For fun, let's try and predict the maps for the next six elections

[Agonized-Statism]

2020

President Donald John Trump (R-NY) / Vice President Michael Richard "Mike" Pence (R-IN) ✓
Senator Elizabeth Ann Warren (D-MA) / Mayor Peter Paul Montgomery "Pete" Buttigieg (D-IN)

Warren pulls off a narrow victory against Biden, Sanders, and Harris in the primaries by nailing down the white vote. She's a poor debater, does poorly with minorities, invests her resources in the wrong places, and ultimately loses a close one. There are some recounts.

2024

Senator Richard Lynn "Rick" Scott (R-FL) / Fmr. Governor Kristi Lynn Noem (R-SD)
Congressman Ruben Marinelarena Gallego (D-AZ) / Governor Gretchen Esther Whitmer (D-MI) ✓

A bad recession hits early in the 2020s. Vice President Pence declines to run, and a "catch-all" political opportunist beats a number of more ideological candidates in the primaries. Ben Shapiro runs just to get a show on Fox News but does surprisingly well. A young, activist Democrat elected to statewide office in the Sun Belt in 2020 wins on a populist platform involving marijuana legalization, lower university costs, withdrawing from Afghanistan, a Year 2000 Rollback on gun rights, universal Pre-K, and putting hardline social liberals in cabinet positions.

2028

President Ruben Marinelarena Gallego (D-AZ) / Vice President Gretchen Esther Whitmer (D-MI) ✓
Fmr. Governor Ronald Dion "Ron" DeSantis (R-FL) / Senator Randal Howard "Rand" Paul (R-KY)
Fmr. Ambassador to Russia Jon Meade Huntsman, Jr. (I-UT) / Some Moderate Ex-Democrat

A flu pandemic slows economic recovery and gives the border control movement a boost early in the President's administration. Republicans sweep Congress in 2026. Tensions mount with Russia as the Republicans split in the primaries over foreign policy and economics. Ron DeSantis runs as a 2016 Trump imitator, calling for isolationism and a strange Jacksonian kind of post-partisanship. He ends up being a terrible candidate. A third party further splits the Republican vote.

2032

Vice President Gretchen Esther Whitmer (D-MI) / House Minority Whip Cedric Levon Richmond (D-LA) ✓
Senator Daniel Reed "Dan" Crenshaw (R-TX) / Some Republican Governor of an Oil State

Sun spots start disappearing, ending a period of relative calm in the climate, and a category five hurricane hits New Orleans. New Orleans native and old Biden ally Cedric Richmond is praised for his response, and joins the Vice President in the race. Domestic oil is attacked, and the Republicans put forth an ex-military, pro-oil tough guy. By now, a second fracking boom has made the Dakotas much more significant and brought economic prosperity after an unstable decade. The Republican reunites the party but loses in a close one. Like DeSantis, turns out to be surprisingly unlikable.

2036

President Gretchen Esther Whitmer (D-MI) / Vice President Cedric Levon Richmond (D-LA)
Senator Nicholas James "Nick" Freitas (R-VA) / Fmr. Governor Glenn Allen Hegar, Jr. (R-TX) ✓

The President and Vice President infamously clash on gun rights, once again dividing the Democrats. The issue becomes divided on race and lots of well-to-do white Democrats walk out to join the Republicans. The GOP nominates a libertarian, socially liberal and fiscally conservative, who appeals to many new liberal Republicans.

2040

President Nicholas James "Nick" Freitas (R-VA) / Vice President Glenn Allen Hegar, Jr. (R-TX) ✓
Fmr. Vice President Cedric Levon Richmond (D-LA) / Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

The economy hiccups but prosperity continues. Richmond comes back and loses. His running mate accidentally offends Mexican-American voters and suppresses their turnout.

Extra: 2044

Some Midwestern Republican / Some Western Liberal Republican
Some Texan Latino Democrat / Some Northern Progressive Democrat ✓

Operations against Neo-Soviet rebels in wartorn Russia are successful. However, by now, the recession has become a full-blown depression. Automation has put millions out of work, preventing them from paying their debts. Municipalities go bankrupt. If it hasn't already, social security has failed. The credit bubble can no longer be inflated. The President leaves office with a Democratic congress and a fairly untarnished reputation. Both parties share the blame. New ideologies are solidifying: the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, modernization, social libertarianism, and deregulation who want to stay the course with automation, and the Democrats are a more populist party built on racial minorities and community values. Unlike the first Great Depression, both philosophies are popular and are clearly divided on race.

Progressives in places like Massachusetts and a Rojava-inspired renewed Detroit stay with the Democrats. Vermont is ancestrally Democratic and due to be Republican by the 2050s, and Mississippi and Louisiana will very quickly go solid Democrat at the same time. Arm-chair election enthusiasts see South Carolina and Alabama going solid Democrat in the 2070s once Republican millennials there start dying off, and believe that the rest of the northeast will go the opposite way.

[Agonized-Statism]

A flu pandemic slows economic recovery and gives the border control movement a boost

*"That's So Raven" theme plays*

Subtract points for guessing the wrong virus and being a few years off, bonus points for predicting it would boost xenophobia.

[Agonized-Statism]

A flu pandemic slows economic recovery and gives the border control movement a boost

*"That's So Raven" theme plays*

Subtract points for guessing the wrong virus and being a few years off, bonus points for predicting it would boost xenophobia.

Well it hasn't exactly boosted the border control movement though, at least in so much as border control is double-speak for "keep the Mexicans away". East Asians on the other hand...

And that's true. I don't know if I had this in the write-up but I expected the virus to spike up in Latin America and for the xenophobia to be directed at the "carriers", so it still counts as a blurry snapshot. Regardless, this is exactly why I try a multidisciplinary approach when predicting the future. It's always a crapshoot but this makes it more of a science.

If I was even remotely good at math I'd be an actuary. XD

[Agonized-Statism]

2024

President Joe Biden (D-DE) / Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) ✓
Fmr. President Donald Trump (R-FL) / Senator Tim Scott (R-SC)

Instability and insecurity continue, with a global recession in 2023, gridlock and dysfunction in congress, and a war of attrition in Ukraine with an accompanying rise in food and energy costs still dragging on by 2024. Trump defeats DeSantis in the primaries and loses the general.

2028

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) / Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (D-IN)
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) / Fmr. Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) ✓

Feeding off the chaos, anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions break out around the world. There is a coup in Russia, followed by multiparty elections and a dramatic unraveling started by Chechnya's secession. Iran has a civil war with botched American-led intervention. There is another surge of migrants from Latin America, which Senator Hawley capitalizes on in his attempt to rebrand the party after 2024's fight between nationalist and neoliberal Republicans. Facing waning enthusiasm, Democrats lose a close one.

2032


China experiences a slowdown around this time caused by accelerated decoupling with Western economies, the fall of Russia, an aging population, and the bursting of a global tech bubble (cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and the metaverse prove to be the nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners of their time, the gimmicks of tech monopolies trying to surpass the limits of capital that can be extracted from society's relationship with technology). However, the post-Xi Communist Party veers dramatically to the left and begins to challenge the US much more in proxy wars around the world. Hawley fumbles, struggling with a new Pink Tide in Latin America and "losing Peru" to a China-backed government. Progressive Senator Ruben Gallego excites a fledgling labor movement with social and economic reforms and public works projects to address climate change and the malaise in the long struggling American economy.

2036


The post-neoliberal soul-searching of the 2010s and 2020s is over. The government has a more active role in the economy, and sustainability is the zeitgeist. A network of transmission lines to widely distribute wind and solar power is under construction, but land acquisitions are in limbo and rallying Republican opposition. Climate migration and the arrival of an idealistic generation of Climate Corps workers flip the Gulf states. Republicans run a Hawleyist who loses handily.

2040

There are cracks in the Democrats' big tent, and even more climate refugees from South Asia and Central Africa, but Democrat policies remain popular enough for the incumbent VP to win. Republicans push hard in perma-Purple Texas but also make some breakthroughs in the Northeast.

2044

The US loses the War in Uzbekistan. A more moderate Republican wins, still pushing the envelope of communitarianism that Hawley emphasized, but primarily criticizing the Democrats' response to antibiotic-resistant pandemics and highlighting the coastal cities and communities that lay abandoned despite investment in bulkheads and seawalls, jumping on the blue-green infrastructure and biotech bandwagons. Nativists remain a big part of the coalition, but a muffled one as they were pre-2010: by this point, voting blocs are a lot fuzzier with the country being majority-minority and more mixed race.

[Agonized-Statism]

Out of curiosity, why did Alaska/Kansas never flip? Ruben Gallego’s coalition seems perfect for a growing Alaska due to climate change forcing some people away from the mainland US. Some lower parts of Anchorage have been flooded yet Fairbanks is growing and the oil is drying up. Kansas also seems like a future slam dunk for democrats based on Kansas City (obviously it’s a 2030/2040s flip).

I went back and forth on those two for a while, especially Kansas, but I think there's a strong enough Republican adaptation to the post-Reaganite paradigm and reaction to immigration to keep them afloat there. "Hawleyism" provides a Republican answer to Democrat programs. Conversely, Gallego's Green New Deal platform sees a strong reaction from oil workers in Alaska, while the "land grabs" required for the transmission line projects, wind farms, and high speed rail see a strong reaction from the Plains. As the Ogalla Aquifer dries up in the 2030s, Republican influencers push conspiracy theories about Democrats wanting to turn the whole region into the Buffalo Commons, with residents of course thrown into FEMA camps and forced to use neopronouns.

On Alaska's growth, the state does benefit somewhat from increasing geopolitical and economic interest in the Arctic and the opening of the Northwest Passage, but equally, ocean acidification hurts commercial fishing in a big way, the oil industry takes a hit from a shift to renewables and carbon pricing, and many remote Alaska Native villages disappear with their livelihoods of subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering made impossible by climate change. As for Kansas, most Southern climate migrants are still crowding into closer Southern cities in the 2040s, and aren't likely to be driven out of the region outright for a few decades. By that point, they would probably go to a Great Lakes or Northeast revitalized by reshored micromanufacturing, not the Plains. And, a simpler answer, Republicans just get stronger in the cities too. Not to mention, for Kansas, that there would be an isolationist reaction to the proxy wars with China.

They definitely get closer though!

[Agonized-Statism]

I wonder where in the US said subcontinental and Sub-Saharan refugees would be most likely to settle and what if any electoral impact they'd have.

For the near future, most likely the states where immigrants are going now, which for more than half of the five million new immigrants since 2010 has been Florida, Texas, California, Washington, and New Jersey.

[Agonized-Statism]

I thought I'd throw a specific name into this which is Elissa Slotkin is elected as the first woman President in 2040 after being elected Senator in 2030 to replace Debbie Stabenow and then being elected VP in 2032.

Reading this, I think she would provide a good balance to Gallego as she's a woman, from the Midwest, and being from the more moderate wing of the party.  Plus a Gallego/Slotkin ticket would signal generational change ala Clinton/Gore in '92.

I could totally see that! Was kinda picturing someone currently obscure with a similar profile to Gretchen Whitmer for the same reasons.