Due to growth of minorities, professional immigration, youth voting, etc. states like Georgia, Texas, AZ, NM, CO, VA, NC are all moving or have moved to the left. Also states like NH seem like they are moving left (Gore lost that state in 2000, it has been more blue). Indiana has arguably been moving left too.
But what states are moving to the right? Are Wisconsin and Minnesota moving right, or is that just because the last election cycles? I think west Virginia and Missouri are moving right also. Any others? What motivates the move to the right? The move to the left I’m fairly sure of the reason (youth voters, minorities, professionals) but I am not sure what the move to the right would be since the base of the right (white, married, middle class from rural areas) are shrinking on all levels. The US is becoming less white, married, middle class and rural. The great party switch when whites from small towns switched from democrat to republican should be over now, so I don’t think that would make a difference.
As far as moving, I’m talking about various levels of politics. Presidential, federal congress, governor, state congress, local, etc. Like in Indiana I think it is moving to the left on the federal level but staying the same on the state or local level wrt partisanship.
I no longer live in the US, but the feeling I get from family members back in CA is that the state has been slowly moving towards the right. It won’t turn red, but the southern half is certainly more Republican now.
I think most of that was due to whites from the south turning from democrat to republican in the 60s-90s. The democrats in the south supported LBJs and FDRs economic reforms, that isn’t possible now. The 13 southern states make up about 1/4 of the senators, maybe 1/3 of the EV and House of representative members. So that going from solidly blue to solidly red caused political shifts.
In that same time frame the west coast & northeast moved to the left though.
However those changes (the coasts moving left, the south moving right) seem to be over.
As far as CA, they now have a supermajority of democrats in the state congress.
I reject that analysis. Democrats won the White House and made gains in the House and Senate in 2012. Several reliably blue presidential states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin elected Republican governors in the great ACA smear campaign of 2010. That’s over and that false rightward shift will be corrected in 2014 and even more so in 2016.
Ohio is not a reliably blue state in presidential elections. The Republican has done better in Ohio relative to the nationwide popular vote in every election since 1972.
This makes the incorrect assumption that Democrat=Left. While it’s true that GOP<>Left, and some Democrats are left of center, Clinton moved the whole Party to the right. I would say Democrats generally are about equivalent to early 80’s Republicans.
Good point. Ronald Reagan would be a thousand times more at home in today’s Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. Obama is probably a bit left of Reagan and a bit right of Nixon.
I thought that was due to the shift in southern whites. If a voting bloc that elects 1/4 of senators and 1/3 of representatives and 1/3 of electoral votes goes from being 70-100% democrat to 70-100% republican then that is going to cause a massive shift in politics.
In 1964, of the 11 confederate states there were 94 democrats and 10 republicans in the house. There were 21 democrats and 1 republican in the senate. I have no idea about Missouri or Kentucky, but I assume they were similar. Now those states are about 80% republican. Those 11 states now have 18 republican senators instead of 1.
But I think the age of angry white southerners having a huge influence in politics is coming to an end (NC, FL and VA are purple states; states like TX and GA will become purple states within 10 years).
I don’t know if Clinton moved the party, or if he was just responding to the environment where the south had shifted.
In my opinion? A little of both, but he had to do it or lose. The downside was that it established the centrist position as the way to win for Democrats. Then the GOP started going batshit crazy to the right and center moved.
I don’t really follow Wisconsin politics, but in the 2012 election, at the state level, the Democrats gained control of both houses of the MN legislature, after already taking the Governor’s seat in 2010. At the federal level, Amy Klobuchar (D) was reelected, and the 8th District was flipped blue. Michelle Bachmann notwithstanding, Minnesota certainly seems to be moving left, not right.
That being said, I think Minnesota’s actually staying more or less stable, and the parties are moving to the right, as many others are saying.
Not entirely true in regard to Wisconsin. Walker will pummel his opponent in a landslide reelection, and a RINO Congressman Petri will be replaced, probably with ultra conservative Glenn Grothman.
With that said, Wisconsin is a weird state and kind of hard to figure out. In '10 we tossed from the Senate previuosly popular Democrat Russ Feingold and replaced him with Republican Johnson, but in '12 elected extremely liberal Baldwin over previously popular Governor Thompson. In 2010 the state replaced a Democratically controlled state senate, assembly, and Governors mansion with all 3 with Republican majorities, but gave the POTUS election to Obama.
That has to do with voter turn out, but overall the state has swung a bit to the right.
Oregon has become a lot more blue in my lifetime, and just over the last few years especially. Oregon got rid of its ® senator in 2008, and unlike many other (D) senators up for re-election this year, Jeff Merkley is not expected to have any trouble at all winning his seat again. Oregon has become a bastion of liberalism, when in 2000 it was too close to call for a very long time (not as long as Florida obviously), and in 2004 only moderately went for Kerry.
I believe the same is more or less true for Washington.
Missouri is the starkest example of a state moving to the right.
Florida is moving to the left, and I predict will not even be considered a swing state in another election or two. The fact that Obama won it in a very tightly contested election does not bode well for republicans (as OMG A Black Republican said on election night: unbelievable).
Especially amazing in view of the more or less recent past: In 1993, Betty Castor resigned as Commissioner of Education (to take the post of President of the University of South Florida), and Governor Lawton Chiles (D) appointed as replacement the late Doug Jamerson, who was black, but that last fact was not widely known save to political junkies, the office not being very high-profile. In 1994 Jamerson ran for election to the post – and, being black, he did not dare include his photographs in his campaign ads and literature – but challenger Frank Brogan did include Jamerson’s pix in his ads, and won. “[H]ad Jamerson won, he would have been the first black elected to statewide office since 1868.”
The governors opponent only seems to know how to tell lies! This is all the Democrats have to throw at him?
The RINO Petri has already bailed rather than face sure defeat. Grothman is so conservative his nickname in the state legislature is “Spooky”. He was named by Milwaukee Magazine as the most conservative in the state.
I think it’s way too early to concede reelection to Walker. Early polls may be interesting but let’s give the campaigns a chance to work. I’m cautiously optimistic that Walker’s victory in the recall election was more about the rejection of the idea of recall than it was an endorsement of him. I’m thinking his hamfisted gutting of public worker unions will lead to his defeat.
It’s hard to suss out these trends because we’ve seen a lot of changes since Obama became President. There’s no way to know if these trends will outlast his term in office. Things could very easily snap back to the way they were in 2004 come 2016.
