How much of the shift could be explained by voters switching from voting for Democrats to voting for Republicans, vs Democratic voters being discouraged and not voting, vs Republican voters being energized and turning out in higher numbers? What are the factors that have driven these counties toward the MAGA movement? That turned two of the most purple battleground states in the country over the last 50 years, Ohio and Iowa, into states with a much redder hue.Īmerican Family Voices has undertaken a project to deeply study what is going on in these counties and with these voters. That turned two 2008 50/50 states, Missouri and Indiana, into two deeply red states in recent elections. That caused a state not lost by Democrats since 1972, Minnesota, to become a purple state instead of a blue one. The counties where agriculture dominates the local economy had higher turnout than in the past which made them more red, although that shift was nowhere near enough to overcome the Democratic gains in the cities and suburbs.īut it has been the massive voting shift - almost 2.6 million votes lost in net Democratic margin - in the small and midsized manufacturing towns in these states that crumbled the “blue wall” of states that had gone Democratic in every election since 1992. The cities, big city suburbs, and college towns moved considerably more Democratic in these states. The seismic shift that transformed American politics between the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the troubled times we live in today has many causes that politicos love to debate, but the geographic heart of this transformation lies in America’s classic industrial heartland: the small and midsized Factory Towns of Pennsylvania and the industrial Midwest.
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