The resilience of industrial-state incumbents such as Brown, Stabenow, and Casey makes clear that Democrats aren’t facing imminent extinction in the heartland they are even well positioned to potentially recapture several governorships there this year. All of those are preponderantly white and heavily blue-collar states where Trump remains much more popular than he is nationally. But the GOP’s strength among older and blue-collar whites has still placed Republican challengers in a strong position to oust Democratic Senators Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, and-to a somewhat lesser extent-Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Jon Tester in Montana. In this year’s Senate contests, Democrats appear to have stabilized their position in several of the industrial states, with incumbents generally considered strong favorites for reelection in Michigan (Debbie Stabenow), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), and Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), along with a more equivocal favorite in Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin). ![]() The shift toward the GOP among older whites threatens the long-term position of Democrats in a wide array of states across the country’s heartland, where those adults constitute a critical mass. But his style and agenda are simultaneously alienating younger and nonwhite voters, and straining the GOP’s grip on college-educated whites, especially women. ![]() Trump is intensifying the GOP’s strength among older, blue-collar, and rural whites. This long-term geographic reconfiguration reflects the shifting demographics in each party’s coalition-a transformation that Trump’s tumultuous presidency is accelerating. “But over time, because of population shifts, I think we are going to spend a lot more time in the Sun Belt.” “In 2020, the Electoral College vote forces us to win in both places,” says Robby Mook, the 2016 campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. ‘One of the most brutal races in the country’ has just begun in Florida. And, through the next several elections, that will increase the pressure on Democrats to post deeper gains in Sun Belt states-such as Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and perhaps even Texas-that more reflect their modern coalition. For the 2020 presidential race, the top priority for most Democratic strategists remains recapturing the three Rust Belt states Donald Trump dislodged from the party’s “blue wall” by a combined margin of only about 80,000 votes: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.īut many of those same strategists agree that as support for each party divides more sharply along racial, generational, and class lines, it will be difficult for Democrats to rely on predominantly white heartland states as much as they do today in presidential, congressional, and state races alike. ![]() In the coming years, Democrats will likely face a growing need to expand their inroads in the Sun Belt states-which tend to be younger, racially diverse, and white-collar-as Republicans strengthen their position in older, predominantly white, and blue-collar states across the Midwest and Great Plains. This week’s competitive primaries in Arizona and Florida suggest the midterm elections could provide revealing signals on one of the most important questions facing the two parties over the next decade: Can Democrats overturn the Republican advantage in the rapidly growing Sun Belt?
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