5 ms·

Swing states shift, though. California was basically solid red from the 1950s through the 1980s. Until 2016, few people would have called Wisconsin or Michigan

Swing states shift, though. California was basically solid red from the 1950s through the 1980s. Until 2016, few people would have called Wisconsin or Michigan "swing states" judging from their voting in the past few elections. People move, demographics change.

hyperpape 7y ago
This is true, but I’m not sure having your vote count for a decade, then not count, then count again is all that much better. Note that going in to an election, the potential battleground states are usually known. Some states haven’t been swing states for a long time, too.
- WarDores 7y ago
  I'm not sure what the correct answer is. Winning a national contest is always going to be about coalition-building all said and done. Trump changed the calculus on the traditional GOP coalition (going after unions -- once considered a Democrat lock), and won states he "shouldn't" have. Coalitions line up with states in a lot of cases. If Democrats started pandering to farmers (I can see this happening), the midwest might look different. I don't see this as a "states not counting" problem as much as the issues that come up in national elections affect different populations in different ways. If there was a national popular vote, there would still be people who feel disenfranchised because the candidates don't see their chosen issues as vital to their coalition.
  - pishpash 7y ago
    We're witnessing a party re-alignment in real time.
ajmurmann 7y ago
I'm not sure that's actually true. There was a great graphic a few years back that showed party allegiance by state over time. You could see how most states used to be fairly split between both parties and how they frequently swung from party to party between elections. However, in the 80s or so many states started to align more closely with one party. Given the duration for which that has been going on, I wonder if that's the natural end state of a defacto two party system.
- sachdevap 7y ago
  That end result is probably strongly favored by gerrymandering.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > You could see how most states used to be fairly split between both parties and how they frequently swung from party to party between elections. That was a short-term artifact of political realignments starting in the 1930s (New Deal Coalition) and—before that one had fully stabilized—1960s (Civil Rights). Those overlapping realignments settled down into s new relatively stable alignment by the late 1980s; before the realignments most states were much stronger one-party states than the solid-red or solid-blue states today, and sometimes the second state party, if it existed at all, wasn't even the other major national party (Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is a remnant of that: prior to the New Deal coalition, which it became part of and eventually joined the Democratic Party, the party competing with the dominant Republican Party in Minnesota was the Farmer-Labor Party, which was not associated with the Democrats.)
  - saghm 7y ago
    > That was a short-term artifact of political realignments starting in the 1930s (New Deal Coalition) and—before that one had fully stabilized—1960s (Civil Rights). To be fair, there were only four elections in the previous 70 years that resulted in a Democrat winning. I think that avoiding something that like in the future is probably worthwhile, which is a minor argument against the electoral college based on past results.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> California was basically solid red from the 1950s through the 1980s Suddenly swung in 1992, and has been seen as solid blue since—not really an example of swing states switching as a state rapidly moving from Republican lock to Democratic lock.
- pishpash 7y ago
  Phase transition is a natural outcome of all-or-nothing elector pledging.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Phase transition is a natural outcome of all-or-nothing elector pledging. Don't see why it would be. Obviously a flip will flip all of a states electors if it did all or nothing assignment, as most do, but sudden flip from consistent red to consistent blue in Presidential elections isn't a product of that. Might be a product of winner take all elections at other levels (e.g., state house, with the majority flipping reshaping donor alignments in the state and leading major voices to switch sides) but that's not what happened in CA either; the legislature didn't flip from solid Red to solid Blue at a time that would be consistent with it being a driving factor for the Presidential shift.
- masonic 7y ago
  California was never "solidly red". Aside from President, it's been mostly blue, as a simple look at the makeup of the state legislature shows (it's been mostly Democrat controlled for over two generations).

hyperpape 7y ago

This is true, but I’m not sure having your vote count for a decade, then not count, then count again is all that much better. Note that going in to an election, the potential battleground states are usually known. Some states haven’t been swing states for a long time, too.

WarDores 7y ago
I'm not sure what the correct answer is. Winning a national contest is always going to be about coalition-building all said and done. Trump changed the calculus on the traditional GOP coalition (going after unions -- once considered a Democrat lock), and won states he "shouldn't" have. Coalitions line up with states in a lot of cases. If Democrats started pandering to farmers (I can see this happening), the midwest might look different. I don't see this as a "states not counting" problem as much as the issues that come up in national elections affect different populations in different ways. If there was a national popular vote, there would still be people who feel disenfranchised because the candidates don't see their chosen issues as vital to their coalition.
- pishpash 7y ago
  We're witnessing a party re-alignment in real time.

ajmurmann 7y ago

I'm not sure that's actually true. There was a great graphic a few years back that showed party allegiance by state over time. You could see how most states used to be fairly split between both parties and how they frequently swung from party to party between elections. However, in the 80s or so many states started to align more closely with one party. Given the duration for which that has been going on, I wonder if that's the natural end state of a defacto two party system.

sachdevap 7y ago
That end result is probably strongly favored by gerrymandering.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> You could see how most states used to be fairly split between both parties and how they frequently swung from party to party between elections. That was a short-term artifact of political realignments starting in the 1930s (New Deal Coalition) and—before that one had fully stabilized—1960s (Civil Rights). Those overlapping realignments settled down into s new relatively stable alignment by the late 1980s; before the realignments most states were much stronger one-party states than the solid-red or solid-blue states today, and sometimes the second state party, if it existed at all, wasn't even the other major national party (Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is a remnant of that: prior to the New Deal coalition, which it became part of and eventually joined the Democratic Party, the party competing with the dominant Republican Party in Minnesota was the Farmer-Labor Party, which was not associated with the Democrats.)
- saghm 7y ago
  > That was a short-term artifact of political realignments starting in the 1930s (New Deal Coalition) and—before that one had fully stabilized—1960s (Civil Rights). To be fair, there were only four elections in the previous 70 years that resulted in a Democrat winning. I think that avoiding something that like in the future is probably worthwhile, which is a minor argument against the electoral college based on past results.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> California was basically solid red from the 1950s through the 1980s Suddenly swung in 1992, and has been seen as solid blue since—not really an example of swing states switching as a state rapidly moving from Republican lock to Democratic lock.

pishpash 7y ago
Phase transition is a natural outcome of all-or-nothing elector pledging.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Phase transition is a natural outcome of all-or-nothing elector pledging. Don't see why it would be. Obviously a flip will flip all of a states electors if it did all or nothing assignment, as most do, but sudden flip from consistent red to consistent blue in Presidential elections isn't a product of that. Might be a product of winner take all elections at other levels (e.g., state house, with the majority flipping reshaping donor alignments in the state and leading major voices to switch sides) but that's not what happened in CA either; the legislature didn't flip from solid Red to solid Blue at a time that would be consistent with it being a driving factor for the Presidential shift.
masonic 7y ago
California was never "solidly red". Aside from President, it's been mostly blue, as a simple look at the makeup of the state legislature shows (it's been mostly Democrat controlled for over two generations).