By now you are certainly aware that all states have certified their final vote counts, and Clinton defeated Trump by more than 2.8 million in the popular vote. This translates into a 2.1% Democratic edge, versus 3.9% for Obama in the 2012 vote. All vote totals and percentages here are from the Cook Political Reports spreadsheet of final, certified 2016 vote totals and comparison to 2012 votes.
As we all know, the shift towards the Republicans was enough to flip Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to Trump (even if by razor-thin margins in the first two cases), gifting Trump with an Electoral College victory. In most states, Clinton underperformed Obama’s margin, whether states that were blue in both election cycles (such as Connecticut, which saw a 3.7% shift towards Trump) or red in both (such as Alabama, which saw a 5.5% shift towards Trump). Perhaps less well known is the fact that in 13 jurisdictions (12 states plus the District of Columbia) Clinton actually outperformed Obama’s 2012 margin. Can the results in these states plus DC tell us anything of value as we look ahead to 2020?
As it happens, these 13 jurisdictions, in my view, fall into 3 different categories — one of which is unique to the 2016 election cycle, but the other two do offer some insight.
We may label the first category “Blue states bluer.” Clinton outperformed Obama 2012 in the following 7 states:
California +7.0%
Massachusetts +4.1%
DC +3.1
Virginia +1.5
Washington +0.6
Maryland +0.3
Illinois +0.2
All of these are “Blue Wall” states (or, in the case of Virginia, soon to be). Clinton’s Virginia margin surely got a boost from her running mate Tim Kaine. But notably, in a cycle where things went so dramatically wrong for the Clinton campaign, these states reaffirmed or intensified their innate liberalism. Outside of the Midwest, the “Blue Wall” is holding strong.
The next category might be labeled “2016 oddities.” Clinton also outperformed Obama 2012 in the following 3 deep red states:
Utah +30.0
Kansas +1.1
Idaho +0.1
I’m pretty sure we can agree that this does not represent some upsurge in liberalism in these states. In the case of heavily Mormon Utah (and the somewhat less heavily Mormon Idaho) it was more of an anti-Trump backlash; the Mormons, at least (or many of them anyway) couldn’t stomach Trump and either turned to independent Evan McMullin or even to Clinton as a more acceptable alternative. Kansas, having suffered greatly under the extraordinary mismanagement of Governor Brownback, also saw many voters decline the Trump bandwagon this year. Although Trump may well run for re-election in 2020, and underperform again in these states, they do not represent realistic pickup chances for Democrats in the near future.
The final category is in my opinion the most interesting and promising; let’s call it “Hopeful Signs.” Clinton outperformed Obama 2012 in the following 3 decreasingly red states:
Texas +6.8
Arizona +5.5
Georgia +2.7
Trump, of course, won these three states as well. Yet, in an election where he outperformed Mitt Romney 2012 in almost all the red states, he underperformed here. Why? These 3 states, of course, are part of the much-discussed demographic shift of recent election cycles: in at least 2 or 3 of these states, we see increasing (and overwhelmingly Democratic) minority populations, increasing educational levels (also associated with voting Democratic), and increasing young populations (also associated with voting Democratic). Both Georgia and Arizona may be potential targets in 2020; Trump’s winning margin in these 2 states was 5.1% and 3.6%, respectively. A Democratic candidate without the burden of the unfavorable perceptions Clinton suffered (regardless of how fair or unfair those were), and the extraordinary near-30-year campaign of hate against her by the right wing, would almost certainly do better on that basis alone. However, they would also have the benefit of 4 more years of demographic shift. In Texas, Trump’s margin was 6.8%. 2024 seems a more realistic time frame than 2020 for demographic shifts to bring Texas within reach, but — especially if the Democrats are wise enough to focus strong efforts on Hispanic voter registration there, as well as Arizona — the efforts should pay off.
All of which points to a simple and clear strategy for 2020. (1) Devote the resources to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that were missing in 2016. This is less “find ways to appeal to white working class voters” than it is “present a simple, clear economic message of fighting for workers and unions against corporate and plutocratic wealth” and “motivate and facilitate minority turnout everywhere.” In other words, do NOT take these states for granted. (2) Focus on the south Atlantic coast (Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia, in that order) and Arizona. All of these states have either gone Democratic in recent elections or (in the cases of Georgia and Arizona) are on the verge of doing so. A normal Democratic candidate with a strong message of fighting on behalf of the average American — for Social Security, for Medicare, for health insurance, for overtime and minimum wage and other worker protections — will bring in the Democratic coalition along with open-minded whites who are not so socially conservative that they can’t bear to vote Democratic due to their hatred and fear of ‘liberals,’ gays, and darker-skinned people.
Full disclosure: I was just as embarrassingly wrong as anyone else regarding what I expected on Election Day (see my final diary about the polling numbers). Actual vote counts have an important and obvious advantage, however: they show what people actually did, not what they said they would do (or were predicted to do, based on likely voter models). So it would benefit the Democratic party greatly, at every level, to emulate what the Republicans did in 2012: have a serious post-mortem of the election, analyzing what went wrong state-by-state and identifying the right strategies to prevent it from happening again.