There Is No 'Blue Wall'

[Slander and/or Libel]

PA has been among the most consistently D+3 states in the nation for the last 50 years. They have tended to usually mildly swing against the incumbent's party, but never to such an extent that they don't vote more Democratic than the nation at large.

[bobloblaw]

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.

There is no Dem majority. Holding one office out of WH, congress, govs and state legislatures doesnt make a majority. 1920s were a majority for the GOP and 1932-68 was a majority for the Dems.

[Bull Moose Base]

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.

?

Single digits encompasses both very close elections and blowouts. If the GOP wins the popular vote 50-49 there's a very good chance they lose PA and WI doing so. If they somehow win by 9, they're well over 300 EVs.

[publicunofficial]

So the article's basic argument is "There is no Democratic advantage, because if a Republican wins the popular vote they'll carry enough states to win"


Which is basically saying "There is no Democratic advantage, because a Republican win is possible", which is barely even an observation. Of course Republicans CAN win, but the demographics and models say they won't.

[Nyvin]

So the article's basic argument is "There is no Democratic advantage, because if a Republican wins the popular vote they'll carry enough states to win"


Which is basically saying "There is no Democratic advantage, because a Republican win is possible", which is barely even an observation. Of course Republicans CAN win, but the demographics and models say they won't.

Pretty much.  Nate Silver took the blue wall as if people were saying "It's impossible for the GOP to win no matter what!!!"  Which is obviously crazy.   The "blue wall" just represents how the current demographics and party alignment work out and how the Democrats have an easier path to win the WH then the GOP does.   

[Rockefeller GOP]

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!win

He is not actually a Republican (I don't know the story behind the avatar change), is extremely liberal and is one of the most knowledgeable posters on this site.  And you do seem to at least SOMEWHAT imply the painfully simplistic notion that the early Republican Party is some sort of anscestor of the modern Democratic Party and vice versa for early Democrats and today's Republicans.  Democrats won a very different South than Republicans are winning today, and Republicans won a very different New England than Democrats are winning today.  That's pretty undeniable.

[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.

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!

Very well.  You didn't seem to listen to what I've been saying to you for YEARS anyway.  Like the idea that a president being destined to win more in his re-election just because he was in the top 5 "pick-ups" is a logical fallacy.

But seriously folks, come on here around 10 or so and see exactly why this line of thinking is flawed. Hint: it is extremely similar to Nate Silvers flawed thinking.

[pbrower2a]

When all is said and done, the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both respect legal precedents more than they trust legislation and the transitory will of the people in states. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress.

The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.

 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2008 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red.

Is anyone impressed by the states that ever voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 or 1956? Most were (and still are) toward the bottom in measures of human development, including formal education. To be sure, Missouri and West Virginia still had the strong and militant  United Mine Workers who could make the difference between Democrats and Republicans winning the state -- but now Missouri and West Virginia are statistically awful.

...Barack Obama has picked up lots of voters who would be conservatives in other times. Asian-Americans (except Japanese-Americans and Indian-Americans)  used to be more conservative than Americans as a whole. But have their cultures really changed? It's America that has changed. Republicans used to exploit anti-Communist sentiments among most Asian-American groups successfully, but their anti-intellectualism now alienates some Asian-American groups (Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese). Asian-American voters  are as culturally-conservative as they ever were, but Republicans offer the wrong sort of conservatism. This is a growing part of the electorate, and when California was competitive they may have been the difference between R and D victories.

The Japanese-American component of the Asian-American vote has not increased -- but the Chinese-American, Korean-American, Vietnamese-American, and Filipino-American parts of the electorate have grown.  So has the Indian-American vote. Anti-intellectualism offends them.

American blacks may not have grown as a group, and paradoxically the states with the highest percentages of blacks are the strongest places for Republicans. But add Latinos, many of whom have joined the middle class and in earlier times might have been expected to start voting Republican are staying away from the GOP. The Latino vote is the difference between California being a swing state and being Solid D.

But those are ethnic groups.    

Barack Obama did not win these interests which may have been the difference between a near-landslide (2008) or a middling win (2012) and blowout wins in 2008 and 2012:

Mormons
plutocrats
ranch interests
oil interests

which likely made the difference between Obama and Eisenhower in their coalitions of victory. Obama did extremely well with just about any discernible minority group; Eisenhower probably fared better among Latinos and blacks than any subsequent Republican. On the other side, Eisenhower probably never won a majority of organized labor and Obama probably saw organized labor at its political weakest since the 1920s during his Presidency.

I look at Eisenhower winning Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Rhode Island together -- twice. Such is remarkable. No Republican since has ever won both Massachusetts and Minnesota together; Massachusetts and Rhode Island were the only non-Southern states that Herbert Hoover failed to win in his 1928 landslide.  

...It is hard to understand what Barack Obama did to offend Mormons, who have heavily voted Republican in every Presidential election since 1948. A Republican would have to do something very stupid to lose the Mormon vote. Oil interests? That's the difference between Alaska being R and being D. Oil production workers have to be taken care of because they are out in the sticks.  

Ranch interests? Dairy farming now implies a factory-like setting for those who milk cows for an employer. Dairy farmers can let their proletarized help fend for themselves. Ranchers must provide housing for ranch hands who get a more paternalistic treatment and are less likely to find many fellow ranch hands. Cow-milkers can be unionized; ranch hands are isolated enough (it may be tens of miles to the next ranch) that they can't unionize.

.... President Obama may have started to pull some people who might have been conservatives toward the Democratic Party.  
  

[Mechaman]

Well folks, here I go:

Why DS0816's points are wrong

Before I get too much further in, this isn't about what I think is going to be the political trend in the coming decades.  Hell, this isn't even about which party was to the left or which party was to the right at different parts of history.  What this is taking issue with is the idea that you can predict the future of politics based off of what has happened in the past or the idea that regions are static in their voting patterns and are relative to how other regions drift.  Those are the reasons why I reacted as strongly as I did to DS0816's post, given that a lot of American Political History has been anything but static and that I strongly believe that "the parties flipped" argument is one of the stupidest ever.  Fact of the matter is that changes do occur in the voting landscape and to conclude that parties hedge their future entirely on region appeal is itself a big fallacy that excludes a wide variety of other factors (namely demographics and class) that are also very significant.

What isn't being debate is how many times a state has gone a certain way.  I am not here to debate results and numbers.  What I am debating here, what is being taken issue with is using numbers as the be all end all in determining politics.  The amount of times the Republicans won up to 1932 did not help them survive the electoral bloodbath they faced.  The amount of times that the Republicans won California did not stop FDR from curbstomping Hoover that year either.  There is a certain point where numbers become meaningless as the extraordinary overtakes the ordinary.
Often times this results in "realignments" where the map is redrawn to where states shift in political allegiance.  This is a process that has been seen many many times over the past two and a half centuries of American History.

Here are my key issues with DS0816's analysis:
1. The assumption that voting trends won't drastically change the voting map to something we don't recognize in a few decades:
As my friend AdamGriffin has noted extensively in the past, non-white voting percentages in Georgia and Mississippi have massively increased in the  past few years and show signs of only increasing even some more.  The Deep South is becoming more and more non-white by the year and shows little sign of stopping.  Florida and Virginia have already long left "the Republican South" and North Carolina looks like a very likely contender to follow (something that AG seems to disagree with).  In a few decades, if trends hold Democrats will be winning these five "Old Confederacy states" regularly.  If the GOP totally bombs with Hispanics they could even have a chance in hell of winning Texas at some point too.  Given that, if the Democrats are indeed winning potentially six out of eleven states that most historians would unanimously would agree are "Old Confederacy" states, simple logic would suggest that it would not make much sense to conclude that a future Republican Party would be basing their support out of the "Old Confederate" South if demographic trends help it become more Democratic.  Many posters agree with this, as you can see from some what-if projections.
And this kind of shift is not unprecedented in US History.
The problem here is that the disrespectable poster has mistaken cultural politics for geographical politics.  The difference here is that the former is static and the later has a tendency to be dynamic and changes with the times.  Changes in geographical politics has happened in American History in every region of the country due to a wide variety of factors that go beyond which side they supported in the Civil War.

2. Again in case you missed it, how a state performed electorally in the past does not guarantee that they will be "on the winning side" in the future:
Really a point that needs more emphasizing here, as before 1860 the records would have shown that most winning coalitions included winning "the South" (by DS's logic) and that being based out of New England was a killer.  This is the kind of fallacy you run into when you try to gauge everything by numbers.  Believe me, I work with numbers everyday and often times it influences your thinking to an amazing degree.  Budgets can be made based off of last month's expenses.  Forecasts can be prepared for months into the future on the expectations from last year.  However, you can't really predict what the market is going to be like in four or five years.  DS had the audacity to say that in most of our lifetimes we would see Democratic victory after Democratic victory based out of old "winning Republican" states.  A lot of us are going to live to be at least sixty years old.  SO basically what he is saying is that he projects a good and safe market with guaranteed returns for the Democrats for the next (let's assume average Atlasian age is about 20) 40 years and that it will be via states like Illinois and California.
Imagine living in Massachusetts in 1888 and projecting that state would still be voting Republican in 1928 along with all the other "right" states.  That's the kind of fallacy we're seeing here.
Speaking of Massachusetts, that brings me to point 3:

3. Electoral patterns on the local level are not being taken into consideration:
What it says on the tin can.
Basically, treating a 53% vote victory like it's a 70% vote victory.
This goes back into rhetoric about how "there are Democrats in Georgia" and "there are Republican in Connecticut".  Historically this was very true in many Northern states that had a Republican bias.  For instance, Democrats somehow managed to win above 40% in the state of Massachusetts during the 1880s and early 1890s on the presidential level.  Norfolk County was voting 60% Democratic surrounded by a sea of Republican blue.  Those of us well versed in history and immigration know that obviously it was Catholics, particularly Irish Catholics, who helped provide this strong margin in the capital of one of the most Republican states in the nation.  This actually made Massachusetts, which was one of the most Republican states just a couple of decades before that, less Republican than several Plains and Mountain West states.  Further, the not at all Southern state New York was actually a lean Democratic state due largely to the growing immigrant population as well as the machinations of Tammany Hall.  New Jersey and Connecticut, both northern states, were also regularly in the Democratic column during the Gilded Age.
Such results suggest party strategy that goes a bit beyond "base region" strategy.  Parties do not hedge electoral strategy solely out of "regions" (in fact that tends to be self-destructive) but in fact invest it largely in appealing to demographics which back their agenda the most strongly.  Likewise, there were Republican areas in eastern Kentucky in eastern Tennessee that often kept Democratic performances below sixty pretty regularly.  Eventually, in both cases, strength in opposition territory eventually helped them create winning coalitions in those areas.  Point is that parties don't build strength in opposition territories just to waste their appeal on "base" strategies.  A simple look at some of the GOP victories last year will show even they are not that stupid (let me remind you a Republican was elected Governor of Massachusetts last year).

4. Comparing electoral coalitions from the past to the present is like comparing apples to oranges:
Let's start out with the most obvious: the Jim Crow Era Democratic South vs. the modern day Republican South.
On the one hand you had a violently enforced white supremacist regime with political machinery that would make Tammany Hall squeal.  On the other hand you have an admittedly quasi-racist coalition of middle-upper class white suburbanites, evangelical Jesus freaks, working class whites, and unemployed coal miners (though that is more recent).  In between you probably have George Wallace voters.
See where I'm going with this?
Point being that these are coalitions that are suited to different eras of the South.  Hell, the Jim Crow Era South operated outside of the political system, using outright authoritarian measures to keep many Southern states voting Democratic and scaring Republican voters sh*tless from voting.  The closest the Republican South gets to that is decreasing aid to public education and supporting voting restrictions, Republican measures you are likely to see in non-Southern states like Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, and even states like Ohio and Indiana!  Modern Republicans, even in the South, are forced to playing the game legitimately (though with a lot of outsider funding, THANKS CITIZENS UNITED!) and having to make a conservative case to voters around the nation.  The late 19th century-early 20th century Democratic Party, by contrast, could play radically different agendas in different parts of the country.  In the South they could play up law and order issues by drumming up supremacist rhetoric about keeping the blacks in their place.  Up North they would go into ethnic neighborhoods drumming up resentment about moralistic "reformers" and greedy "robber barons" who raised tariffs but not their wages.  Given that white supremacy was the central goal of the Dixiecrats and the GOP at the time was associated with Civil Rights, battles between economic interests largely were consigned to Democratic Primaries.  It wouldn't be until that was taken off the table that the GOP had a window in the South to make appeals to pro-business conservatives who before then were Democrats.
In other words, this kind of comparison is between a one party state and a two party state where one party is strongly favored due to the sympathies of the time.
Likewise, northern Democrats were forced to take a more pro-labor line due to the corporate interests that ruled the Republican Party as well as their immigrant heavy voting base in many areas that resented being worked to death by their robber baron bosses.  Republicans kept their strength in the North largely by waving the Bloody Shirt (ie bringing up the Civil War constantly against Democrats to question their Patriotism), linking pro-business policies with economic prosperity, demonizing non-protestant ethnic groups as corrupt criminals, and playing up the morality card on issues like alcohol and work ethic in order to discredit "radical" labor unions.
Different strategies for different times and different coalitions.  The electoral coalitions of the 19th century were guided by the circumstances of the time, much like they are today.  It isn't all just the result of the Civil War.

the tl;dr version of this all: how areas vote go beyond simplistic black and white narratives based off of the Mason-Dixon line.

[Nyvin]

The Southern Atlantic states are changing (other than South Carolina).   The rest of the South is pretty much as conservative and right wing as it ever has been.

[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.

?

Single digits encompasses both very close elections and blowouts. If the GOP wins the popular vote 50-49 there's a very good chance they lose PA and WI doing so. If they somehow win by 9, they're well over 300 EVs.

How about a four point win?

[Slander and/or Libel]

If the GOP won 51-47, I suspect they'd have something like 290-310 EVs.

[pbrower2a]

The Democrats now have the more stable coalition for winning the Presidency. Their last (the current) President is far easier to defend than the last Republican President. Their policies are beginning to pay political dividends. 

[bobloblaw]

The Democrats now have the more stable coalition for winning the Presidency. Their last (the current) President is far easier to defend than the last Republican President. Their policies are beginning to pay political dividends. 

talk about spin.

Their last election 2012, was the third closest presidential re-election in US history and the only one where the incumbent won with fewer votes and a smaller percentage of the votes. Even GW Bush got 12 million more votes in 2004 than in 2000.

Yeah their policies have paid dividends alright.........for the GOP. Since 2008, the Dems have lost 78 House seats, 13 Senate seats and thousands upon thousands of state legislative seats.

[Slander and/or Libel]

The Democrats now have the more stable coalition for winning the Presidency. Their last (the current) President is far easier to defend than the last Republican President. Their policies are beginning to pay political dividends. 

talk about spin.

Their last election 2012, was the third closest presidential re-election in US history and the only one where the incumbent won with fewer votes and a smaller percentage of the votes. Even GW Bush got 12 million more votes in 2004 than in 2000.

Yeah their policies have paid dividends alright.........for the GOP. Since 2008, the Dems have lost 78 House seats, 13 Senate seats and thousands upon thousands of state legislative seats.

FDR won fewer votes and a smaller percentage of the votes in 1940 and 1944 than 1936.