Long term, what blue states does the GOP have potential in?

[Kamala's side hoe]

NJ has the potential of a Pub snap back if the salience of economic issues waxes, and cultural issues wanes. NJ is not a woke state.

Any alignment where economic issues overshadow everything else would mean wokeness becomes irrelevant to voting patterns.  

[ProgressiveModerate]

Rhode Island is on borrowed time.

I think it's pretty plausible that Rhode Island moves to the right, but borrowed time--implying that it would flip--is a bit of a stretch imo.

The main issue with this imo is it implies the gop would be winning back educated northeastern suburbs since 80% of RI is greater Providence or affluent liberal coastline communities.

I can't make up my mind about New England.  On the one hand, almost everyone went to college  when compared to other states/regions.  On the other hand, Dems are so massively overperforming with middle class white voters and in rural areas, that I have to wonder if it eventually comes in line with the national average, in which case everything but MA and maybe CT flips.  It's the inverse of the GOP lead in MS and LA.  There's a good reason for the states behaving differently, but you wonder if something has to give eventually.

Firstly beyond northern Maine, New England doesn’t have many true rural areas, it’s mostly a combination of cities, suburbs, and exurbs. Think about how relatively close together majour cities are too relative to other areas of the country. In Connecticut for example you hard Hartford, New Port, Bridgeport, Stamford all in a relatively close proximity. This makes the GOP’s task tricky because the cities will always be able to outvote exurbs and “rurals”

And yes, like the south some of it is cultural; the main southern states that have been changing politically have been doing so because of growth and cities now dominate, republicans still do amazing in rural areas (GA is a prime example). In New England, the only state rn where you can make this argument is Maine because Northern Maine is much more akin to the rural Midwest than New England in many ways, plus there is strong evidence to suggest generational replacement in the state favored Rs.

In all the other New England states, we aren’t really seeing a rise in any prominent R communities and infact growth is mostly constrained to liberal areas, suggesting long term the region will stay liberal. Even in Maine the coast is growing much faster than upstate which is generally shrinking.

So yes, for the same reason MS isn’t competitive and will unlikely be for a long time, CT and RI aren’t competitive even if they may seem so based on demographics alone.

[Central Lake]

New Mexico, Delaware

[Central Lake]

Also since Illinois was mentioned, I think Hawaii is state that could swing to the right. Hawaii is not that culturally liberal.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Also since Illinois was mentioned, I think Hawaii is state that could swing to the right. Hawaii is not that culturally liberal.

Plus it’s very homogenous, making it easier for a large rightwards shift to happen

[Sol]

Also since Illinois was mentioned, I think Hawaii is state that could swing to the right. Hawaii is not that culturally liberal.

Plus it’s very homogenous, making it easier for a large rightwards shift to happen

Hawai‘i's not a homogenous state at all unless you're just looking at diversity in terms of census racial data. Asian-Americans in Hawai‘i are a very diverse community with many different historic waves of immigration and some notable political cultural cleavages. The swing to Trump in parts of Western O‘ahu and in the Western urban core of Honolulu was correlated with Filipino-American ancestry, for example (I think both of these also correspond with income though I could be wrong).

There a decently large number of Micronesians in Hawai'i too; only Arkansas is a bigger destination for people from the Marshall Islands.

Even white people in Hawai'i have some unusual demographics; the state is about 4% Portuguese-American, higher than Massachussetts.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Also since Illinois was mentioned, I think Hawaii is state that could swing to the right. Hawaii is not that culturally liberal.

Plus it’s very homogenous, making it easier for a large rightwards shift to happen

Hawai‘i's not a homogenous state at all unless you're just looking at diversity in terms of census racial data. Asian-Americans in Hawai‘i are a very diverse community with many different historic waves of immigration and some notable political cultural cleavages. The swing to Trump in parts of Western O‘ahu and in the Western urban core of Honolulu was correlated with Filipino-American ancestry, for example (I think both of these also correspond with income though I could be wrong).

There a decently large number of Micronesians in Hawai'i too; only Arkansas is a bigger destination for people from the Marshall Islands.

Even white people in Hawai'i have some unusual demographics; the state is about 4% Portuguese-American, higher than Massachussetts.

HI probably will continue trending R from the Obama era, but the state is still quite left-wing on race/multiculturalism and environmental issues, which will probably prevent HI from becoming competitive in the foreseeable future.

Aside from what you mentioned, the (non-mixed) Chinese community in HI is significantly more R than on the mainland which is partly due to its small size and their history of upward mobility through education and entrepreneurship, which sets them apart from the larger and comparatively working-class/blue-collar Japanese and Filipino communities.