There Is No 'Blue Wall'

[Stranger in a strange land]

The Blue Wall is a popular vote wall not an electoral college one. Obviously if Romney won the PV by 4%, he'd win all those states.

But in order to win the PV by 4%, with anti-immigration, anti-welfare, anti-minority rhetoric, they'd have to carry 65% of the white vote. Good luck.

The GOP can win 65% of the white vote....with all the race baiting going on currently, I predict they win 70% in 2016

LOL

There's a hard floor in the white vote of granola types, single women, latte liberals, gays and their supporters, Reform Jews, unionites, young urbanites, the highly educated, and New Englanders who will never, ever vote for the Republican party in it's current form.

[Senate Minority Leader Lord Voldemort]

The Blue Wall is a popular vote wall not an electoral college one. Obviously if Romney won the PV by 4%, he'd win all those states.

But in order to win the PV by 4%, with anti-immigration, anti-welfare, anti-minority rhetoric, they'd have to carry 65% of the white vote. Good luck.

The GOP can win 65% of the white vote....with all the race baiting going on currently, I predict they win 70% in 2016

Turns out the Northeast and West Coast exist.

[Skill and Chance]

The Blue Wall is a popular vote wall not an electoral college one. Obviously if Romney won the PV by 4%, he'd win all those states.

But in order to win the PV by 4%, with anti-immigration, anti-welfare, anti-minority rhetoric, they'd have to carry 65% of the white vote. Good luck.

The GOP can win 65% of the white vote....with all the race baiting going on currently, I predict they win 70% in 2016

LOL

There's a hard floor in the white vote of granola types, single women, latte liberals, gays and their supporters, Reform Jews, unionites, young urbanites, the highly educated, and New Englanders who will never, ever vote for the Republican party in it's current form.

This is true, but going by liberal/progress self-ID in polling, this floor is 25-30% (which is a GOP electoral college win until and unless Texas flips), not the current 35-40%.  Union voters can be up for grabs under the right circumstances.

[IceSpear]

The Blue Wall is a popular vote wall not an electoral college one. Obviously if Romney won the PV by 4%, he'd win all those states.

But in order to win the PV by 4%, with anti-immigration, anti-welfare, anti-minority rhetoric, they'd have to carry 65% of the white vote. Good luck.

The GOP can win 65% of the white vote....with all the race baiting going on currently, I predict they win 70% in 2016

LOL

[King]

did you happen to notice what happened to the Asian vote in 2014?

The GOP did do better with Asians in 2014, but not as good as advertised. It was only a 10 point swing from 40% in 2010 midterm Asians to 50%. Presidential year Asian vote is more locked into the Democrats. However, I will give you that it would not be out of bounds to expect the 76% support Obama received to go down with Hillary.

The problem with the change in the Asian vote is that their concentration isn't in swing states. They live mostly California, Texas, Washington, Illinois, and New York. It doesn't really matter to a victory strategy.

Using this handy dandy tool, one notes that if Asian support is moved from 76% D to 50%, no states flip; and if moved from 76% to 0%, the Democrats still win the EC 286-252.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

did you happen to notice what happened to the Asian vote in 2014?

The GOP did do better with Asians in 2014, but not as good as advertised. It was only a 10 point swing from 40% in 2010 midterm Asians to 50%. Presidential year Asian vote is more locked into the Democrats. However, I will give you that it would not be out of bounds to expect the 76% support Obama received to go down with Hillary.

The problem with the change in the Asian vote is that their concentration isn't in swing states. They live mostly California, Texas, Washington, Illinois, and New York. It doesn't really matter to a victory strategy.

Using this handy dandy tool, one notes that if Asian support is moved from 76% D to 50%, no states flip; and if moved from 76% to 0%, the Democrats still win the EC 286-252.

Keep in mind, that tool assumes uniform swing across the country, and therefore may not be entirely accurate.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

The reason why the there is a Blue wall , is that Republicans have been getting their ass kicked in Presidential elections since 1992. They have lost the popular vote in 5/6 presidential elections. If they have managed a solid popular vote margin like Obama got in 2008 and 2012 then the blue wall would be breached.

If the Republicans had won by 4 points in 2012, they would have the Romney states + FL, NC, VA , PA, WI, IA, NH and NV. The Democrats have an edge in a tied popular vote or even losing by 1-3 points as their states are only slightly leaning to them. If Republicans managed to win by more than 3 points then the wall would be breached.

[Likely Voter]

Wow Silver really destroyed the strawman didn't he?

As far as I have always understood the 'blue wall' it was that in a close election, the Dems have an advantage, and ironically Silver actually confirmed this in the same article...

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As we can recall from 2012, even though there were a few times that Romney pulled through with a small PV lead in national poll averages he never was able to do so in the EC. That was the 'blue wall' in action. And of course the GOP selection of battleground states itself showed an EV advantage for the Dems. The Romney campaign spent 77% of their money on the GOP 'defense' states of NC, FL, OH and VA. 

And as Sabato's well thought out list of battlegrounds for 2016 shows, the Dems continue to have an EV advantage. That is the real 'blue wall'. It isn't insurmountable, it is just an extra barrier the GOP has to get over to win. 

[pbrower2a]

I think it just splendid that everyone here understands it is about  95% all about the popular vote, and nothing else, and this parsing of swing states is just a waste of time, particularly at this point in the election cycle. And sure one can speculate about the popular vote, but given Hillary's potential problems, and given that we don't know who the Pub nominee will be, and that it is really up in the air in fact, and that we don't know how the Pub contenders will do under the klieg lights under pressure in prime time, and given that we don't know what the economy will be like, or what the Middle East will look like, and whether or not there have been more terrorist attacks, and how the Iran thing will play out, isn't that just about as silly an exercise?

Thank so much. Cheers.

In 2000 where the votes came from mattered more than that Al Gore got more of them. In 2004, John Kerry could have won the Presidency with less than a majority of the popular vote by winning Ohio just barely.

In both 2008 and 2010 the Presidency seemed for a long time to boil down to Obama winning just one of several states that could have decided the election. 2008 proved to not be so close as it looked earlier.

As the 2016 season approaches, nobody reasonably expects either nominee to win the 55% or so of the popular vote that gives 400 or so electoral votes. But know well: as the popular vote is distributed, the Democrats have an edge because they can win the states that they have won in every election beginning in 1992 by smaller margins than the margins of states that they never win. The Democratic nominee can win the Presidency while getting less than a plurality of the popular vote.

Really? Yes. The tipping point for 2008 was Iowa, which Barack Obama won by a little over 9.5%. Oddly, Iowa was practically never in doubt for Obama. But shift 4.5% of the Presidential vote from D to R, and McCain would have won the popular vote 50.1% - 48.36%  but lost the popular vote 275-263.

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This election does not have the impending secession of California or the combination of New England and New York as an issue.  More likely we will see labor-management issues, the environment, or economic performance as the focus of 2016.

[DS0816]

The reason why the there is a Blue wall , is that Republicans have been getting their ass kicked in Presidential elections since 1992. …

Actually, this speaks to the realigning and counter-realigning of the electoral map. (Thank goodness for Tricky Dick Nixon!)

This is not mentioned in Nate Sliver's analysis.

Notice that, with those six election cycles (1968 to 1988), there was only one Old Confederacy state always carried by the Republicans—Virginia, which had bare misses for the two winning Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, from that 1968 to 2004 Republican realigning period. All the rest shown on Nate Silver's map were outside the Old Confederacy states. Also notice that the bellwether state of New Mexico—which people aren't considering a bellwether anymore (it has the No. 1 best historical record; it is the only state which has carried over 90 percent, since its first participation, of having voted for presidential winners!)—was in the Republican column in all six of those election cycles.

I also notice that no one in the media mentions that the eleven Old Confederacy states have a lackluster history in carrying for presidential election winners. Florida, which has carried in 20 of the last 22 cycles (1928 to 2012), has the best record of all states from this region. The likes of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina rank among the ten worst states in presidential election history.

The Democrats of today have the electoral map the Republicans had in the past: California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—to name a few (each with double-digit electoral votes)—all have better historical records than Florida. And Florida, like those other just-mentioned ones, ranks among the Top 20 best-performing states in having carried for presidential winners.

The Republican Party—and some of the forum members here—are playing for the Old Confederacy and deluding themselves into thinking that that area of the United States will have the dominant influence over the rest of the country in picking presidential winners. The Old Confederacy—that's today's Republican Party's base. The threads on Arkansas and border-south West Virginia—they're imaginative, fun, harmless threads. (Just as another one, however long ago, was with concern for Utah.)

The Democrats are better off now that the map has been flipped. (Bill Clinton's Arkansas is worth trading to the Republicans and, in return, Ronald Reagan's California is more than worth trading to the Democrats—after all, California ranks in the Top 10 historically with having voted for presidential election winners.) Do keep in mind that every state that winning Republican Abraham Lincoln carried in his first election, 1860, carried for the first election, in 2008, for winning Democrat Barack Obama!

I believe that what we will experience—during the rest of the lives of everyone who participates at this site—are the majority of United States presidential elections being won by nominees from the Democratic Party. (Just as it was the case with the Republican Party in the past generations, with their base states of support, between 1860 and 1988.)

[Ebsy]

The reason why the there is a Blue wall , is that Republicans have been getting their ass kicked in Presidential elections since 1992. …

Actually, this speaks to the realigning and counter-realigning of the electoral map. (Thank goodness for Tricky Dick Nixon!)

This is not mentioned in Nate Sliver's analysis.

Notice that, with those six election cycles (1968 to 1988), there was only one Old Confederacy state always carried by the Republicans—Virginia, which had bare misses for the two winning Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, from that 1968 to 2004 Republican realigning period. All the rest shown on Nate Silver's map were outside the Old Confederacy states. Also notice that the bellwether state of New Mexico—which people aren't considering a bellwether anymore (it has the No. 1 best historical record; it is the only state which has carried over 90 percent, since its first participation, of having voted for presidential winners!)—was in the Republican column in all six of those election cycles.

I also notice that no one in the media mentions that the eleven Old Confederacy states have a lackluster history in carrying for presidential election winners. Florida, which has carried in 20 of the last 22 cycles (1928 to 2012), has the best record of all states from this region. The likes of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina rank among the ten worst states in presidential election history.

The Democrats of today have the electoral map the Republicans had in the past: California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—to name a few (each with double-digit electoral votes)—all have better historical records than Florida. And Florida, like those other just-mentioned ones, ranks among the Top 20 best-performing states in having carried for presidential winners.

The Republican Party—and some of the forum members here, like King (what with his asinine assertion that the Republicans will garner 70-percent, nationwide, from whites!)—are playing for the Old Confederacy and deluding themselves into thinking that that area of the United States will have the dominant influence over the rest of the country in picking presidential winners. The Old Confederacy—that's today's Republican Party's base. The threads on Arkansas and border-south West Virginia—they're imaginative, fun, harmless threads. (Just as another one, however long ago, was with concern for Utah.)

The Democrats are better off now that the map has been flipped. (Bill Clinton's Arkansas is worth trading to the Republicans and, in return, Ronald Reagan's California is more than worth trading to the Democrats—after all, California ranks in the Top 10 historically with having voted for presidential election winners.) Do keep in mind that every state that winning Republican Abraham Lincoln carried in his first election, 1860, carried for the first election, in 2008, for winning Democrat Barack Obama!

I believe that what we will experience—during the rest of the lives of everyone who participates at this site—are the majority of United States presidential elections being won by nominees from the Democratic Party. (Just as it was the case with the Republican Party in the past generations, with their base states of support, between 1860 and 1988.)

I just have to step in and say that King has been arguing against the people that think Republicans will get 70% of the white vote. I'm sure he would agree with most of what you said in your post, and it is really disingenuous for you to single him out when he's probably the most reasonable blue(or fake green) avatar in this thread.

[DS0816]

I'll revise that, Ebsy.

[ClimateDem]

Nate Silver thrives off being a contrarian. He's the political analyst equivalent of a hipster.

[Fuzzybigfoot]

The Blue Wall is a popular vote wall not an electoral college one. Obviously if Romney won the PV by 4%, he'd win all those states.

But in order to win the PV by 4%, with anti-immigration, anti-welfare, anti-minority rhetoric, they'd have to carry 65% of the white vote. Good luck.

[Skye]

It's an interesting analysis. But yeah, the EV Blue Wall is big because the GOP has been getting their asses handed to them every time, or the election is really close.

[Nichlemn]

One of Nate Silver's other articles that he links to in this article points out the lack of robustness to the Democrats' supposed EV>popular vote advantage. So Obama did have a slight electoral college advantage in 08 and 12, but (notoriously) it was the opposite in 2000, and hasn't shown any historical tendency to favour one party, or correlate from one election to the next.

And as Silver alludes to, the starting date of 1992 is clearly cherrypicked for the most favourable framing. It looks a lot less rosy if you picked 1968, or 1980, or 2000 as the starting point. Not that it really matters, as there isn't any correlation between past performance and future results anyway:

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The Blue Wall is term used since Obama's term as 272 map; CO, IA, NV, Pa, NV and NM. But, there was one during Clinton term: OH, WI, IA, Pa, NM; known as 270 wall.  It isnt a bad term, it us just a term used to show the electoral strength of Dems.

The Southern Strategy is used by media during their dominance of presidency, too.

[HAnnA MArin County]

The Blue Wall is a popular vote wall not an electoral college one. Obviously if Romney won the PV by 4%, he'd win all those states.

But in order to win the PV by 4%, with anti-immigration, anti-welfare, anti-minority rhetoric, they'd have to carry 65% of the white vote. Good luck.

The GOP can win 65% of the white vote....with all the race baiting going on currently, I predict they win 70% in 2016

LOL

There's a hard floor in the white vote of granola types, single women, latte liberals, gays and their supporters, Reform Jews, unionites, young urbanites, the highly educated, and New Englanders who will never, ever vote for the Republican party in it's current form.

Careful, I thought that was a banned word on Atlas.

But I agree with you that there is a significant faction in the Democratic Party's white electorate that will never, ever vote Republican because of their perceived animosities towards them. To them (myself included), there is a stigma attached to voting Republican, especially when the party is run by the crazy circus and wackos in the Trump/Palin/Bachmann/Gohmert/Cruz/Steve King/Rick Santorum/Ben Carson/Allen West/Sharron Angle/Christine O'Donnell tents.

[Bull Moose Base]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/nate-silver-is-the-one-ignoring-history-206999.html

Voters swing less than in the past so Dems recent wins do mean they're favored.

Demographic trends favor Dems.

And even when voters were more swingy than they are now, it was usually a recession that broke a winning streak (32,52,92).

The blue wall is that if the GOP wins the popular vote by a margin akin to 60, 68, 00, Hillary probably still wins the election. He basically acknowledges it. Not an impenetrable wall but a D advantage.

Hillary feels a lot better than 50/50 but it's moot.

[Mechaman]

Yeah, this seems to be deconstructing an absurd strawman that isn't really believed by even the most absurd Dem "predictors" on this website.  It wasn't even that true in the past (see Election Results on this website) except for maybe the Gilded Age when the Democrats won the popular vote in like four elections but were only elected in two of those.

[Mechaman]

The reason why the there is a Blue wall , is that Republicans have been getting their ass kicked in Presidential elections since 1992. …

Actually, this speaks to the realigning and counter-realigning of the electoral map. (Thank goodness for Tricky Dick Nixon!)

This is not mentioned in Nate Sliver's analysis.

Notice that, with those six election cycles (1968 to 1988), there was only one Old Confederacy state always carried by the Republicans—Virginia, which had bare misses for the two winning Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, from that 1968 to 2004 Republican realigning period. All the rest shown on Nate Silver's map were outside the Old Confederacy states. Also notice that the bellwether state of New Mexico—which people aren't considering a bellwether anymore (it has the No. 1 best historical record; it is the only state which has carried over 90 percent, since its first participation, of having voted for presidential winners!)—was in the Republican column in all six of those election cycles.

I also notice that no one in the media mentions that the eleven Old Confederacy states have a lackluster history in carrying for presidential election winners. Florida, which has carried in 20 of the last 22 cycles (1928 to 2012), has the best record of all states from this region. The likes of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina rank among the ten worst states in presidential election history.

The Democrats of today have the electoral map the Republicans had in the past: California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—to name a few (each with double-digit electoral votes)—all have better historical records than Florida. And Florida, like those other just-mentioned ones, ranks among the Top 20 best-performing states in having carried for presidential winners.

The Republican Party—and some of the forum members here—are playing for the Old Confederacy and deluding themselves into thinking that that area of the United States will have the dominant influence over the rest of the country in picking presidential winners. The Old Confederacy—that's today's Republican Party's base. The threads on Arkansas and border-south West Virginia—they're imaginative, fun, harmless threads. (Just as another one, however long ago, was with concern for Utah.)

The Democrats are better off now that the map has been flipped. (Bill Clinton's Arkansas is worth trading to the Republicans and, in return, Ronald Reagan's California is more than worth trading to the Democrats—after all, California ranks in the Top 10 historically with having voted for presidential election winners.) Do keep in mind that every state that winning Republican Abraham Lincoln carried in his first election, 1860, carried for the first election, in 2008, for winning Democrat Barack Obama!

I believe that what we will experience—during the rest of the lives of everyone who participates at this site—are the majority of United States presidential elections being won by nominees from the Democratic Party. (Just as it was the case with the Republican Party in the past generations, with their base states of support, between 1860 and 1988.)

I gotta say, the absolute ignorance of the development of American Political History seen in this post is amazing.  It's almost as if though the "Old Confederate South" and those "Abraham Lincoln states" haven't changed at all!  And the people living in those states are obviously the same as they were 155 years ago!

Kudos to you.

EDIT: If you are feeling particularly brave I will go into extreme detail of just why your analyses so far is full of fail later this evening.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The GOP has embrace NAFTA during the Southern Strategy which included partnership with Mexico and won CO and NV. But when the right of citizenship when it came to amnesty; the map flipped in favor of the Dems.

The Democratic majority from 1993-2001, and 2009-2015 and will continue into 2016; has become the Abraham Lincoln blue wall.

[Slander and/or Libel]

A lot of the posts defending Silver on this appear to rest on something like, "Well, states that have voted one way for a long time can just turn on a dime." But is that really what happened in 1992?

Starting the clock at 1968 is misleading because it includes three pretty massive wave elections for Republicans, and four of the five won by Republicans were won by Republicans from California. If you look at the 9 states that switched from R to D, of the 21 "red wall" states identified by Silver, 4 of them (CA, IL, NM and VT) were pretty clearly completing a slide that had lasted 4 or 5 election cycles that put them in the D column. This trend was identifiable from the elections leading up to 1992, not just something that happened out of the blue.

The other 5 states (CO, MT, NH, NJ, NV) are a little dicier, but most of them look like they were also completing a slide, except into swing state status. Colorado went from R+14.26 in 1980 to R+10.1 in 1984 to R+0.05 in 1988 and then R+1.3 in 1992. Montana was doing something similar. New Jersey had always been hovering below R+6, so Clinton picking it up wasn't that big a surprise. The only two I'd say look legitimately surprising were NH and NV. NH went from R+18.43 in 1988 to R+4.34 in 1992, and NV went from R+13.21 in 1988 to R+2.93 in 1992.

But most of this belies the idea that sometimes states just up and switch for no good reason. Occasionally they do. But when we dig into things, we find that when they do, there are actually years-long trends happening, identifiable from the data.

[DS0816]

The reason why the there is a Blue wall , is that Republicans have been getting their ass kicked in Presidential elections since 1992. …

Actually, this speaks to the realigning and counter-realigning of the electoral map. (Thank goodness for Tricky Dick Nixon!)

This is not mentioned in Nate Sliver's analysis.

Notice that, with those six election cycles (1968 to 1988), there was only one Old Confederacy state always carried by the Republicans—Virginia, which had bare misses for the two winning Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, from that 1968 to 2004 Republican realigning period. All the rest shown on Nate Silver's map were outside the Old Confederacy states. Also notice that the bellwether state of New Mexico—which people aren't considering a bellwether anymore (it has the No. 1 best historical record; it is the only state which has carried over 90 percent, since its first participation, of having voted for presidential winners!)—was in the Republican column in all six of those election cycles.

I also notice that no one in the media mentions that the eleven Old Confederacy states have a lackluster history in carrying for presidential election winners. Florida, which has carried in 20 of the last 22 cycles (1928 to 2012), has the best record of all states from this region. The likes of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina rank among the ten worst states in presidential election history.

The Democrats of today have the electoral map the Republicans had in the past: California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—to name a few (each with double-digit electoral votes)—all have better historical records than Florida. And Florida, like those other just-mentioned ones, ranks among the Top 20 best-performing states in having carried for presidential winners.

The Republican Party—and some of the forum members here—are playing for the Old Confederacy and deluding themselves into thinking that that area of the United States will have the dominant influence over the rest of the country in picking presidential winners. The Old Confederacy—that's today's Republican Party's base. The threads on Arkansas and border-south West Virginia—they're imaginative, fun, harmless threads. (Just as another one, however long ago, was with concern for Utah.)

The Democrats are better off now that the map has been flipped. (Bill Clinton's Arkansas is worth trading to the Republicans and, in return, Ronald Reagan's California is more than worth trading to the Democrats—after all, California ranks in the Top 10 historically with having voted for presidential election winners.) Do keep in mind that every state that winning Republican Abraham Lincoln carried in his first election, 1860, carried for the first election, in 2008, for winning Democrat Barack Obama!

I believe that what we will experience—during the rest of the lives of everyone who participates at this site—are the majority of United States presidential elections being won by nominees from the Democratic Party. (Just as it was the case with the Republican Party in the past generations, with their base states of support, between 1860 and 1988.)

I gotta say, the absolute ignorance of the development of American Political History seen in this post is amazing.  It's almost as if though the "Old Confederate South" and those "Abraham Lincoln states" haven't changed at all!  And the people living in those states are obviously the same as they were 155 years ago!

Kudos to you.

EDIT: If you are feeling particularly brave I will go into extreme detail of just why your analyses so far is full of fail later this evening.

Don't bother.

The fact that you wrote your response at 06:54 a.m. ET, edited it eleven minutes later (at 07:05 a.m. ET), and said nothing between both is not worth your time…and not worth my time.

I don't care what your "extreme detail" may be. The fact that you failed to understand my points, and that you state that I'm the one who is ignorant, is all I need to know from a self-described Republican from Texas.

Thanks for letting me to know I should put you on ignore!

[Mister Mets]

To an extent, there is a blue wall. These are the states that Democrats will win if the popular vote is within single digits.

But it doesn't include Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.