The last time WI went Rep was 1984; PA 1988; and MI 1988. Demography is destiny.
You’re not counting the overall rightward shift evidenced by the midterms and the tens of millions who will vote for Cruz who haven’t voted for years and Hilary’s inevitable collapse as more and more evidence is leaked and presented against her by those behind the email releases as well as her own self-destructive facetime toxicity and the inevitable rise of Rat candidates to replace her before its too late.
So pack up your big colorful Obama maps and your cries of hopeless doom and crawl back to your wonk hole at DU.
Agreed, it’s the demographics, stupid. No longer the economy, stupid. In the last presidential election, MR won 59% of the white vote. A few decades ago, that fact alone would have guaranteed MR a landslide victory similar to Nixon in 1972 or RR in 1984. One reason why the GOP has done fairly well in recent midterm elections is due to the fact that in the midterms, you have a much smaller electorate, older, whiter, more disciplined, more conservative, therefore more GOP than is the case in presidential election years. Another structural problem facing the GOP in addition to demographics-—since the New Deal the Democrats have pursued a long term strategy of getting as many people as possible dependent upon government as possible. But as Margaret Thatcher once pointed out, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
As far as state voting patterns are concerned, that is always subject to change. I live in CA. Our state voted reliably GOP for 40 years between 1952 and 1992 (except for the 1964 landslide loss) in presidential elections. Now the state is solidly blue. Other once staunchly Dem states which used to vote reliably Dem have recently become reliably GOP in recent years. These states include WV, LA, KY, AR among others. And there are always the swing states like OH, VA, and FL which constantly swing back and forth. I do agree with you, demographics trends favor the Dems in presidential elections. GOP must run the tables on virtually all of the swing states to have a chance.
Further, I think it is possible that a couple of staunchly blue states could turn purple. I would have NEVER guessed in a million zillion years that WI and MI would be RTW states today.
I don not subscribe to the Brezhnev Doctrine: What’s mine is mine. What’s yours is negotiable.
Under the right circumstances we could pick off a few blue states.