The battleground states across the industrial Midwest have functioned as the decisive tipping point of American politics for at least 30 years, especially in presidential elections. But the latest Census Bureau findings on both overall population growth and voter turnout in 2020 signal that the Sun Belt will increasingly rival, and potentially replace, the Rust Belt as the central battlefield in US elections. …
Though Republicans retain at least a slight edge in many of the Sun Belt states, the growth in them is occurring primarily in places, and among groups, that lean Democratic. The Census Bureau hasn’t yet released its final 2020 data documenting where the growth occurred within the states, but all the findings from other data sources over recent years show that large metro areas will be the principal source of that increase, especially in the Sun Belt. …
As with geography, the demographic changes in these states also bend toward Democrats. When the full census data is released, it’s likely to show that most of the population growth in the fast-growing Sun Belt states occurred among Hispanic, Asian American, mixed-race and in some places Black communities. CONTINUED
Ronald Brownstein, CNN
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