Sun Belt and West are trending Democratic…How do Democrat’s run next year ?

If you look at the map graphic on the bottom?

You will notice that it shows a slight advance to Republicans…..

Sabato’s Kondik cautions that the map ‘s (Which is about the Electoral college)  is just that a map’s….

But the Democratic nominee is gonna have to convert some of those lean-R states that Trump won two years ago to move into the nations’s White House….

The way I see that?

That means a left leaning campaign is simply NOT gonna send Donald Trump or whoever packing….\

(And keep a majority in the House and better their numbers in the Senate, also?)

The answer will be in the middle, and slightly to the right in some places….

And THAT will mean bucking the political media that tends to favor showcasing the Democratic left….

— Despite persistently close presidential elections this century, many states have been becoming dramatically more Democratic or Republican compared to the nation over the course of the last decade and a half.

— Generally speaking, the Sun Belt and West are trending Democratic. The Midwest and North more broadly, along with Greater Appalachia, are trending Republican.

— Map 1 at the end of this article shows the trends, and the charts throughout show the trend of every state in its presidential lean relative to the nation from 2000 to 2016….

…

Let’s look at how the states have changed from 2000 compared to 2016, both close elections where Republican presidential nominees overcame small popular vote losses to nonetheless capture the Electoral College.

Map 1 compares the presidential deviations of each state in 2000, George W. Bush’s first election, to 2016, Donald Trump’s first election.

Map 1: Changes in presidential deviation by state, 2000 vs. 2016

Note: The numbers listed with the state abbreviations are their respective number of electoral votes.

Some broad patterns emerge. Generally speaking, much of the West and parts of the South were more Democratic relative to the national voting in 2016 than they were in 2000, while much of the Midwest, Greater Appalachia, and New England were more Republican relative to the nation in 2016 than they were in 2000.

Now, just because states like Rhode Island (much more Republican) and Utah (much more Democratic) stand out on Map 1, they still start out the next election as Safe for their usual parties in Map 2, which is our previously released initial ratings of the 2020 Electoral College.

Map 2: 2020 Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings

Think of Map 2 as a reality check of the trends in Map 1. Just because states may be trending one way or the other doesn’t mean that they are truly competitive. But this exercise does help to show how even over the course of just 16 years, the relative position of the states in the Electoral College has in many instances shifted so much….

More….