There is an obverse side of the coin I mentioned yesterday. Blacks are moving to somewhere. They’re not just leaving Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. In some cases blacks are moving from inner cities to the collar suburbs. From Woodlawn and Chatham to Maywood, Hazel crest, and Dolton. But about half are just moving away. They’re moving to Atlanta, Richmond, Columbia, Virginia Beach, Jackson, and, to a lesser extent, Houston, Miami, and Baltimore. They are likely to keep voting Democratic.
We already saw some of that in the 2018 mid-terms in which seats that were supposed to be easy wins for Republicans were hotly contested.
I don’t think that Chicago or Detroit will be able to stem “black flight”. They’ll just shrink. Whether Republicans can hold onto what used to be safe, Southern seats is in question. I doubt that they can.
The entire country is getting purpler.
This is anecdotal, but it’s very evident here in FL. People flee (and talk about) the messes in MA, NJ and NY, but a disproportionate number retain that Dem streak and vote accordingly. It irrational, but observable.
There has been an affiliational component to political party that transcends policy or performance.
Following from yesterday, I don’t disagree about potential realignments, particularly some Southern states like Georgia and Texas might be more likely to vote for state and local Democrats. Texas might elect a Texas Democrat to beat someone as controversial as Cruz, but a national Democratic candidate, even one from a proud slave state like Delaware, isn’t likely to close the gap in Texas through migration.
My notes from yesterday had these states as won by Trump by less than 5% of the vote (the percentage of African-Americans in each state is in parenthesis):
Michigan, 16 EV (14.0%)
Pennsylvania, 20 EV (11.07%)
Wisconsin, 10 EV (6.3%)
Florida, 29 EV (16.1%)
Arizona, 11 EV (4.2%)
North Carolina, 15 EV (21.5%)
My two main observations about that list are: first that other than Florida and North Carolina, these are states with lower portions of blacks than the national average (12.6%) Second, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the closest, so close in fact that one could say everything is important. But getting someone to switch their vote from R to D is twice as important as getting someone to turnout that sat out last time.