Are people overhyping how much of a re-alignment election this was?

[super6646]

The realignment happened in 2016. This is just what a narrow-but-solid GOP win looks like in the Seventh Party System.

Agree and disagree. The Trump of 2016 had no shot in places like the RGV or making New Mexico or New Jersey into remotely competitive states. However, I do agree that 2016 laid the seeds for racedep (Hispanics and other minority groups still swinging towards Trump despite his awful rhetoric at the time) and the primary split to move toward education. 2024 is the culmination of those trends really being brought to bare.

[dw93]

Yes. A combo of 2008 and 2016 were the re-alignment, the elections since were the result of said re-alignment.

[MABA 2020]

Yeah it's not 2024 is a realignment, but more a confirmation of the previous realignment.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Yes.

Way overhyped.

It wasn't a realignment at all when you consider that Donald Trump won all three elections.

He lost in 2020.

That is just a gag Samo.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Trump has a "mandate", according to many of the worst people on this site and elsewhere.

What they're really saying is "We won, Trump is super-popular, now shut up and f--k you." They're trying to bully/exhaust their way into having no pushback. It would be wise not to let them.

[Joe McCarthy Was Right]

Any realignment should consider states. I believe these were the only realigning elections since the Gilded Age:

1896: McKinley built a northern and midwestern conservative coalition that lasted until 1930.
1932: FDR built the New Deal Coalition that lasted until 1952.
1952: Suburbanization and the Cold War lead to Republicans winning most presidential elections until 1990. The only Democratic victories were flukes caused by strong Democrat candidates like Kennedy and Carter or weak Republican candidates like Goldwater.
1992: Bill Clinton turned the northeast and west into Democratic strongholds with working class voters, but ironically, it's been the professional class voters that have kept those states Democratic since then, and the Democratic base of 2012 looked nothing like 1992.
2000: 6 states that Bill Clinton won twice would vote for Bush and never vote Democratic again; Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Also, almost all of the states that trended Democratic vote Democrat to this day. The trend map was similar to the trends of the 2016 election.


2016 had massive vote preference shifts in both directions, but that mostly created new swing states as opposed to long-term partisan states. Iowa, Ohio, and Florida look like the only states that have become solid states. Similarly, I don't consider 2008 a realignment. Colorado and Virginia look like the only red states that became perma-blue in that election. New Mexico was already Democratic despite the fluky Bush win in 2004.