GOP's problem in smaller metro areas

[Roll Roons]

One thing that's underdiscussed is the collapse of Republican strength in a lot of smaller/"second fiddle" metro areas. I mean places like Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, and Reno. Obviously, this hurts GOP prospects in statewide races, including president.

These metro areas have traditionally been far less Democratic than the larger ones in their respective states, but that's changing. What can they do to stop the bleeding in places like these?

[ottermax]

I'm not sure it is much of a collapse as much as a bit of a geographic depolarization happening. On the flip side there are large metros seeing significant gains for the GOP in the past two cycles such as South Florida, NYC, and Los Angeles which are not that helpful for the GOP electorally in the short-term.

[bagelman]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

[Roll Roons]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

[Annatar]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Johnson outperformed Trump in the Green Bay metro area and even Michels managed to run ahead of Romney's numbers there. There are a lot of small metro areas where Trump in 2020 ran significantly ahead of Romney in 2012, in most of those areas Republicans did even better in 2022, obviously they did better nationally, winning the house vote by around 2.3% by estimate adjusting for uncounted seats vs Trump losing by 4.5% so its not surprising they did better in those areas.

Also, Trump even in 2020 outperformed Romney in the Pittsburgh metro area overall, so from 2012-20 the Pittsburgh metro area shifted Republican.

[Vosem]

I think some of these tend to be highly educated on account of what their main industries -- true of Grand Rapids and I think increasingly Reno. "Highly educated second-fiddle metro areas" used to be, like, the base of the Republican Party as recently as 15-20 years ago, so there's a lot of room to fall there.

Otherwise, Green Bay is pretty clearly trending right over time, and I'm not sure 2022 was a particularly weird result there. Pittsburgh swung left senatorially in 2022 but that seems like something of a favorite son effect in an unusually regionalized race? More generally, Pittsburgh is to some degree trending left but I don't think it's a "smaller metro area" that can be grouped with the rest of these; it's significantly larger and just kind of counts as a city by any metric you want to choose.

[Nyvin]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Johnson outperformed Trump in the Green Bay metro area and even Michels managed to run ahead of Romney's numbers there. There are a lot of small metro areas where Trump in 2020 ran significantly ahead of Romney in 2012, in most of those areas Republicans did even better in 2022, obviously they did better nationally, winning the house vote by around 2.3% by estimate adjusting for uncounted seats vs Trump losing by 4.5% so its not surprising they did better in those areas.

Also, Trump even in 2020 outperformed Romney in the Pittsburgh metro area overall, so from 2012-20 the Pittsburgh metro area shifted Republican.

I know the Pittsburgh metro isn't exactly coterminous with Allegheny county, but Romney didn't outperform Trump 2020 in the county.  Unless you mean in total raw votes?

Romney -
Allegheny    56.69% D - 42.12% R

Trump 2020 -
Allegheny    59.61% D - 39.23% R

[Schiff for Senate]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Johnson outperformed Trump in the Green Bay metro area and even Michels managed to run ahead of Romney's numbers there. There are a lot of small metro areas where Trump in 2020 ran significantly ahead of Romney in 2012, in most of those areas Republicans did even better in 2022, obviously they did better nationally, winning the house vote by around 2.3% by estimate adjusting for uncounted seats vs Trump losing by 4.5% so its not surprising they did better in those areas.

Also, Trump even in 2020 outperformed Romney in the Pittsburgh metro area overall, so from 2012-20 the Pittsburgh metro area shifted Republican.

I know the Pittsburgh metro isn't exactly coterminous with Allegheny county, but Romney didn't outperform Trump 2020 in the county.  Unless you mean in total raw votes?

Romney -
Allegheny 56.69% D - 42.12% R

Trump 2020 -
Allegheny 59.61% D - 39.23% R

It’s because the counties directly around Allegheny - technically considered Pittsburgh’s suburbs - are quite Appalachian in character. So formerly ancestral D (just look at the 1984 presidential map and you’ll see it), now quite Republican, and of course moved to the right in the Trump Era. Even as late as 2018, popular downballot Democrats such as Tom Wolf and Bon Casey vastly outperformed Hillary Clinton’s performance (of course, they did so across the state, but Southwest PA, even compared to the state as a whole, had a large leftward swing between 2016-PRES and 2018-SEN/GOV). Take, for instance, Washington County, just south of Allegheny and part of the Pittsburgh metro officially. It was Romney+13.6 in 2012; is Trump+22.7 now. Despite Trump’s 25-point win in the county in 2016, Republican Scott Wagner won it by under a point in the 2018 gubernatorial race. Or consider the stronger example of Greene County, also officially part of Greater Pittsburgh, which Wagner won by a point and a half, and Barletta won by 2: it was Romney+8.3 in 2012 and Trump+30.8 in 2016 (it swung more to the right in 2020, going up to Trump+33.4). These swings add up - Allegheny may have 1.25 million people, but Greene has 130,000, and Washington has over 200,000.

[Annatar]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Johnson outperformed Trump in the Green Bay metro area and even Michels managed to run ahead of Romney's numbers there. There are a lot of small metro areas where Trump in 2020 ran significantly ahead of Romney in 2012, in most of those areas Republicans did even better in 2022, obviously they did better nationally, winning the house vote by around 2.3% by estimate adjusting for uncounted seats vs Trump losing by 4.5% so its not surprising they did better in those areas.

Also, Trump even in 2020 outperformed Romney in the Pittsburgh metro area overall, so from 2012-20 the Pittsburgh metro area shifted Republican.

I know the Pittsburgh metro isn't exactly coterminous with Allegheny county, but Romney didn't outperform Trump 2020 in the county.  Unless you mean in total raw votes?

Romney -
Allegheny    56.69% D - 42.12% R

Trump 2020 -
Allegheny    59.61% D - 39.23% R

By the Pittsburgh metro area I use the Census definition of the counties included in it, if you just look at Allegheny, its true Trump didn't do better than Romney.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Johnson outperformed Trump in the Green Bay metro area and even Michels managed to run ahead of Romney's numbers there. There are a lot of small metro areas where Trump in 2020 ran significantly ahead of Romney in 2012, in most of those areas Republicans did even better in 2022, obviously they did better nationally, winning the house vote by around 2.3% by estimate adjusting for uncounted seats vs Trump losing by 4.5% so its not surprising they did better in those areas.

Also, Trump even in 2020 outperformed Romney in the Pittsburgh metro area overall, so from 2012-20 the Pittsburgh metro area shifted Republican.

I know the Pittsburgh metro isn't exactly coterminous with Allegheny county, but Romney didn't outperform Trump 2020 in the county.  Unless you mean in total raw votes?

Romney -
Allegheny 56.69% D - 42.12% R

Trump 2020 -
Allegheny 59.61% D - 39.23% R

By the Pittsburgh metro area I use the Census definition of the counties included in it, if you just look at Allegheny, its true Trump didn't do better than Romney.

Trump certainly made big gains in places like Washington and Westmoreland Counties from past GOP nominees.

[Schiff for Senate]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Not enough to flip the county (which isn't that red in the first place, and was purple during the Obama years).

Tammy Baldwin did win the county in 2018 despite losing it in 2012, but then, her numbers improved in most of the state.

[bagelman]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Not enough to flip the county (which isn't that red in the first place, and was purple during the Obama years).

Tammy Baldwin did win the county in 2018 despite losing it in 2012, but then, her numbers improved in most of the state.

Went from R+1 to D+3, a D+4 swing. Statewide swing towards Baldwin was over 5 points, so it still managed to trend R within the state.

[Schiff for Senate]

How is the Green Bay metro moving left? Brown WI was R+2 in 2012 rounded up and R+7 in 2020 rounded down.

Evers and Barnes both made huge gains there this year.

Not enough to flip the county (which isn't that red in the first place, and was purple during the Obama years).

Tammy Baldwin did win the county in 2018 despite losing it in 2012, but then, her numbers improved in most of the state.

Went from R+1 to D+3, a D+4 swing. Statewide swing towards Baldwin was over 5 points, so it still managed to trend R within the state.

Fair enough. If I was really interested I could've searched for the margins and would probably have found this out myself, but I was lazy, so I was just seeing if it was blue or red on Wikipedia, lol.

[Hope For A New Era]

It gets more interesting if you go smaller than this. Have a look at small cities in Kansas like Emporia and Garden City.

[Devils30]

I started a post on this a little while back:

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=534970

The trends in Harrisburg and Grand Rapids are not covered by the media but huge, big reason why Michigan and Pennsylvania could remain blue even in the long term. Green Bay is smaller than these metros, hence Wisconsin trends not looking as great for the Dems. But Dems can now easily replace Wisconsin with Georgia or Arizona at this stage.

[mileslunn]

It depends on state.  Trump dominance of smaller metro areas in Florida and Ohio is big reason he won those both times while Obama won them both times.  But true in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and off course many blue states Biden dominated them.  In Texas, Trump did really well in smaller metro areas outside Rio Grande Valley and is only reason state is still red.  If smaller metro areas in either Texas or Florida voted like they did nationally, both would be blue states not red.

[pbrower2a]

One thing that's underdiscussed is the collapse of Republican strength in a lot of smaller/"second fiddle" metro areas. I mean places like Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, and Reno. Obviously, this hurts GOP prospects in statewide races, including president.

These metro areas have traditionally been far less Democratic than the larger ones in their respective states, but that's changing. What can they do to stop the bleeding in places like these?

Republicans need to give up the rhetoric that offends the minorities in the states involved and start offering solutions to real problems that poor non-whites have.

They are not going to stop the hemorrhaging of the GOP vote in such a place as Pittsburgh without solving some of their electoral failures in Philadelphia. I can say the same of Grand Rapids, Green Bay, Reno... and in due time, Tucson and Colorado Springs.