Why has North Carolina and Virginia trended Democrat 4 times in a row now?

[Virginiá]

...also in regard to Virginia vs North Carolina,  don't forget the Republicans were successful in implementing their voter suppression law in North Carolina for 2016.

To be fair, most of the noteworthy restrictions from the 2013 bill were struck down. The biggest factor then became the early voting changes, which Republicans abused to cut locations/hours in many areas with large African American populations. That was only for the first week, though. The rest of early voting saw relatively good plans. Other than that, I suppose the abolishment of straight ticket voting might have hurt some downballot offices. I do often wonder what turnout would have been like had that law not been mostly gutted by the court system.

[Virginiá]

But the trend was so insignificant, it almost doesn't matter. NC in my opinion is just too much out of reach for democrats. Obama BARELY won in 2008, and the state has slowly started snapping back to the GOP. While it will never be as republican as it was in 2004, I think it is a GOP leaning state (just like Virginia is a Democrat leaning state).

It's not really snapping back. Obama did very well in 2008, and thus he did better in North Carolina. He did worse in 2012, so he did worse in NC. Ditto for Clinton. Otherwise, nothing has really changed. Even though the state's leftwards shift has stalled out, the overall movement of the state is still not looking favorable to Republicans long-term. Not unless something changes about the preferences of the growing parts of the electorate.

[Virginiá]

Unless I'm calculating something incorrectly, didn't NC trend Republican from 2012 to 2016? Using NYT results, Obama won nationally by 2.8 and lost NC by 2.2 in 2012 (R+5.0). Clinton won nationally by 2.1 and lost NC by 3.6 (R+5.7).

Is it just a discrepancy between the source of results?

You were already talking about this just 6 or 7 posts ago lol. TT explained it, unless you're rethinking it?

[Virginiá]

No, I understand the methodology (which is what I was asking for clarification on before). However, the numbers he had used are significantly different from NYT 2012 results. Apparently NYT shows Obama with a lead ~1% smaller than most other sources, which is what was now confusing me, because if you use NYT numbers, NC did not trend Democratic from '12 to '16.

Oh I see, fair enough. Why not use the FEC's and NC SBOE's official results?

http://er.ncsbe.gov/

+

https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2016/2016presgeresults.pdf
https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/2012presgeresults.pdf

[Virginiá]

Florida is becoming more and more Republican and has been doing so for years.

Florida's trends are a lot less conclusive than some people may think. The exploding Hispanic population (which includes a changing Cuban electorate that is also shrinking as a share of Hispanics) and the growth of Millennials, both heavily Democratic groups is somewhat counterbalanced by a heavily Republican senior population that receives a constant influx of older people. Boomers will keep the older age groups leaning Republican for years yet but once they are gone, it's unlikely Republicans can rely on old people anymore as reliable votes.

It is not clear yet what the Democratic share of the white vote in FL will be in the future, either. 32% is pretty low for a Democrat in FL, so based on historical patterns its more likely to stabilize somewhere higher, but you never know. What is known is that a 5% shift of whites to the Republican still only barely allowed them to carry the state.

Florida will remain close for the near future, but Republican efforts to lock it down will depend on making big inroads with minorities and driving up their white share to Georgia-like levels, which is probably not going to happen.