If this is a re-alignment election; why?

[xavier110]

It’s going to be another tight election, without a mandate, between two incredibly disliked candidates. Not a realignment election.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It isn't, but third parties are definitely going to be the biggest variable.

[Bush did 311]

Incels

Millennial men have weaker education backgrounds than their female peers. In major cities they even earn less as well. A historically large percentage cannot get laid or form relationships. Every civilization is in trouble when it starts to have a large population of downwardly mobile sexually frustrated men.

Unlike most social issues where the left has been very proactive about offering solutions and reaching out to affected groups, this is one that a large percentage of the left, and liberals, and many people in democratic party consider "not a real issue", or "a good thing", or "not as serious as the issues women face so we're not gonna deal with it". I can see this coming a mile away. This is one issue where the people who should be reaching out and offering solutions have objectively failed to offer anything to help a group of people in distress and has instead met them with disdain.

These people don't support Republican economic or social policies necessarily. They like Trump specifically. They see Trump as a disruptive force that sends a message to the establishment. As long as he is on the ballot they will show up to vote for him. This does not reflect most of Trump's coalition. He still wins the traditional conservative and Republican groups as well. This is just the last 10% or so that put him over the top.

[dspNY]

The only realignment I could see happening is non-Cuban Hispanics switching to the GOP, especially in the Southwest. That would mean Nevada and Arizona are out of reach for the Democrats. I think there is some shift, but not a huge shift, because the polling out of AZ and NV shows about a 3-5 point Trump lead, and we'd see New Mexico hotly contested

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Incels

Millennial men have weaker education backgrounds than their female peers. In major cities they even earn less as well. A historically large percentage cannot get laid or form relationships. Every civilization is in trouble when it starts to have a large population of downwardly mobile sexually frustrated men.

Unlike most social issues where the left has been very proactive about offering solutions and reaching out to affected groups, this is one that a large percentage of the left, and liberals, and many people in democratic party consider "not a real issue", or "a good thing", or "not as serious as the issues women face so we're not gonna deal with it". I can see this coming a mile away. This is one issue where the people who should be reaching out and offering solutions have objectively failed to offer anything to help a group of people in distress and has instead met them with disdain.

These people don't support Republican economic or social policies necessarily. They like Trump specifically. They see Trump as a disruptive force that sends a message to the establishment. As long as he is on the ballot they will show up to vote for him. This does not reflect most of Trump's coalition. He still wins the traditional conservative and Republican groups as well. This is just the last 10% or so that put him over the top.

I don't see much evidence that men are shifting GOP more than women this election. It's not as if Trump is making men's issues a prominent force in this election. Both men and women seem to be shifting to Trump.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The only realignment I could see happening is non-Cuban Hispanics switching to the GOP, especially in the Southwest. That would mean Nevada and Arizona are out of reach for the Democrats. I think there is some shift, but not a huge shift, because the polling out of AZ and NV shows about a 3-5 point Trump lead, and we'd see New Mexico hotly contested

.

Lol a tie is out of rich lol you and Milineal Moderate and Progressive moderate all believe that AZ and NV are out of reach, NOT

[Bush did 311]

I don't see much evidence that men are shifting GOP more than women this election. It's not as if Trump is making men's issues a prominent force in this election. Both men and women seem to be shifting to Trump.

Look at the numbers again then. The shift is coming from black and hispanic millennial men. Women in the same age group in the same demographics are holding steady.

[dspNY]

Incels

Millennial men have weaker education backgrounds than their female peers. In major cities they even earn less as well. A historically large percentage cannot get laid or form relationships. Every civilization is in trouble when it starts to have a large population of downwardly mobile sexually frustrated men.

Unlike most social issues where the left has been very proactive about offering solutions and reaching out to affected groups, this is one that a large percentage of the left, and liberals, and many people in democratic party consider "not a real issue", or "a good thing", or "not as serious as the issues women face so we're not gonna deal with it". I can see this coming a mile away. This is one issue where the people who should be reaching out and offering solutions have objectively failed to offer anything to help a group of people in distress and has instead met them with disdain.

These people don't support Republican economic or social policies necessarily. They like Trump specifically. They see Trump as a disruptive force that sends a message to the establishment. As long as he is on the ballot they will show up to vote for him. This does not reflect most of Trump's coalition. He still wins the traditional conservative and Republican groups as well. This is just the last 10% or so that put him over the top.

If your thesis is correct then we have huge problems in this country beyond the scope of this election. Societal collapse starts to enter the conversation

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Incels

Millennial men have weaker education backgrounds than their female peers. In major cities they even earn less as well. A historically large percentage cannot get laid or form relationships. Every civilization is in trouble when it starts to have a large population of downwardly mobile sexually frustrated men.

Unlike most social issues where the left has been very proactive about offering solutions and reaching out to affected groups, this is one that a large percentage of the left, and liberals, and many people in democratic party consider "not a real issue", or "a good thing", or "not as serious as the issues women face so we're not gonna deal with it". I can see this coming a mile away. This is one issue where the people who should be reaching out and offering solutions have objectively failed to offer anything to help a group of people in distress and has instead met them with disdain.

These people don't support Republican economic or social policies necessarily. They like Trump specifically. They see Trump as a disruptive force that sends a message to the establishment. As long as he is on the ballot they will show up to vote for him. This does not reflect most of Trump's coalition. He still wins the traditional conservative and Republican groups as well. This is just the last 10% or so that put him over the top.

If your thesis is correct then we have huge problems in this country beyond the scope of this election. Societal collapse starts to enter the conversation

South Korea is slowly starting to experience this now. It is a decaying country. Don't think America is anywhere close to SK, yet.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Incels

Millennial men have weaker education backgrounds than their female peers. In major cities they even earn less as well. A historically large percentage cannot get laid or form relationships. Every civilization is in trouble when it starts to have a large population of downwardly mobile sexually frustrated men.

You do realize that a number of users on the forum would qualify for this?

[LAKISYLVANIA]

The only realignment I could see happening is non-Cuban Hispanics switching to the GOP, especially in the Southwest. That would mean Nevada and Arizona are out of reach for the Democrats. I think there is some shift, but not a huge shift, because the polling out of AZ and NV shows about a 3-5 point Trump lead, and we'd see New Mexico hotly contested

To be fair we haven't gotten (much) polling from New Mexico, but a re-alignment as you say would indeed indicate a close election here (or much closer).

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

No, it's not and it's a 275/219 map with NV as the tie breaker, the polling in NV is silly Trump +11

[Vice President Christian Man]

If this is a re-alignment election, why?

Because it's about past time. Re-aligning elections are events that tend to happen approximately every generation or so, and as such we're sort of overdue for one right about now.

And yes, the 2024 re-alignment that polls are suggesting is real.

There’s also been a lot of digital ink spilled on reasons why men might move away from Dems en masse.

Depending on which surveys you choose to consult, the gender gap has narrowed either slightly or significantly since 2020, but either way the chasm between the two sides appears to have closed somewhat during this time frame. This continues the trend we saw from polling during this spring's primary race, where Trump performed better among women than men while Haley did better with men than women, despite the candidates' own respective genders. Of course the GE electorate will look far different than that of the GOP primary, but this general rule can still be decently instructive for what we'll see in the fall.

We just had a realignment in 2016, although 1980 was a part 2 to the realignment of the late '60s/early '70s one which cemented said trends so I can see the parallels.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Biden is on track to duplicate his 20 vote total of 5 pts 75/70M votes because each Prez Eday not Midterms we outvoted Rs 65/60M on average, there simply more Ds in blue states

It's not realignment because since ,2006 we changed from a center right country and out of the Reagan era into Obama era we been realignment since 2006

These are the realignments
1750/1865 Tradtl slave era DIXIECRATS
1865/1920 Secular urban era LINCOLN/TEDDY ROOSEVELT ERA
1920/1948 Tradtl era COOLIDGE CAR ERA
1948/1968 Civil Rights era JFK ERA AND TV HOLLYWOOD
1968/2006 Tradtl Reagan era
2006 Obama era GREEN ERA ELECTRIC CARS REPLACE GAS CARS

[Agonized-Statism]

It's worth noting that Trump has already singlehandedly shifted the Overton Window, and in that sense, he was a wild success. Every other president this century had the opposite effect: the Reaganite three-legged stool collapsed under Bush, Obama's hands-off progressive historical determinism was disproven, and it's already widely agreed that Biden doesn't represent the future of his party (his career predates both the neoliberal and modern progressive wings). Democrats have quietly embraced tenets of Trumpism, as Beet explains here:

Basically he was the second term of Trump. He consolidated Trumpian policies in terms of industrial policy, protectionism, and oversaw a rightward shift on immigration. He crushed the progressive wing of his Party and the traditional activist causes like BLM, woke, #Resist, Medicare4All, free college, minimum wage, anti-war, socialism, etc. collapsed. The "Squad" and the Bernie wing became irrelevant. Although he did not contribute to it, the Trump-shaped Supreme Court came of age during his presidency. The rise of TradCath culture and the right-wing reemergence online. Decisive backlash against trans rights, drag shows, etc. He moved his party towards being the pro-police, pro-establishment and pro-war party. During his presidency people like Liz Cheney shifted towards the Democrats. He was essentially the left wing of Trumpism and gave Trump four needed years to regroup, re-consolidate and formulate a carefully considered plan for how to take on the Deep State in his second personal term.

I think Trump's win will be an issue of Democratic turnout rather than a massive influx of new voters on his part, but then like most of us here, I also tend to underestimate him. Time and time again, Trump's end was predicted and it never happened. Neoliberalism is beyond discredited at this point, progressivism is exhausted, and the weird tightrope act between the two that Democrats have tried isn't working- maybe Americans really do just see national populism as the way forward after giving a return to pre-Trump norms one last try. It's not like this forum really has its finger on the pulse of the country.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The Trump tax cuts are still in place because we have divided Govt, the tax cuts will go away once the DS get the Trifecta

But, Ds are shouldered with the burden of carrying Trump tax cuts because it was passed under R Congress and we have an R H back again

[pikachu]

Incels

Millennial men have weaker education backgrounds than their female peers. In major cities they even earn less as well. A historically large percentage cannot get laid or form relationships. Every civilization is in trouble when it starts to have a large population of downwardly mobile sexually frustrated men.

Unlike most social issues where the left has been very proactive about offering solutions and reaching out to affected groups, this is one that a large percentage of the left, and liberals, and many people in democratic party consider "not a real issue", or "a good thing", or "not as serious as the issues women face so we're not gonna deal with it". I can see this coming a mile away. This is one issue where the people who should be reaching out and offering solutions have objectively failed to offer anything to help a group of people in distress and has instead met them with disdain.

These people don't support Republican economic or social policies necessarily. They like Trump specifically. They see Trump as a disruptive force that sends a message to the establishment. As long as he is on the ballot they will show up to vote for him. This does not reflect most of Trump's coalition. He still wins the traditional conservative and Republican groups as well. This is just the last 10% or so that put him over the top.

The only thing I can think of is backlash to covid-era restrictions which the electorate associated with Biden and the Democratic Party. Which makes some amount of sense given that backlash did cut across racial categories.

My issue with both of these theories is that they would've manifested themselves in prior Trump elections. Trump's persona has basically been the same since 2016 - it's hard to picture a mass group of incels who voted for Clinton and Biden that are now going to vote for Trump.

It's a similar with restrictions. Trump and the GOP already ran as the anti-restriction party from 2020 to 2022. It's just hard to imagine who'd be the first-time Trump/GOP voter in 2024 on that issue when there was already one presidential election (along with several others where they could directly punish Democratic state/local officials) that they had the chance do so and the it was a more salient issue then. It kinda feels like switching from Trump to Biden in 2024 because you find Trump's views on immigration to be disturbing.

[wnwnwn]

Maybe if college whites swing D+10, only then.
Also, I think that the "losers of globalization fo R" trends have already happened. What happend now is that Biden now has a criticable record and the popularity of the D party is the lowest since the W years.
The gender gap increases as...
The left loses their male WWC voters
The right loses their UMC female voters
Black conservative young males go R

[Sir Mohamed]

I agree that a realignment doesn’t make sense. This cycle’s been odd for me bc I’m someone who’s generally a big believer in the polls and topline numbers make a lot of sense, but yeah, I have a really hard time buying that we’re about to see a realignment for the reasons you listed + American society going to hell in the election and not provoking the kind of shift that 2024 polls are suggesting.

I can sort of see the rationale for a big swing right among young voters and nonwhites even if I’m a skeptic. Both groups feel awful about the economy at present, have large groups of nonvoters who could be activated by that, and outside of older blacks, are more swingy regardless. There’s also been a lot of digital ink spilled on reasons why men might move away from Dems en masse.

I have no idea why seniors would see a big swing left though. This is an age cohort that’s voted GOP multiple times, people become less swingy as they age, and there haven’t been any events during the Biden presidency that would provoke a swing to him. If anything, considering that inflation is worse for savers, you’d expect the opposite.

Absolutely agree.

That said, if said realignment was real, wouldn't that mean Dems are essentially locked out of power nationally and be back to minority party only in control of coastal liberal states? That thought is horrifying.

[Skill and Chance]

I think you can make a reasonable economic case for a decline and potential reversal in age polarization:

1.  There seems to be a major misconception here that the average young person in America is deeply in (fixed rate) debt and dying for it to be inflated away.  This simply isn't true.  Perhaps this misconception lingers from when we had a more rural agriculture-based economy?  Student loans also aren't anywhere near as prevalent as often assumed here.  To truly benefit from 2020's inflation as a debtor, you likely need to have fixed rate, pre-pandemic debt.  Otherwise, it will just adjust upward with interest rates and asset prices.  Most of the people with a lot of fixed rate, pre-pandemic debt are not 18-29 year-olds.  They are middle aged professionals to young seniors in their peak earning years with a pre-pandemic 3% mortgage on a McMansion.

2. Social security automatically adjusts for inflation each year.  For somewhat wealthier retirees, the asset prices important to them (home value, stock market) have consistently outpaced CPI in the 2020's.  Sure they may be paying higher prices at the grocery store, but their paid off suburban house is worth nearly twice as much as it was in 2019 and their IRA/401K has probably more than doubled.  Seniors are probably feeling pretty flush, and even poorer seniors have been made whole by Social Security indexing.

3. For young people, wages don't automatically adjust like this, particularly in the private sector and particularly for inexperienced employees who don't have market power to demand it.  If you didn't already own those assets (housing, stocks, etc.), you are out of luck trying to buy them now.  Mortgage payments on an average house have doubled, for example.  Hiring for skilled professions has also cooled considerably.

4. We are entering a period in which providing retirement benefits to seniors will by necessity be most of what the federal government does.  There will barely be enough fiscal capacity to sustain Social Security, Medicare, etc. until the median Baby Boomer has passed on.  Young people are getting squeezed and will receive little benefit from the federal government during this time, because there simply isn't much of anything left to spend on them.  Both young and old people are starting to recognize this, with the latter becoming more appreciative of what "big government" can do for them and the former more skeptical.   

5.  This is more speculative, but we are quickly approaching a world where only religious conservatives consistently have large families.  The decline in secular Northern fertility really becomes noticeable in the generation born after the 2008 financial crisis and has really accelerated post-2020.  Once you see that the post-COVID generation is basically being raised in one giant Texas exurb, you can't unsee it!   Of course, people can change their minds as adults and other issues and events will intervene, as we have seen with Democrats and the growing Hispanic vote.  However, it seems reasonable that partisan pressures from demographic change will start going in the other way into the late 2020's and 2030's, particularly in the Sunbelt.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

No it's not we have been out of the Reagan era since 2006, Obama realigned the states that's why it's a 319/219 Eday and a 48/49/3 Senate map, the map follows the Blue wall since Obama, and the only reason why FL voted D during that time was Bill Nelson. It's all R now since Nelson is gone

1968/2006 was the last Reagan Revolution, Trump won in 2016 but Ds have won since then so it's no realignment

[It’s so Joever]

The actual state by state results won’t look like a realignment by any means. However, I do fully expect the precinct results in major cities to show a major change, and that is the swapping of white liberals and black/hispanic heavy neighborhoods in terms of voting patterns in major cities. Whether this is enough to be a “realignment” is debateable because the result will be fairly similar (a tight Trump victory)

[kyc0705]

More notes on age breakdowns:

Bush won the 18-29 cohort (born 1959-1970) in 1988 by six points. The oldest members of this group will be entering the 65+ cohort this year. The most Dukakis-friendly age group was the 60+ demographic (born before 1929), which voted for Bush by two points.

The most Republican-leaning cohort in each election since was:

45-59 (born 1932-1947) in 1992; voted Clinton by one point.
60+ (born before 1937) in 1996; voted Clinton by four points.
30-49 (born 1950-1970) in 2000; voted Bush by two points.
60+ (born before 1945) in 2004; voted Bush by eight points.
60+ (born before 1949) in 2008; voted McCain by eight points.
65+ (born before 1948) in 2012; voted Romney by twelve points.
50-64 (born between 1951 and 1965) in 2016; voted Trump by nine points.
Tied between 50-64 (born between 1955 and 1969) and 65+ (born before 1956) in 2020; voted Trump by five points.

Since 2004, the pattern has somewhat consistently settled that older voters (whenever born) are the most Republican. Additionally, voters born in the 1950s seem to be more Republican leaning on the whole, so I agree with the earlier posts that a sudden left-shift among 65+ this year would be unusual, since that group now includes almost everyone born in the '50s.