How to Stop Blue States From Turning Red
Minnesota is widely seen as a “Democratic stronghold.” For the past twelve presidential elections, Minnesota has gone for the Democratic nominee, sometimes by large margins. But a disturbing trend has emerged in recent years. In 2016, Minnesota was only two points away from voting for Donald Trump, which also happened to be a little less than the amount that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote nationwide. While in 2020 Joe Biden won the state by seven points, that’s only three points more than his popular vote margin. While the incumbent governor performed well in the 2022 midterms, this performance is starting to place Minnesota in the realm of swing states: the Cook Partisan Voter Index (PVI) now places the state’s partisan lean at D +1.
So, what’s going on? States like Arizona and Georgia have shifted from safe red states to toss-ups (or even leaning Democrat) in the two most recent elections, and Texas has been trending blue. But that doesn’t mean Democrats are doing better nationwide — far from it. Over the past two election cycles, we’ve seen two major players in the nation, Florida and Ohio, become red-leaning, if not solidly red, after voting for Barack Obama twice. Over the past ten years, we saw West Virginia go from a safe Democratic state to a safe Republican one. Not only this, Democrats might be losing ground in Virginia, as Republican Glenn Youngkin won the gubernatorial race in 2021 by two points. While this could be chalked up to President Joe Biden’s unpopularity at that time, it’s also worth mentioning that the Cook PVI of Virginia is only D +3.
When we look at why Arizona and Georgia have been moving blue, the cause is pretty clear: voters of color in Maricopa County and Atlanta, respectively. It’s no secret that black voters are among the most reliable parts of the base of the Democratic Party, as they were able to catapult Biden’s faltering primary campaign into full force after the South Carolina Democratic primaries. Voters of color reliably supported Biden throughout the general election too. We see this in Atlanta, as black voters have accounted for half of the state’s electorate growth since 2000. In Maricopa County, Asian, Latino, and Native American voters helped carry Biden to a win in the Copper State. But looking at demographics also exposes Democrats’ biggest weaknesses: specifically, the fact that their support has been slipping among Latinos (specifically Cubans) and especially among white blue-collar voters.
Look at Ohio and Florida: Ohio has a large white blue-collar population, and that’s reflected in its statewide government, which is predominantly older white men and with their only Democrat being US Senator Sherrod Brown, who has remained popular by appealing to the blue-collar vote. In Florida, Biden saw massive losses with Latino voters, especially with Cuban voters in South Florida. And nationwide? Currently, Biden sits at a 26% approval rating from Latino voters, compared to a 63% approval rating from black voters and 31% from white voters. It’s especially embarrassing to Democrats that in the most recent gubernatorial election in Florida, incumbent Ron DeSantis flipped liberal stronghold Miami-Dade county, solidifying the fact that Hispanic voters in Florida are now a red voting bloc.
Democrats losing ground with Latino voters might be confusing, especially since former president Donald Trump’s rhetoric about Latino immigrants was quite harsh, to put it mildly. But it makes more sense when you consider the Democratic Party’s missteps when it comes to messaging. One of the prime examples of this is the use of the term “Latinx,” which is widely used in the messaging of many Democratic candidates and is doing them no favors. “Latinx” is widely unpopular and is only used by about 3% of Hispanics, as many of them view it as Amero-centric — “erasing a crucial part of Latin American language and identity, and replacing it with an English word,” as the Miami Herald puts it. This disconnect highlights the issues that Democrats have been having with many voters: rather than focusing on what that group’s priorities might actually be, Democrats focus more on unpopular culture war topics.
But part of the story is GOP messaging that the Democratic Party is “socialist.” This messaging ignores key differences between democratic socialism and actual socialism, while also eliding that the number of Democratic members of congress publicly affiliated with democratic socialism is limited to five individuals. Still, this line of attack is extremely effective. More than 40% of Hispanic voters across the country have expressed concern with the Democratic Party “embracing socialism and leftist policies,” and among those who voted for Trump, 70% cite that as their reason for doing so. This likely stems from Cubans, Venezuelans, and other Latin Americans emigrating from countries with ostensibly socialist governments becoming a larger part of the Hispanic electorate.
Working-class voters from rural and suburban areas used to be a huge part of the Democratic Party’s base, as those voters from states like West Virginia and Kentucky delivered massive wins for Bill Clinton during the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. But both of those states have become bloodred, voting for both Mitt Romney and Trump by large margins. These voters are dissatisfied with messaging from Democrats on various topics, ranging from the economy to culture war issues. Of the latter, topics such as police reform, education, and immigration are places where Democrats haven’t quite found their footing, whereas Republicans are more united on these fronts. Many Democratic politicians have been hurt by this, such as Terry McAullife during the recent Virginia gubernatorial election, and calls to defund the police from the furthest-left members of Congress are wildly unpopular with most people. Although party leaders like Biden have come out against defunding the police, calls from any member of the Democratic caucus doing so allow for more effective propagandizing by the GOP.
The “socialist” messaging also works effectively, as many workers today lived through the era of the Soviet Union, in which Cold War propaganda and the serious problems in the Soviet Union and other socialist societies created an intense fear of the word. It’s unclear what they mean by “socialism”, but 21% of Democrats claim that they wouldn’t vote for a socialist for president, alongside 45% of independents and 76% of Republicans. By letting themselves be associated with socialism, Democrats create an unnecessary liability for themselves.
So what can Democrats do to keep Latino and white working-class voters with them? The best thing that they can do for themselves is ignore the farther left members of their caucus when it comes to messaging. Picking fights with billionaires on Twitter won’t be helping them in the long run when it comes to securing swing voters: the people who want Democrats to do that probably won’t be voting for Republicans. When the media gives the Squad a larger platform than most other Democratic representatives, it gives voters the idea that they’re the main policy proposers. In reality, many of their most substantial bills don’t pass or even make it to the floor of Congress.
In addition, Democrats’ messaging needs to be more pointed and focused and should adopt better rebuttals to common Republican critiques. For example, Republicans attack Democrats for their “open border policy.” Democrats have an easy job here: compare their own border policy to Trump’s, which ends up being not so different. Although this might seem like it might lose some support on their own side, Democrats are likely to gain more moderate swing voters by being tougher on the border than they are to lose more liberal supporters.
Democrats also haven’t been pointing out how lackluster Republicans have been on certain issues. While they’ve been good about focusing on abortion in the upcoming midterms due to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, they still haven’t hammered the Republican party enough on the fact that they don’t even have ten senators who are willing to legalize gay and interracial marriage. But Republicans aren’t just lackluster on social issues: their poor economic plans don’t help most of their constituents either. The only thing of substance Trump passed during his presidency was tax cuts for business owners, which don’t benefit the working class. In the upcoming election, Republicans declined to even release a national platform, and they haven’t attempted to give voters a plan on how to deal with inflation other than saying that they would handle it better than Democrats. These are prime weaknesses that the Democrats can exploit, and not doing so is foolish.
If Democrats fail to clear up their messaging or fail to distance themselves from their further-left members, Republicans will have free reign to spin the narrative the way they want. Democrats have the slimmest of majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and in a system that’s already gerrymandered to favor Republicans, Democrats don’t have much wiggle room with winning voters over. Democrats might be able to bring states like Florida and Ohio back within reach if they conduct their party in an orderly fashion — but might even lose winnable states like North Carolina and Nevada if they don’t figure out their sound bites quickly.
