GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[Hammy]

On Mississippi on the map above, the state is both the poorest and most rural state in the Deep South, and the white voters could be demographically similar to West Virginia than surrounding states, so the Dem trend (if one happens) would be much slower than surrounding states.

[Skill and Chance]

On Mississippi on the map above, the state is both the poorest and most rural state in the Deep South, and the white voters could be demographically similar to West Virginia than surrounding states, so the Dem trend (if one happens) would be much slower than surrounding states.

I'm really not buying Mississippi.  Louisiana is the better target because it actually has 2 large cities.  Other than Virginia, where it already happened, the only Southern states I am reasonably confident will vote left of the nation by 2040 are Georgia and Texas.  Florida will probably move right and NC could go either way.  Both states will get more diverse, but if Trump is the future of the GOP, the retirement communities in Florida will be the Republican answer to NY-15 in another decade and NC has enough Appalachian exposure that nothing is assured there.  Basically, you need giant metros to be >50% of the entire state for things to work out consistently for Democrats in the South. 

[Skill and Chance]

I agree that GA will go the way of VA, and this should happen very quickly. By 2030 or so, MS, LA and maybe NC could all lean D and TX and FL (and maybe SC) would be pure Tossups or lean D. The Democratic Party's base will be in the South.

Rhode Island and Delaware look random, and I can't see Illinois or New Mexico voting Republican on a presidential level unless the GOP makes significant inroads with Hispanics.  I also wouldn't put Georgia as safe D either, by any means.

There are few things that we can be certain of, but Mississippi not being a Democratic-leaning state in 13 years is one of them.  I kind of understand the argument for it being competitive in 2050 (even if I don't fully agree with it), but there is no way it is there in 2030.

The thing that makes MS so precarious is that it is wholly dependent on white block voting to keep it Republican. If MS whites voted as Republican as they do in neighboring states, it would be a lean Democratic state. There is also the factor that the bulk of those White Republicans are concentrated in the age bracket 65 and above. By 2030, half of those people will be gone. That means that the White Vote is going to naturally trend downward for the GOP over the next several years as 90% GOP Seniors are replaced with 50-50 Millenials starting to vote more frequently.

So 2030 is not at all unreasonable for it to be tilt Dem state.

That might be true if MS white millennials were voting 50-50, but the NY Times demographics calculator said they voted 86 or 88% (I can't remember which) for Romney in 2012.  White millennials as a whole voted for Trump, so they of course voted overwhelmingly for Trump in Mississippi of all places.  If it ever goes Democratic (apart from in a landslide), it will simply be because the black vote outvoted the white vote, which doesn't seem to be that close to happening yet, considering the 2016 results.  There is no NOVA or Atlanta that could anchor Mississippi to a rapid trend like Virginia and, possibly, Georgia.

Yep.  If anything, you could make a better case for Louisiana with the growing film/arts presence in New Orleans.

[Virginiá]

Both states will get more diverse, but if Trump is the future of the GOP, the retirement communities in Florida will be the Republican answer to NY-15 in another decade and NC has enough Appalachian exposure that nothing is assured there.  Basically, you need giant metros to be >50% of the entire state for things to work out consistently for Democrats in the South.  

I'd argue that old people will not always stay so Republican-leaning. What happens in 15-20 years when you have almost a whole generation of more heavily Republican seniors passing away and being replaced by less Republican seniors in Florida? If you combine this with the growing Hispanic electorate in FL, it presents a bigger problem for the GOP.

Of course, it also depends on where the old people moving to FL come from, but I still think the time period matters. Old people alone aren't enough to keep Florida in Republican hands, imo.

[Skill and Chance]

Both states will get more diverse, but if Trump is the future of the GOP, the retirement communities in Florida will be the Republican answer to NY-15 in another decade and NC has enough Appalachian exposure that nothing is assured there.  Basically, you need giant metros to be >50% of the entire state for things to work out consistently for Democrats in the South.  

I'd argue that old people will not always stay so Republican-leaning. What happens in 15-20 years when you have almost a whole generation of more heavily Republican seniors passing away and being replaced by less Republican seniors in Florida? If you combine this with the growing Hispanic electorate in FL, it presents a bigger problem for the GOP.

Of course, it also depends on where the old people moving to FL come from, but I still think the time period matters. Old people alone aren't enough to keep Florida in Republican hands, imo.

Isn't it the "youngest" old people who are the most Republican and the "oldest" old people who are the most Democratic, though?  And given that the Reagan generation comes next, this would likely continue until we actually have millennials retiring.

I would be a lot more optimistic for Democrats in the West where more states are completely dominated by 1-2 cities and some of the Mormon vote may actually be up for grabs going forward.

[Virginiá]

Isn't it the "youngest" old people who are the most Republican and the "oldest" old people who are the most Democratic, though?  And given that the Reagan generation comes next, this would likely continue until we actually have millennials retiring.

That is actually a pretty good question. I'm not sure if you mean the "youngest/oldest old people" within the 65+ age group, so I'll assume no - 65+ is the most Republican group in Florida, with 50-64 being the 2nd most. I think in terms of old people moving to FL to retire, they would have most of their effect on the 65+ age group, meaning that about 15 years from now Democrats will have significant support among at least the 30-60 age range, but most likely 18-60. The voters set to take the place of FL's pre-retirement age group (50-64) are very Democratic - by at least 15%, and so there simply aren't enough Republicans to hold on to anything but 65+ year olds.

The most rosy long-term scenario for Republicans in FL to me is that they have a Illinois 2016 situation going, where pretty much every age group is voting for Democrats by double digits, except 65+, which in IL swung massively to Trump with at 61-35 (T)

Of course this assumes a linear progression of voting patterns coupled with Hispanic growth, but it's possible Republicans make inroads with other groups they are currently failing hard with. The depth of it matters, but it's not off the table.

[Skill and Chance]

Isn't it the "youngest" old people who are the most Republican and the "oldest" old people who are the most Democratic, though?  And given that the Reagan generation comes next, this would likely continue until we actually have millennials retiring.

That is actually a pretty good question. I'm not sure if you mean the "youngest/oldest old people" within the 65+ age group, so I'll assume no - 65+ is the most Republican group in Florida, with 50-64 being the 2nd most. I think in terms of old people moving to FL to retire, they would have most of their effect on the 65+ age group, meaning that about 15 years from now Democrats will have significant support among at least the 30-60 age range, but most likely 18-60. The voters set to take the place of FL's pre-retirement age group (50-64) are very Democratic - by at least 15%, and so there simply aren't enough Republicans to hold on to anything but 65+ year olds.

The most rosy long-term scenario for Republicans in FL to me is that they have a Illinois 2016 situation going, where pretty much every age group is voting for Democrats by double digits, except 65+, which in IL swung massively to Trump with at 61-35 (T)

Of course this assumes a linear progression of voting patterns coupled with Hispanic growth, but it's possible Republicans make inroads with other groups they are currently failing hard with. The depth of it matters, but it's not off the table.

Actually, I was thinking of the (well documented) divide between the very oldest people born during the 1920's and early 30's who still lean Dem vs. people born later.  Trump's platform just seems tailor made to eventually have a Republican margin with white retirees that matches the Democratic margin with African-Americans, so I wouldn't assume anything can't happen when it comes to Florida.  It really would not shock me if Sumter County (The Villages) was 91% Republican come the mid 2020's.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Another good article from the AJC, whose coverage of this race has been excellent: "How the 6th District went from red to purple".  http://www.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/how-the-6th-district-went-from-red-purple/b7y60fDp6NskrCxxOoSE2I/

[UncleSam]

The number of people on this forum who think Georgia will be solidly Democrat by 2030 astounds me. Sure, it might swing less conservative (same with Texas), but that's because recent ideological trends (i.e.Trumpism) within the Republican party have been less south-centric, and is not because of long-term demographic problems within the Republican party.

The reason I think the 'demographics is destiny' trends assumed for many states here is b.s. is because this assumption is based on two faulty principles:
1. That, because older generations vote more Republican than younger generations, eventually the Republican voter base will die off faster than the Democratic voting base
2. That, because minority populations will represent larger and larger segments of the overall population, Democrats will necessary swamp Republicans with vast majorities within these groups until the end of time

Number 1 is the easier point to address; there's a good resource available here that deals with this in part: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics

The basic gist is this: people get more conservative as they age. The baby boomers used to be the most liberal generation of them all, and are now the most conservative. This isn't that hard to understand because as people experience more of the world their worldview tends to solidify, and they become more resistant to change. While not universal, this is a definite trend that Democrats seem to conveniently ignore whenever they discuss the emerging supermajority the millennial generation will provide them with.

Number 2 is more difficult to address, as (unfortunately) there is virtually no data on the extent to which 'browness' indicates propensity to vote Democratic, but the basic gist is this: persons who are half-black (such as Barack Obama) currently count as just as much of an African American as someone who is full-black. As America gets browner, it will most certainly get less White - but it will also get less Black. Unless Democrats can find a way to convert similar percentages of quarter-black (or less) persons, both the White voter base of Republicans AND the Black voter base of Democrats will die off, leaving people who are brown but not 'as black' as the Democratic minority base of old.

However, as mentioned previously, there is simply no data on this hypothesis one way or another. People are counted as simply 'black' or 'white' based on how they identify, and there is no clear cutoff point at which someone becomes 'White' vs. 'Black' (or Hispanic, or Asian, etc.). Democrats do tremendously among African-Americans presently, but if in the emerging generation (which will be much more minority than previous generations because many more kids of interracial couples are in it than in previous generations) Democrats do even a bit less well, that would be a big blow to their voter base (though of course the fact that the generation as a whole is less White will hurt Republicans as well).

In other words, Democrats like to talk only about the demographic changes in this regard that will presumably hurt Republicans, while not talking about potentially changes that could hurt their voter base.

While point 2 is not as spurious as point 1 (i.e. there's plenty of data to disprove point 1, and none whatsoever on either side to disprove or prove point 2 yet), I see no particularly strong reason to think that states such as GA or TX (much less MS) will become Democratic within the next decade or two.

Consider this: in this era of increasing polarization, for the past 28 years most states have remained fairly constant in their partisan-order (i.e. if you lined up the states in order of most Democratic to least). Generally, partisan changes in this ordering have been largely attributable to dynamics of individual races (i.e. Trump did not bother appealing to or visiting the Sun Belt while spending all his time in the Midwest/Florida/North Carolina, while Hillary sent both multiple surrogates to Arizona).

Talk of the Democratic party being dead in Minnesota or Michigan (much less Oregon lmao) in 20 years is just as unfounded as talk of Republicans being dead in Georgia or Texas. Sure, a few of these states will naturally flip sides over time, but the progression will be a lot slower than people here seem to think. The Republicans are prohibitive favorites in Georgia and Texas at least through the next decade or two, as they vastly underperformed in both places due to the unique dynamics of a race. While a Democrat could win either in a landslide, neither will be voting to the left of Michigan in the near future.

As for Florida, the demographic changes there don't seem to be benefitting either side, and people here are finally starting to get that. Florida will always be older than the nation as a whole (which will always benefit Republicans unless ideologies flip drastically) but also more diverse (again, which will always benefit Democrats barring ideology changes), and the overall tilt of the state will probably remain slightly Republican for the foreseeable future.

The only true long-term demographic problem I see presently for either party is a simple one: Democrats seem to be more inclined to box themselves into small, densely populated areas, while Republicans appeal more and more to geographically diverse voters across a large majority of the country's area. The constitution is set up in such a way as to value geographic diversity (via providing bonuses to the party which wins more states through additional senators and therefore the electoral college votes those seats in congress represent), and so Democrats will need to find a way to start appealing to people outside of the burbs to win consistently.

Just my (much more than) two cents.

[Skill and Chance]

Isn't it the "youngest" old people who are the most Republican and the "oldest" old people who are the most Democratic, though?  And given that the Reagan generation comes next, this would likely continue until we actually have millennials retiring.

That is actually a pretty good question. I'm not sure if you mean the "youngest/oldest old people" within the 65+ age group, so I'll assume no - 65+ is the most Republican group in Florida, with 50-64 being the 2nd most. I think in terms of old people moving to FL to retire, they would have most of their effect on the 65+ age group, meaning that about 15 years from now Democrats will have significant support among at least the 30-60 age range, but most likely 18-60. The voters set to take the place of FL's pre-retirement age group (50-64) are very Democratic - by at least 15%, and so there simply aren't enough Republicans to hold on to anything but 65+ year olds.

The most rosy long-term scenario for Republicans in FL to me is that they have a Illinois 2016 situation going, where pretty much every age group is voting for Democrats by double digits, except 65+, which in IL swung massively to Trump with at 61-35 (T)

Of course this assumes a linear progression of voting patterns coupled with Hispanic growth, but it's possible Republicans make inroads with other groups they are currently failing hard with. The depth of it matters, but it's not off the table.

Actually, I was thinking of the (well documented) divide between the very oldest people born during the 1920's and early 30's who still lean Dem vs. people born later.  Trump's platform just seems tailor made to eventually have a Republican margin with white retirees that matches the Democratic margin with African-Americans, so I wouldn't assume anything can't happen when it comes to Florida.  It really would not shock me if Sumter County (The Villages) was 91% Republican come the mid 2020's.

91% is quite a radical number. I can't speak for Virginia, but I think there are way too many differences among white retirees for them to be that homogeneous of a voting group. For one, they prioritize their entitlements. Guess which party is commonly associated with proposing to cut them? Second, educational divide is still greater among whites than it is among almost any other voting group, and that still plays a part in people's ideologies. I could go on and on, but "white retirees" is way too vague to lump all together to produce such a lopsided result. Maybe 80% tops, but even that is pushing it, IMO. Now, if we're talking about white retirees from the Plains states or from Texas, then yeah, I'd agree. But white retirees from places along the East and West Coast are going to be decidedly more Democratic relative to the Plains/Midwesterners.

I should clarify that this applies to retirees who are (relatively) wealthy enough to move to and own retirement property in Florida.  Relatively poor retirees, who would be the most inclined to vote Dem, tend to stay where they lived during their working years and eventually move in with family.  As far as Florida retirees are concerned, though, they are likely to be the new GOP core.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Yea I don't think that Florida is going to trend like these other states, because of that wealthy skew of the retiree population.


Also, it is not so much that demographics equal destiny and Democrats will rule everything from here to the end of time. What happens is that you have a hostile demographic or generation coming through the pipeline, the Republicans then have to adapt to achieve a majority. The question then becomes which path requires them to adapt the least, because that is the path they will take. Right now, the Northern/Trump one is the answer.

We have actually seen this play out in both the macro and the micro levels. We have seen state's flip because of generation change opening the door, and the Republicans or Democrats rushing in to take full advantage causing the state to flip. The were generations of Georgians who would blow your brains out if you asked them to vote Republican. There was another one after that, which would largely vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican because of the New Deal and Great Depression. They would vote Republican sometimes (Reagan, Nixon etc) and the Silents even more so. Beginning with the boomers, you had a generation open to being heavily Republican and Republican Party moved aggressively to meet them. The end result is that GA began to shift heavily Republican in the 1990's, once they reached prime voting age.

The political map is constantly in an evolutionary state.

[Skill and Chance]

Yea I don't think that Florida is going to trend like these other states, because of that wealthy skew of the retiree population.


Also, it is not so much that demographics equal destiny and Democrats will rule everything from here to the end of time. What happens is that you have a hostile demographic or generation coming through the pipeline, the Republicans then have to adapt to achieve a majority. The question then becomes which path requires them to adapt the least, because that is the path they will take. Right now, the Northern/Trump one is the answer.

We have actually seen this play out in both the macro and the micro levels. We have seen state's flip because of generation change opening the door, and the Republicans or Democrats rushing in to take full advantage causing the state to flip. The were generations of Georgians who would blow your brains out if you asked them to vote Republican. There was another one after that, which would largely vote for a yellow dog before voting for a Republican because of the New Deal and Great Depression. They would vote Republican sometimes (Reagan, Nixon etc) and the Silents even more so. Beginning with the boomers, you had a generation open to being heavily Republican and Republican Party moved aggressively to meet them. The end result is that GA began to shift heavily Republican in the 1990's, once they reached prime voting age.

The political map is constantly in an evolutionary state.

This, but I think it's more about states that are/will be dominated by large cities than Millennials or ethnic demographics per se.  Although political generations are real enough that I do expect a 12-20 year Dem streak when Millennials are at peak voting strength.  This has been a consistent feature of US history.  I also think identity politics will fade away over the next 15-30 years and Obama era racial polarization will be viewed as an exception to the rule, in the same way Catholic/Protestant polarization was under Kennedy.

[Virginiá]

Number 1 is the easier point to address; there's a good resource available here that deals with this in part: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics

The basic gist is this: people get more conservative as they age. The baby boomers used to be the most liberal generation of them all, and are now the most conservative. This isn't that hard to understand because as people experience more of the world their worldview tends to solidify, and they become more resistant to change. While not universal, this is a definite trend that Democrats seem to conveniently ignore whenever they discuss the emerging supermajority the millennial generation will provide them with.

Except that there is real election data in America that directly contradicts this both at the national level and the state level. Yes, parties can win over older voters, but it is harder. Yes, a party can change enough to lose certain groups of voters even in old age, but these are not common events. The Boomer generation wasn't all hyper-liberal, and even now there is a subgroup of boomers that is more Democratic - the ones that grew up under Nixon. The rest are more Republican and tilt that group towards conservatives. Further, young people under Reagan started out supporting Republicans and stuck that way. Finally, just getting more 'conservative' as they age and more apt to defending the status quo does not automatically equate to supporting Republicans.

So, no, the huge age gap the parties are seeing is not automatically going to resolve itself in favor of Republicans.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Number 1 is the easier point to address; there's a good resource available here that deals with this in part: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics

The basic gist is this: people get more conservative as they age. The baby boomers used to be the most liberal generation of them all, and are now the most conservative. This isn't that hard to understand because as people experience more of the world their worldview tends to solidify, and they become more resistant to change. While not universal, this is a definite trend that Democrats seem to conveniently ignore whenever they discuss the emerging supermajority the millennial generation will provide them with.

Except that there is real election data in America that directly contradicts this both at the national level and the state level. Yes, parties can win over older voters, but it is harder. Yes, a party can change enough to lose certain groups of voters even in old age, but these are not common events. The Boomer generation wasn't all hyper-liberal, and even now there is a subgroup of boomers that is more Democratic - the ones that grew up under Nixon. The rest are more Republican and tilt that group towards conservatives. Further, young people under Reagan started out supporting Republicans and stuck that way. Finally, just getting more 'conservative' as they age and more apt to defending the status quo does not automatically equate to supporting Republicans.

So, no, the huge age gap the parties are seeing is not automatically going to resolve itself in favor of Republicans.

^This I mean seriously think about it for millennial pov in their lifetime the republican party a) lead us into Iraq, b) created our debt problem, c) crashed our economy, and d) made Trump an all possible incompetent baggage he is going to bring

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The number of people on this forum who think Georgia will be solidly Democrat by 2030 astounds me. Sure, it might swing less conservative (same with Texas), but that's because recent ideological trends (i.e.Trumpism) within the Republican party have been less south-centric, and is not because of long-term demographic problems within the Republican party.

The reason I think the 'demographics is destiny' trends assumed for many states here is b.s. is because this assumption is based on two faulty principles:
1. That, because older generations vote more Republican than younger generations, eventually the Republican voter base will die off faster than the Democratic voting base
2. That, because minority populations will represent larger and larger segments of the overall population, Democrats will necessary swamp Republicans with vast majorities within these groups until the end of time

Number 1 is the easier point to address; there's a good resource available here that deals with this in part: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics

The basic gist is this: people get more conservative as they age. The baby boomers used to be the most liberal generation of them all, and are now the most conservative. This isn't that hard to understand because as people experience more of the world their worldview tends to solidify, and they become more resistant to change. While not universal, this is a definite trend that Democrats seem to conveniently ignore whenever they discuss the emerging supermajority the millennial generation will provide them with.

Number 2 is more difficult to address, as (unfortunately) there is virtually no data on the extent to which 'browness' indicates propensity to vote Democratic, but the basic gist is this: persons who are half-black (such as Barack Obama) currently count as just as much of an African American as someone who is full-black. As America gets browner, it will most certainly get less White - but it will also get less Black. Unless Democrats can find a way to convert similar percentages of quarter-black (or less) persons, both the White voter base of Republicans AND the Black voter base of Democrats will die off, leaving people who are brown but not 'as black' as the Democratic minority base of old.

However, as mentioned previously, there is simply no data on this hypothesis one way or another. People are counted as simply 'black' or 'white' based on how they identify, and there is no clear cutoff point at which someone becomes 'White' vs. 'Black' (or Hispanic, or Asian, etc.). Democrats do tremendously among African-Americans presently, but if in the emerging generation (which will be much more minority than previous generations because many more kids of interracial couples are in it than in previous generations) Democrats do even a bit less well, that would be a big blow to their voter base (though of course the fact that the generation as a whole is less White will hurt Republicans as well).

In other words, Democrats like to talk only about the demographic changes in this regard that will presumably hurt Republicans, while not talking about potentially changes that could hurt their voter base.

While point 2 is not as spurious as point 1 (i.e. there's plenty of data to disprove point 1, and none whatsoever on either side to disprove or prove point 2 yet), I see no particularly strong reason to think that states such as GA or TX (much less MS) will become Democratic within the next decade or two.

Consider this: in this era of increasing polarization, for the past 28 years most states have remained fairly constant in their partisan-order (i.e. if you lined up the states in order of most Democratic to least). Generally, partisan changes in this ordering have been largely attributable to dynamics of individual races (i.e. Trump did not bother appealing to or visiting the Sun Belt while spending all his time in the Midwest/Florida/North Carolina, while Hillary sent both multiple surrogates to Arizona).

Talk of the Democratic party being dead in Minnesota or Michigan (much less Oregon lmao) in 20 years is just as unfounded as talk of Republicans being dead in Georgia or Texas. Sure, a few of these states will naturally flip sides over time, but the progression will be a lot slower than people here seem to think. The Republicans are prohibitive favorites in Georgia and Texas at least through the next decade or two, as they vastly underperformed in both places due to the unique dynamics of a race. While a Democrat could win either in a landslide, neither will be voting to the left of Michigan in the near future.

As for Florida, the demographic changes there don't seem to be benefitting either side, and people here are finally starting to get that. Florida will always be older than the nation as a whole (which will always benefit Republicans unless ideologies flip drastically) but also more diverse (again, which will always benefit Democrats barring ideology changes), and the overall tilt of the state will probably remain slightly Republican for the foreseeable future.

The only true long-term demographic problem I see presently for either party is a simple one: Democrats seem to be more inclined to box themselves into small, densely populated areas, while Republicans appeal more and more to geographically diverse voters across a large majority of the country's area. The constitution is set up in such a way as to value geographic diversity (via providing bonuses to the party which wins more states through additional senators and therefore the electoral college votes those seats in congress represent), and so Democrats will need to find a way to start appealing to people outside of the burbs to win consistently.

Just my (much more than) two cents.

Behold!
http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls/georgia/president
That 66-point age gap would explain people expecting Georgia to go the way of Virginia (probably to an even more dramatic extent) in the next decade or so. A large part of it has to do with people under the age of 25 in Georgia being 50% minority, and that number gets bigger and bigger as you get into younger birth years. Now, I don't think the nation as a whole will follow Georgia's rather extreme age/demographic gap, so I'd be hesitant to extrapolate this onto other groups.

There is something to be said for Georgia's extreme age gap (it was one of the biggest in the country) versus states like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota which actually had reverse age gaps.  But, Georgia had a much smaller age gap in the Senate race, so it may just be dependent on the direction the Republican Party goes.  I wish we had seen exit poll data for Georgia white 18-34s because it would have been interesting to see how much Clinton improved with them (Obama was only in the low 20s, if I remember correctly) and to see how much of it is an age issue versus how much of it is a racial issue.

[Virginiá]

Oh, I agree, but if those numbers are anywhere close to accurate, once Georgia flips, it ain't coming back. Even if Republicans did manage to make small inroads with minorities, it wouldn't be anywhere near enough to overcome that.

Is there any specific reason we don't have exit poll data like that at the state level? For the national EP, there is data on how voters of different age+racial groups voted, but that is lacking when you look at individual states.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Oh, I agree, but if those numbers are anywhere close to accurate, once Georgia flips, it ain't coming back. Even if Republicans did manage to make small inroads with minorities, it wouldn't be anywhere near enough to overcome that.

Is there any specific reason we don't have exit poll data like that at the state level? For the national EP, there is data on how voters of different age+racial groups voted, but that is lacking when you look at individual states.

Probably that a lot of the sample sizes would be too small

[Skill and Chance]

The number of people on this forum who think Georgia will be solidly Democrat by 2030 astounds me. Sure, it might swing less conservative (same with Texas), but that's because recent ideological trends (i.e.Trumpism) within the Republican party have been less south-centric, and is not because of long-term demographic problems within the Republican party.

The reason I think the 'demographics is destiny' trends assumed for many states here is b.s. is because this assumption is based on two faulty principles:
1. That, because older generations vote more Republican than younger generations, eventually the Republican voter base will die off faster than the Democratic voting base
2. That, because minority populations will represent larger and larger segments of the overall population, Democrats will necessary swamp Republicans with vast majorities within these groups until the end of time

Number 1 is the easier point to address; there's a good resource available here that deals with this in part: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics

The basic gist is this: people get more conservative as they age. The baby boomers used to be the most liberal generation of them all, and are now the most conservative. This isn't that hard to understand because as people experience more of the world their worldview tends to solidify, and they become more resistant to change. While not universal, this is a definite trend that Democrats seem to conveniently ignore whenever they discuss the emerging supermajority the millennial generation will provide them with.

Number 2 is more difficult to address, as (unfortunately) there is virtually no data on the extent to which 'browness' indicates propensity to vote Democratic, but the basic gist is this: persons who are half-black (such as Barack Obama) currently count as just as much of an African American as someone who is full-black. As America gets browner, it will most certainly get less White - but it will also get less Black. Unless Democrats can find a way to convert similar percentages of quarter-black (or less) persons, both the White voter base of Republicans AND the Black voter base of Democrats will die off, leaving people who are brown but not 'as black' as the Democratic minority base of old.

However, as mentioned previously, there is simply no data on this hypothesis one way or another. People are counted as simply 'black' or 'white' based on how they identify, and there is no clear cutoff point at which someone becomes 'White' vs. 'Black' (or Hispanic, or Asian, etc.). Democrats do tremendously among African-Americans presently, but if in the emerging generation (which will be much more minority than previous generations because many more kids of interracial couples are in it than in previous generations) Democrats do even a bit less well, that would be a big blow to their voter base (though of course the fact that the generation as a whole is less White will hurt Republicans as well).

In other words, Democrats like to talk only about the demographic changes in this regard that will presumably hurt Republicans, while not talking about potentially changes that could hurt their voter base.

While point 2 is not as spurious as point 1 (i.e. there's plenty of data to disprove point 1, and none whatsoever on either side to disprove or prove point 2 yet), I see no particularly strong reason to think that states such as GA or TX (much less MS) will become Democratic within the next decade or two.

Consider this: in this era of increasing polarization, for the past 28 years most states have remained fairly constant in their partisan-order (i.e. if you lined up the states in order of most Democratic to least). Generally, partisan changes in this ordering have been largely attributable to dynamics of individual races (i.e. Trump did not bother appealing to or visiting the Sun Belt while spending all his time in the Midwest/Florida/North Carolina, while Hillary sent both multiple surrogates to Arizona).

Talk of the Democratic party being dead in Minnesota or Michigan (much less Oregon lmao) in 20 years is just as unfounded as talk of Republicans being dead in Georgia or Texas. Sure, a few of these states will naturally flip sides over time, but the progression will be a lot slower than people here seem to think. The Republicans are prohibitive favorites in Georgia and Texas at least through the next decade or two, as they vastly underperformed in both places due to the unique dynamics of a race. While a Democrat could win either in a landslide, neither will be voting to the left of Michigan in the near future.

As for Florida, the demographic changes there don't seem to be benefitting either side, and people here are finally starting to get that. Florida will always be older than the nation as a whole (which will always benefit Republicans unless ideologies flip drastically) but also more diverse (again, which will always benefit Democrats barring ideology changes), and the overall tilt of the state will probably remain slightly Republican for the foreseeable future.

The only true long-term demographic problem I see presently for either party is a simple one: Democrats seem to be more inclined to box themselves into small, densely populated areas, while Republicans appeal more and more to geographically diverse voters across a large majority of the country's area. The constitution is set up in such a way as to value geographic diversity (via providing bonuses to the party which wins more states through additional senators and therefore the electoral college votes those seats in congress represent), and so Democrats will need to find a way to start appealing to people outside of the burbs to win consistently.

Just my (much more than) two cents.

Behold!
http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls/georgia/president
That 66-point age gap would explain people expecting Georgia to go the way of Virginia (probably to an even more dramatic extent) in the next decade or so. A large part of it has to do with people under the age of 25 in Georgia being 50% minority, and that number gets bigger and bigger as you get into younger birth years. Now, I don't think the nation as a whole will follow Georgia's rather extreme age/demographic gap, so I'd be hesitant to extrapolate this onto other groups.

There is something to be said for Georgia's extreme age gap (it was one of the biggest in the country) versus states like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota which actually had reverse age gaps.  But, Georgia had a much smaller age gap in the Senate race, so it may just be dependent on the direction the Republican Party goes.  I wish we had seen exit poll data for Georgia white 18-34s because it would have been interesting to see how much Clinton improved with them (Obama was only in the low 20s, if I remember correctly) and to see how much of it is an age issue versus how much of it is a racial issue.

Oh, I agree, but if those numbers are anywhere close to accurate, once Georgia flips, it ain't coming back. Even if Republicans did manage to make small inroads with minorities, it wouldn't be anywhere near enough to overcome that.

Yes, GA is one of the few places where the emerging Democratic majority theory still holds up.  But it's really about urban vs. rural than anything else.  Atlanta metro is even more dominant in GA than NOVA is in VA.  It's basically the opposite situation of Michigan, where Detroit was maxed out and provided a comfortable Dem statewide margin for years while the rural areas were not maxed out for Republicans until Trump came along.  Now that the Atlanta suburbs are giving out and the non-Atlanta metro white vote is already 85%+ R, it could turn into not just Virginia but Maryland overnight. 

But lest Dems get too excited, the only other state where this kind of analysis works is Texas, and it certainly isn't happening next year there.

[Badger]

I agree that GA will go the way of VA, and this should happen very quickly. By 2030 or so, MS, LA and maybe NC could all lean D and TX and FL (and maybe SC) would be pure Tossups or lean D. The Democratic Party's base will be in the South.

Rhode Island and Delaware look random, and I can't see Illinois or New Mexico voting Republican on a presidential level unless the GOP makes significant inroads with Hispanics.  I also wouldn't put Georgia as safe D either, by any means.

There are few things that we can be certain of, but Mississippi not being a Democratic-leaning state in 13 years is one of them.  I kind of understand the argument for it being competitive in 2050 (even if I don't fully agree with it), but there is no way it is there in 2030.

The thing that makes MS so precarious is that it is wholly dependent on white block voting to keep it Republican. If MS whites voted as Republican as they do in neighboring states, it would be a lean Democratic state. There is also the factor that the bulk of those White Republicans are concentrated in the age bracket 65 and above. By 2030, half of those people will be gone. That means that the White Vote is going to naturally trend downward for the GOP over the next several years as 90% GOP Seniors are replaced with 50-50 Millenials starting to vote more frequently.

So 2030 is not at all unreasonable for it to be tilt Dem state.

That might be true if MS white millennials were voting 50-50, but the NY Times demographics calculator said they voted 86 or 88% (I can't remember which) for Romney in 2012.  White millennials as a whole voted for Trump, so they of course voted overwhelmingly for Trump in Mississippi of all places.  If it ever goes Democratic (apart from in a landslide), it will simply be because the black vote outvoted the white vote, which doesn't seem to be that close to happening yet, considering the 2016 results.  There is no NOVA or Atlanta that could anchor Mississippi to a rapid trend like Virginia and, possibly, Georgia.

I couldn't find exit polls showing breakdowns by age and race combined, but the NYT exit poll showed Democrats winning 18-29 year olds and 30-44 year olds in MS by 18 and 8 points respectively.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html

Whether that's due to young whites not being so monolithically conservative as their elders or demographic shifts is a tomato-tomahto issue as either way it paints an optimistic future for state dems as actuarial tables play out, though I suspect it's the former.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I agree that GA will go the way of VA, and this should happen very quickly. By 2030 or so, MS, LA and maybe NC could all lean D and TX and FL (and maybe SC) would be pure Tossups or lean D. The Democratic Party's base will be in the South.

Rhode Island and Delaware look random, and I can't see Illinois or New Mexico voting Republican on a presidential level unless the GOP makes significant inroads with Hispanics.  I also wouldn't put Georgia as safe D either, by any means.

There are few things that we can be certain of, but Mississippi not being a Democratic-leaning state in 13 years is one of them.  I kind of understand the argument for it being competitive in 2050 (even if I don't fully agree with it), but there is no way it is there in 2030.

The thing that makes MS so precarious is that it is wholly dependent on white block voting to keep it Republican. If MS whites voted as Republican as they do in neighboring states, it would be a lean Democratic state. There is also the factor that the bulk of those White Republicans are concentrated in the age bracket 65 and above. By 2030, half of those people will be gone. That means that the White Vote is going to naturally trend downward for the GOP over the next several years as 90% GOP Seniors are replaced with 50-50 Millenials starting to vote more frequently.

So 2030 is not at all unreasonable for it to be tilt Dem state.

That might be true if MS white millennials were voting 50-50, but the NY Times demographics calculator said they voted 86 or 88% (I can't remember which) for Romney in 2012.  White millennials as a whole voted for Trump, so they of course voted overwhelmingly for Trump in Mississippi of all places.  If it ever goes Democratic (apart from in a landslide), it will simply be because the black vote outvoted the white vote, which doesn't seem to be that close to happening yet, considering the 2016 results.  There is no NOVA or Atlanta that could anchor Mississippi to a rapid trend like Virginia and, possibly, Georgia.

I couldn't find exit polls showing breakdowns by age and race combined, but the NYT exit poll showed Democrats winning 18-29 year olds and 30-44 year olds in MS by 18 and 8 points respectively.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html

Whether that's due to young whites not being so monolithically conservative as their elders or demographic shifts is a tomato-tomahto issue as either way it paints an optimistic future for state dems as actuarial tables play out, though I suspect it's the former.

That is the national exit poll.  Mississippi was not exit polled this year.

[RINO Tom]

People REALLY overrate how many rural voters there are, period.

[BaldEagle1991]

Any idea that Jon Ossoff is basically the pinnacle of hope for all red state Dems in 2018? Kind of like how Scott Brown was for blue state Republicans in 2010?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Any idea that Jon Ossoff is basically the pinnacle of hope for all red state Dems in 2018? Kind of like how Scott Brown was for blue state Republicans in 2010?

Not at all.  There are quite a few bluer districts than GA-6 that are currently held by Republicans.

[ApatheticAustrian]

People REALLY overrate how many rural voters there are, period.

yeah, rural voters need to vote in spectacular high numbers and for one single candidate to make a difference.

that was "strange" about 2016 - would be hard to repeat.

[RINO Tom]

People REALLY overrate how many rural voters there are, period.

yeah, rural voters need to vote in spectacular high numbers and for one single candidate to make a difference.

that was "strange" about 2016 - would be hard to repeat.

But my point is that most Trump voters WEREN'T rural.  Just using Illinois, a state that Trump lost by a bad margin, he got 2,146,015 votes.  Of those 2,146,015, 72.67% came from counties that are part of metro areas of 150,000 or bigger:

1,041,346 in Chicagoland
67,906 from the Rockford metro area
58,405 from the Illinois side of the Quad Cities metro area
93,110 from the Peoria metro area
42,314 from the Bloomington-Normal metro area
43,482 from the Champaign-Urbana metro area
54,175 from the Springfield metro area
158,857 from the Metro East (Illinois suburbs of St. Louis)

He won all of those metro areas except for Chicagoland and Champaign.  He also won every single county not included in those metros except for Jackson County in Southern Illinois (Clinton won 11,634 to Trump's 10,843).  What's my point?  Just because Trump won rural counties in Illinois by massive margins DOESN'T MEAN HIS SUPPORTERS WERE RURAL.  As I just demonstrated, the vast majority of his votes came from those metro areas, which don't even include CLEARLY not rural places like Galena (which Trump won), Decatur (which Trump won), Carbondale (which Trump won), etc.

The vast majority of Republican voters are not rural people.  For every rural Republican voter, there are two that live in a much more populated area that just happens to have more Democrats in it.

EDIT: And, doing simple math from the exit polls, only 22.57% of Trump voters lived in rural communities, compared to 52.26% living in suburbs and 25.16% living in urban areas.  So again, let that sink in, there were more Trump voters living in cities than in rural areas.  It doesn't matter that he won a vast majority of rural counties, they just simply didn't provide the bulk of his support, and that's a fact.