The shift of metro areas away from the Republican Party under President Donald Trump rumbled on in yesterday’s elections, threatening the fundamental calculation of his 2020 reelection plan. Amid all the various local factors that shaped GOP losses—from Kentucky to Virginia, from suburban Philadelphia to Wichita, Kansas—the clearest pattern was […] Read more »
The Border Between Red and Blue America
The suburbs are up for grabs. Anybody who’s paying attention to the 2020 election knows that. But there’s a more fundamental question: Just what are the suburbs anyway? In a statistical sense, they are surprisingly hard to define. The United States Census Bureau, the primary source of demographic data, doesn’t […] Read more »
Louisiana Governor: Key Takeaways from the Primary Election
The recent race in Louisiana may not be a bellwether, but it’s more evidence of the growing geographic divide in the country. … The big takeaway from Saturday’s results is that the urban/rural divide that expanded in the 2016 Presidential election is continuing for downballot elections. CONT. Ryan Matsumoto, Inside […] Read more »
Why Trump’s Favorite 2016 Map Should Scare Him
This week, as President Donald Trump went on the offensive to bolster his case against impeachment, he tweeted a county-by-county map of the 2016 presidential race that showed a vast sea of red interrupted only by a few blue inlets, mostly along the coasts. The map, captioned with the headline […] Read more »
The Suburban Vote Isn’t as Blue as It Looks
My colleague, David Wasserman wrote a (typically) insightful analysis on GOP state Sen. Dan Bishop’s narrow win in Thursday’s special election in North Carolina’s 9th district. His main conclusion was that the special election continued a trend we’ve seen since 2016 of suburbs voting more Democratic, while small town and […] Read more »
Election maps show ‘middle ground’ communities are disappearing
This week, the Democratic Party in South Dakota announced it was closing its last two offices in the state. The move surprised some analysts and brought criticism from some quarters as an example of Democrats abandoning difficult political terrain. But a look at the numbers over the past 20 years […] Read more »