“Only 10 of 50 states (and DC and NE-2) saw a decrease.
IL (F you very much DuPage County), MA, CA, MD, AZ, TX (Iowa inched ahead of them!), WA, UT, GA, and VA (suspicious, Kaine or no).”
Trump greatly underperformed Romney among high-income suburbanites (plus among Mormons, many of whom voted for Egg McMuffin instead). Even in the states that you listed, Trump outperformed Romney in blue-collar suburbs and in (non-Mormon) rural areas.
BTW, I do not find the VA numbers suspicious; given Trump’s performance among high-income suburbanites nationwide, and particularly in the DC area, Loudon, Fairfax and PW falling further to the Dark Side was not unexpected anymore than was the further swing towards the GOP of the state’s Appalachian counties.
Our goal for future elections is to get back our suburban support (if not to 2004 levels, at least to 2012 levels) while retaining our gains among blue-collar voters. That would lock up the 306 EVs earned by Trump (his 1% victories in swing states would turn into 3% victories, and GA and AZ would be safely GOP once again) and add MN, NH, VA, CO and maybe NV, ME and NM for a total of 355 EVs.
I don’t know, Trump lead VA impressively earlier in the counting due to strong rural gains and even though everyone knew that most of NOVA wasn’t in yet, talking heads were openly fearful that she might not be able to close the gap. And then Maryland-South rushes in and she ends up doing better than Obama overall in the state, where Terry McAwful’s #1 goal for his entire administration was to carry the state for her. A little suspicious to me.
Progtards have been highly critical of Clinton’s choice of Kaine as her running mate and strategy of going after higher income suburbanites, but the results indicate the strategy was sound and very nearly successful. Liz Warren as her RM would have greatly undermined it. I don’t know if she takes VA without Kaine on her ticket.
I also think if Bernie were the nominee he’d have done badly in these areas, more than making up for any improvement he would have posted with blue collar voters.
“Our goal for future elections is to get back our suburban support (if not to 2004 levels, at least to 2012 levels) while retaining our gains among blue-collar voters. “
No doubt. And even slight improvements with Hispanic (especially) and Black voters could really F the democrats.