Actually, I kind of admire Nebraska’s frontier stubbornness: While it’s one of the reddest states, a lot of that red seems from my point of view to be grounded in principle. It would be easy for them to gerrymander the state into three solid-red districts, but they haven’t, instead coming up with about the same districting that a totally neutral mathematically-minded alien would come up with. And paired with that, they have their unusual method of allocating electoral votes, which results in them occasionally even sending a Democrat to the electoral college. They could change either of those… but they don’t, I’m assuming because of the same stubbornness that led to their unique unicameral legislature.
Yes on all points. I should have been more clear that I love Nebraska dearly and am proud that it has become my ‘home state’.
Most Republicans here are of the classic, principled, most often well-thought out kind. Unfortunately lately plutocrat Johnny-come-latelys have moved in and used family fortunes to buy themselves office and power, which is used to the detriment of all, including the classic, principled basic Republican Nebraskans. Pete Ricketts, I’ma talking to you.
Our legislator Ernie Chambers single-handedly preserved that electoral vote district in Omaha that split Nebraska’s electoral college vote to red/blue. It will probably take less than one election cycle for that to be decimated. Ernie retired, along with his fierce iconoclastic egalitarian fervor, much to many’s dismay.
Vermont. Its a rural, lily white state and on paper it should be diehard republican like Idaho, but its one of the most left leaning states in the union. I know the northeast in general is left leaning, but Vermont is far more left leaning than Maine or New Hampshire for example.
Sure, but the point of the thread was to compare where we might “expect” a state to lean based on it’s demographics, and Texas is overwhelmingly an urban and suburban state – popular images of cattle drives notwithstanding.
It’s really how the suburbs have (and have not) shifted that’s the story of evolving politics in Texas. Democrats made significant gains in the suburbs in 2018, picking up suburban Congressional seats outside of Houston and DFW. But their attempt to add to the tally this year in several other suburban seats where they came unexpectedly close in 2018 (including several that were now open due to retirements) all fell apart.
Comparing what happened in DFW and Atlanta is an interesting study. Biden made modest gains in Collin, Denton and other suburban DFW counties, but made much more substantial gains in the Atlanta suburbs. The question is why, and is what happened there reproduceable in suburban areas of the Metroplex, Houston, San Antonio, etc.
Are you certain? The Dems have veto proof supermajorities in both chambers in Sacramento.
I’m not certain at all. But this is what i saw when I lived there (San Diego for 20yrs). I was very surprised by how red the state was. All you hear on tv is about Hollywood liberals, but there’s way more to the story than that.
The state is liberal on issues of personal freedom; ie choice, ssm, imigration. And they’re conservative on economic issues, taxes, ACA. Yes the current gov is D but they have no problem voting R.
Local politics, where control of the purse strings usually reside is often divided right down the middle. LA and SF where the majority of the state’s population resides are the controlling factors. They’re pretty solidly D, but those are very conservative D’s. Orange County, the North Bay, and the central state are liberal R’s who’ve been voting D recently but that could easily change.
Biden was a big hit in CA, because he aligns pretty closely to their ethos. but run a liberal Republican against a weak or radiclal Democrat and CA goes red.
I did an internship for a campaign in 2010 in Kern County, California. One of the politically reddest places I’ve ever been.
That is San Diego, until this last election the largest city in the United States with a Republican mayor (albeit a socially liberal/moderate one) - I think Jacksonville FLA is the new record-holder now. I think that skews your view a bit, especially if you haven’t been in-state in awhile. But really:
CA Senators: 2 D, 0 R
CA House Delegation: 42 D, 11 R (4 less D seats than 2018, but still 3 more than in 2016 - 2020 was more reversion to the mean in CA)
CA State Senate: 31 D, 9 R
CA State Assembly: 60 D, 19 R, 1 I
Statewide Elected Executive Positions: 8 D, 0 R
Even San Diego has a Dem mayor now. Who also happens to be gay and defeated…another Democrat to gain the seat. Now the largest town in CA with a Republican mayor is Fresno.
There are wide swaths of conservatism in CA, but as with most of the country those wide swaths are mostly lightly populated - Biden carried 63.5% of the vote, the highest margin for any candidate in state since 1936. Since CA is huge, there are in fact many millions of Republicans. But overall CA is currently about as deep blue as states get.
Call me when a “liberal” Republican like Kevin Faulconer wins the presidential nomination 
. You’re right, that kind of Republican can potentially win in CA. But he will never win anywhere else, because most Republicans in places like Kansas or Alabama would consider him a RINO.
I dont disagree with any of that. Growing up in Chicago (with it’s own special brand of liberalism, to be sure) I’d always assumed CA was way more liberal than they actually are, and I was shocked to find out just how conservative they actually are. And you’re right that San Diego may have skewed my perception. Hell, they didnt even have a mayor for a few years while I was there and nobody seemed to really care.
But, you dont have to go that far back to find the R’s in control of the state; the Governator being the very model of the liberal Republican. Prior to Clinton (Bill) the State was pretty solidly Republican for Pres.
It doesn’t have to be Falconer, I could see Romney or Kasich taking CA!
I grew up in Orange County south of Los Angeles. This was a long time ago, but the culture was totally liberal on personal behavior, race, etc., but totally conservative on taxes, private property, law and order, etc.
When the evangelicals, overt racists, and the gun nuts invaded the Rs and it became the party of social/religious reactionary conservatism, while largely abandoning fiscal rectitude, an awful lot of OC abandoned them.
Much of Greater LA was the same story, plus/minus the lower SES / less white areas.
But Bill Clinton had nothing to do with the change; Pete Wilson did. The most socially conservative block in the state is Hispanic and the GOP lost them forever when Wilson pretty much used them as a scapegoat for all of the state’s problems. Gov. Wilson, as a former mayor of San Diego, should have known better.
Not by any definition is Romney or Kasich a “liberal Republican.”
They’re only considered moderates because they refuse to kowtow to the Trumpists, but both of them are very conservative.
Right… and Romney, for one, lost California in 2012 by 23%!!
A liberal Republican may be someone more like Colin Powell or Christine Todd Whitman - neither who are really welcome in Republican circles anymore.
The easy answer is that Stacey Abrams is more politically talented than Beto O’Rourke, so she was able to swing her state blue where Beto wasn’t. I suspect that this might actually be the correct answer.
We’re still two presidential elections away from Texas becoming urbanized enough to turn blue. And that’s IF the border counties can halt their rightward drift.
I will note that a lot of these Atlanta suburban counties have been going blue for a while. There has been a significant influx of people from bluer states (myself included - though I live in Dekalb County) Cobb, once a bastion of Republican support voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and went for Biden by 12% (unthinkable even in 2008). Abrams did a fantastic job, but her effects was felt more in urban areas getting African-Americans registered to vote in large numbers (Fulton and Dekalb) and not necessarily in the suburbs (which are far more white and have far less barriers to register to vote).
Re: Vermont. My impression is that it’s been settled since about the 60s by graduates of small liberal arts schools who couldn’t get jobs writing for The New Yorker. So they migrated to the countryside and set up as artisanal maple syrup, cheese, or wrought iron producers, with a B&B as a sideline. But I don’t live in New England, so perhaps I have the wrong impression. However, that would explain the blueness.
While there are certainly artisanal syrupers and B&Bs in Vermont, those aren’t the sorts of professions you can fill an entire state with. Or even more than a small fraction of a state (i.e., smaller than the margin by which Vermont is blue).
And Kasich and Romney are opposed to Trump precisely because they’re conservative. Possibly the only conservative Republicans left on the national scene.
We call that “Jim Crow” aka “voter suppression”.
Kentucky is a poor state, thus Red.