Blue wall (politics)

Ronald Brownstein describes the blue wall as "the 18 states that form the blue wall, a term I coined in 2009".[3] After the 2012 presidential election, Paul Steinhauser called "blue wall […] the cluster of eastern, Midwest and western states that have traditionally gone Democratic."[4] The earliest description of the forces creating the blue wall comes from a Houston Chronicle blogger, Chris Ladd.[5] A Republican, Ladd wrote in November 2014 that the seemingly impressive Republican win in the 2014 mid-term elections had overshadowed another trend apparent in the results – a demographic and geographic collapse. The blue wall was a Democratic demographic lock on the Electoral College resulting from the Republican Party's (GOP) narrowing focus on the interests of white, rural, and Southern voters. Ladd's analysis became popular when MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell featured it on a post-election episode of his show The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.[6]

A similar "red wall/sea," behind which lie states solidly Republican, has also been posited to exist. But, having fewer votes, it would be theoretically easier for a Democratic presidential candidate to win without breaching it. The Republican party has won just 13 states in each of the last 7 election cycles, totaling 102 electoral votes.

Behind this "blue wall" lay states, many carrying a relatively high number of electoral votes, which appeared to be solidly behind the Democratic Party, at least on the national level, and which a Republican presidential candidate appeared likely to have to write off, seeking a total of 270 electoral votes from other regions. States behind this wall lay generally in the Northeastern United States, and the West Coast of the United States, and included some of the Great Lakes states. In each of the 6 presidential election cycles prior to 2016, the Democratic Party had won 18 of these states (as well as the District of Columbia), totaling 242 of the necessary 270 votes need to win. The "big three" Democratic stronghold states include California, New York, and Illinois.

States falling behind this blue wall generally included those the Democrats had carried since the 1992 presidential election until the 2016 presidential election[4][7] that included (in order of decreasing population and followed by current number of electoral votes): California (55), New York (29), Illinois (20), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), New Jersey (14), Washington (12), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), Minnesota (10), Wisconsin (10), Oregon (7), Connecticut (7), Hawaii (4), Maine (4), Rhode Island (4), Delaware (3), and Vermont (3), as well as Washington, D.C. (3); this is a total of 242 votes. The last time any of these states cast their votes for the Republican presidential candidate before 2016 was when George H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988 and carried California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Maine, Delaware, and Vermont. New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Oregon, Hawaii, and Rhode Island have voted Democratic since Ronald Reagan's landslide in 1984. One of these states, Minnesota, has not been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1972. (The District of Columbia has voted for the Democratic candidate in every election since it was admitted to the electoral college for the 1964 election.)

Red wall/sea

Red wall states, 1980–2016

Red wall states, 2000–2016

The states which Republicans have won in the last 7 cycles include Texas (38), Alabama (9), South Carolina (9), Oklahoma (7), Mississippi (6), Utah (6), Kansas (6), Nebraska (4), Idaho (4), South Dakota (3), North Dakota (3), Alaska (3), and Wyoming (3), giving a total of 102 votes. States with a 6-out-of-7 Republican record include Georgia (16), North Carolina (15), Arizona (11), Indiana (11), and Montana (3) for a total of 158 electoral votes. Much of the Southern United States are probably safely Republican as well, as 6 other states from that general region have not voted for a Democrat since southerner Bill Clinton in 1996, and the Deep South is nearly solidly Republican in their senators and governors. In a Seventh Party System, it is possible many other states could join the red wall/sea, especially states such as Kentucky and West Virginia, both of which have gone to the GOP in the last five presidential elections, with Kentucky voting Republican by at least 15 percentage points in each election and West Virginia giving Donald Trump his second-largest victory margin in 2016 (behind Wyoming).

States that traditionally voted blue (Democratic), but voted Republican in 2016 are marked in red. Minnesota (a historic blue wall state), was won by Democrats by only 1.5% and Maine by 3% in 2016. Additionally, a congressional district in northern Maine gave the GOP one electoral vote.

The Democrats' "lock" on these states had been called into question after 2016, as several had been competitive in recent elections, and many had Republicans currently holding elected statewide office, generally either senator or governor.[8] Blue wall states with a Republican senator included Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine. Those with a Republican governor included Massachusetts, Maryland, and Vermont. In addition to these 18 states, three others, Iowa, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, had only voted for the Republican once in the same 6 election cycles, giving their votes to George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004, whilst Oregon saw Bush lose by only 7,000 votes in 2000. If included in the total, the votes behind the blue wall numbered 257, just 13 short of what is needed to win. In 2016, the blue wall showed some cracks, and went down from 242 electoral votes to 195. Some in the mainstream media did, however, suspect the Democrats might lose Pennsylvania.

Nate Silver had criticized the idea of the blue wall, pointing to a larger "red wall/red sea" of states that voted Republican from 1968 to 1988. He argued that the blue wall simply represented a "pretty good run" in elections, and that relatively minor gains in the popular vote could flip some of its states to Republican.[9] This was seen in the 2016 election, where voters from manufacturing states traditionally behind the blue wall voted for Donald Trump, providing him the victory in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine's 2nd congressional district. [10]

Presidential votes in blue wall states since 1876:

Key

Bold denotes candidates elected as president

• Bible Belt
• Jesusland map
• Political culture of the United States
• Red states and blue states
• Rust Belt
• Sixth Party System
• Swing state
• Solid South
• Red wall (British politics)

• The Detroit News: Mich. GOP eyes plan for cracking 'blue wall'