I'm going to nitpick with you on some of your political demographic factoids, Zaybay, because you made inaccurate claims in all three cases.
So as we can see, a lot of Blue was lost in 2016 and regained in 2018. This region is called the driftless and it makes up most of western Wisconsin. It swung heavily towards the Rs, but swung to the Ds in 2018. This implies that the region is not strongly trending R but rather a swing region that goes with the Ds most of the time, but goes for populists as well. But lets say this region is trending strongly R and the Dems have only the urban areas of Madison and Milwaukee left. The thing is, however, that that is really all they need. Dane county, which holds Madison, is the fastest growing county in all of Wisconsin, and has gotten more blue overtime. Its highly probable that in 2028, this region would be able to hold the state at lean D, with or without the driftless region.
It is absolutely
not all they need. I've mentioned this before in another thread where people were discussing the Democrats' prospects in Wisconsin in light of Madison's growth, but Dane County and Milwaukee County account for only about 25% of the total state population. Madison's growth is obviously good for the Democrats, but forsaking the rest of the state will leave them as a perpetual minority party on the local level. Getting blown out long-term in the Northeast and Driftless Area will lock them out of power.
Pittsburgh proper neither swung nor trended Republican, in fact, it swung and trended
Democrat in 2016, as did the wealthy suburbs to the north and south. It's the rest of the Pittsburgh region that trended so hard to right, especially among the river valleys radiating outward from the city which are chock full of impoverished, blighted, depopulated former steel towns.
Detroit's suburbs are not even remotely similar to the WOW suburbs surrounding Milwaukee. Wayne County suburbs are heavily Democratic (though the south suburbs swung significantly to the right in 2016). Oakland County and Macomb County were former bastions of mid 20th century suburban conservatism (Macomb got a bit of a later start on this trend than Oakland did) which then proceeded to shift Democratic starting in the 1990s, a common trend in the suburbs of Northern and Western cities across the country. Macomb powerfully swung back to the right in 2016, while Oakland has its regions of high Republican density, particularly the north and west ends of the county.
That is not the same as the WOW counties though. The WOW counties are long-standing, ruby-red conservative fortresses that have refused to budge from their ideological guns even as other suburbs have shifted leftward over the decades. They haven't voted Democrat since Johnson's nationwide landslide in 1964. The only equivalent in the Detroit region is Livingston County, which is profoundly exurban in character and of little note in relation to the comparable population behemoths of Oakland County and Macomb County. A stronger case could be made for the suburbs surrounding Grand Rapids and extending into Ottawa County, but at least proportionally speaking, they wouldn't constitute the population anchor for the Republican base the way that the WOW counties do in Wisconsin.
That all being said, I do agree with your assessment that Michigan will be the most right leaning of the three by 2028, though they will most likely all still be swing states then as well as they are now.
And since we are on the topic of nitpicks, I have another one for the OP:
I say Wisconsin Easily
I say these will be the PVI of each state by then
Wisconsin: +6 Republican
Pennsyvania: + 3 Republican
Michigan: + 4 Democratic (I believe by 2028 even MN will be more Republican than MI)
What an utterly bizarre prediction. If we assume the continuation of current trends, which everyone seems to be doing in this thread, Minnesota will easily continue to vote to the left of all three in ten years. As already mentioned in Wisconsin, Dane County and Milwaukee County combined form around 25% of the state population. SEPTA and Allegheny County total around 41.5% of Pennsylvania's population. Wisconsin Democrats have Madison to be hopeful for, with Dane County being the only region posting significant growth over the past decade in the state, but it's small contribution to the total state population and the elasticity of rural areas and mid-sized metros will be a permanent Achilles Heel. Pennsylvania Democrats are gaining ground in SEPTA and will likely expand their influence into the wealthy suburbs of Pittsburgh, but have lost a huge amount of ground in the rural areas and are in danger of continuing to lose their footing further in the second tier metros of the Lehigh Valley, Scranton-Wilkes Barre, and Erie, so it could all potentially be a wash. Obviously Minnesota will vote to the left of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, though you didn't explicitly say it wouldn't either.
But why do you think Minnesota will vote to the right of Michigan by 2028? Wayne County, Oakland County, and Macomb County comprise just a hair under 39% of the population of Michigan. The total population in the core metro area has witnessed sluggish growth over the past decade, Democrats have lost ground in multiple areas throughout the Detroit region, they don't really have any other region in the state to make up for the losses since they've lost ground outstate as well, and Michigan has seen one of the highest exodus of college-educated White Millenials since the Great Recession, if not the single highest rate of loss. Meanwhile, the seven county core of the Twin City Metro constitutes about 54-55% of Minnesota's population. It's prospered with high growth rates for a Midwest metro, has attracted a surplus of college-educated White Millenials over the past decade, Democrats are gaining ground throughout the metropolitan area, and the Republican-shifting outstate areas are losing population. How does the math work out to Minnesota voting to the right of Michigan in ten years?
Poll
