Donald Trump won the presidency despite losing the popular vote, in large part because of his near-sweep of Midwestern states. However, a changing electoral map means the next Republican nominee may want to pursue a different path. …
The 2020 census will almost certainly show a continued shift in population — and therefore electoral power — away from the Northeast and Midwest and toward the South and West. The political impact of that shift is harder to assess: Most of the fastest-growing states voted for Trump in 2016, but the demographic groups that are growing fastest, particularly Latinos, tend to vote Democratic. Cities, which voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, are likewise growing faster than rural areas, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump.
What is clear, however, is that demographic trends are accelerating the existing southward migration of the nation’s center of political gravity. CONT.
Jesse Alston, FiveThirtyEight