Didn't people speculate that a lot of that was some voters feeling burnout from excessive COVID lockdown policies? That will not be an issue in 2024.
Yes, people did, but then NY-GOV was D+5 post-Dobbs in 2022, DeSantis won Miami-Dade, and Newsom lost 5% off his 2018 statewide margin in CA.
I'm expecting the biggest Republican gains in the country to be in majority-minority megacities. Indeed, it's plausible that the only Republican gains are in these places.I guess we will see. It's really hard to predict right now, that is for sure.
I will also be interested to see what happens by age group among White voters, which is very relevant to this question. I was shocked to see that Republicans won the 30-44 age group among White voters 54%-43% in 2022. Those exact people were quite Democratic in all previous exit polls... It's also interesting that this age group was the most Republican of Black voters and the second most Republican among Latino voters:
Black 18-29: 89% DEM, 9% GOP
Black 30-44: 82% DEM, 17% GOP
Black 45-64: 86% DEM, 13% GOP
Black 65+: 88% DEM, 10% GOP
Latino 18-29: 68% DEM, 30% GOP
Latino 30-44: 60% DEM, 37% GOP
Latino 45-64: 55% DEM, 44% GOP
Latino 65+: 58% DEM, 41% GOP
Side note, but it will be really interesting - and possibly even healthy for political discourse - if/when older voters are more Democratic than Republican voters on average, if Millennials and Gen Z voters remain Democratic.
