural areas. 

It's somewhat equivalent to the development curve:  the empirical observation that larger economies grow at a slower rate than smaller ones.  It isn't that larger economies are less innovative, but only that an equivalent amount of investment looks much smaller to an economy like China than it does one like Malawi. 

[Devils30]

The wealthy and educate suburbs had some pretty massive swings from 2012 to 2016.

Yeah, the swings in Dallas, Atlanta, Austin didn't get noticed by as many after 2016 but they were massive and in Atlanta's case- continued onto 2020.

[Sol]

The wealthy and educate suburbs had some pretty massive swings from 2012 to 2016.

Yeah, the swings in Dallas, Atlanta, Austin didn't get noticed by as many after 2016 but they were massive and in Atlanta's case- continued onto 2020.

The Texas swings continued in 2020 as well.

[Tartarus Sauce]

The swings even out a little bit more if you look at them on longer scale terms than just 2016-2020, such as 2012-2020, since Trump's massive rural gains were largely consolidated in just one election cycle, but Democratic gains in the educated suburbs were more spread out between the two cycles.

My personal favorite swing map for tracking the longform shifts between college educated whites leftward and working class-whites rightward is 2004-2020, which really highlights the collapse of metropolitan Republicanism and heartland Demosaurs on a wider timeframe. This also has the added benefit of washing out noisier data, like Obama's freakishly strong performance with working class whites in the Midwest for a Democrat or Trump's big in-roads with Hispanics since Bush performed even better nationally with the Latino vote.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The swings even out a little bit more if you look at them on longer scale terms than just 2016-2020, such as 2012-2020, since Trump's massive rural gains were largely consolidated in just one election cycle, but Democratic gains in the educated suburbs were more spread out between the two cycles.

My personal favorite swing map for tracking the longform shifts between college educated whites leftward and working class-whites rightward is 2004-2020, which really highlights the collapse of metropolitan Republicanism and heartland Demosaurs on a wider timeframe. This also has the added benefit of washing out noisier data, like Obama's freakishly strong performance with working class whites in the Midwest for a Democrat or Trump's big in-roads with Hispanics since Bush performed even better nationally with the Latino vote.

Hidalgo, Webb and Cameron are interesting

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

As kwabbit said, the D coalition is more pluralist (racially, ethnically, religiously, socioeconomically, etc. diverse) than the R coalition. Also there are more right-leaning Dem voters than there are left-leaning GOP voters.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-typology-comparison-2021/

I also enjoy the (probably correct) observation that more people in the Democratic coalition have essentially Republican orientations than the reverse, so there is still more low-hanging persuasion fruit for the Republicans to pick, on net. (Also, interesting to note that Republicans with Democratic orientations are an overwhelmingly young group -- likelier in every younger age group, and the effect is really strong -- while Democrats with Republican orientations seem to have virtually no demographic characteristics that mark them apart. A little likelier to be Hispanic than a different race, but even that's only a small effect.)

If I had to guess what demographic variables might predict who right-leaning self-ID Dem( leaner)s are, maybe occupation, educational attainment, and being foreign-born?

[morgieb]

It's probably a case of GOP counties being smaller than Dem ones. Like the Atlanta suburbs went from 70% R to 50/50 (and arguably tilting D) from 04-20, similar case in Dallas. But that might only affect 5 counties, whereas Appalachia doing something similar would affect 30.

[ottermax]

Hidalgo, Webb and Cameron are interesting

Looks like the shifts have come from the more rural parts of the RGV while more urban areas along the border have stayed close to their 2004 results which was still a high era for Republicans in the region. This year's midterms will be fascinating.

[Gracile]

An underrated factor here is the relative diversity of large urban/inner suburban counties means that you will get a lot of contradictory swings that will cancel each other out to a certain degree. For example, a county with a combination of college-educated white, non-college-educated white, Hispanic, African-American, etc. neighborhoods will have disparate swings and flexibilities.

Compare this to the many rural/small metro counties that have shifted markedly to the GOP, which are comparatively more homogenous and have a collective voter base that is "on the same path," so to speak, means you will see more pronounced swings. So much of this can be explained by the significant gains the GOP made with smaller metro, non-college-educated whites (or in the case of the RGV, small metro Hispanics) and those counties being more demographically uniform.