Not only is Donald Trump’s populist vision making the Republican Party more electable across demographics, but the geographic outlook of the party is also looking up.
Early census redistricting estimates that as of this year, the Republican red states from 2020 will gain 11 electoral votes. The Democratic blue states will lose 11 electoral votes and, therefore, be at a disadvantage in the House relative to now.
It appears increasingly tricky for the electoral math to add up for a Democratic Party whose incumbent president, Biden, is currently down to President Trump by 3 points in the RCP average nationally. At a minimum, with eleven months to go before the 2024 election, President Trump is poised to recapture the White House while winning the popular vote, and 2028 represents the last election Democrats will have with this current electoral college configuration.
California and New York are forecasted to lose 4 and 3 electoral votes, respectively, while Texas and Florida are predicted to gain 4 and 3 electoral votes, respectively. In addition, Idaho, Utah, North Carolina, and Tennessee, all states Trump won twice and will win a third time with ease, will each gain one electoral vote. In contrast, Georgia and Arizona, states where Trump is ahead by and in the RCP average, are also forecasted to gain an electoral vote for the next decade.
There is no reason to think states that voted once for Bill Clinton are permanently in the Democratic column. Increasingly, there are fewer and fewer states that are definitively safe for the Democrats as blue-collar voters flock back to Trump. The growing working-class coalition around the Trump-led populist Republican Party could create an electoral majority that could govern the nation for a generation.
Once considered an impenetrable blue wall in the Midwest, Trump has turned clear losses in Iowa and Ohio into nearly double-digit wins twice and now boasts over double-digit polling leads in each state for 2024. Populist candidate J.D. Vance has since equaled this performance in the 2022 midterm elections. As long as the fading Republican Romney establishment does not actively help the opposition, populist conservatives have more prospects of electoral success nationally than any other element within the Republican Party. Considering the RNC has just 9 million dollars in the bank , voters will gravitate to the populist wing out of self-interest, as donors and grassroots alike do not trust the fading and soon-to-be former establishment.
Furthermore, states that Republicans lost by eight to seventeen points in 2008 and 2012 are now battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. In addition to locking up the Maine 2nd Congressional District electoral vote, a good election cycle for a populist Republican Party would also put New Hampshire and Maine in play and make Virginia competitive again under the right circumstances. Even the Democrat lead in states like New York and New Jersey could be closing dramatically and flip if the Biden administration continues with its failed liberal agenda.
This is a map the 2012 Republican autopsy could only have dreamed of.
Overlay the 2020 presidential election onto the projected apportionment after 2030, and it would produce an electoral college of 292 electoral votes for Democrats and 246 electoral votes for Republicans. At that point, all Republicans would need to hold historically red or lean-red states like Arizona and Georgia to get to 275 votes. Add Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and their projected 2030s totals, and Trump is commanding 320 electoral votes. In other words, the 2016 Trump win now sits at 320 electoral votes.
Add in a state trending red for many cycles in a row, Nevada, and Trump is up to 326. The aforementioned situationally competitive Minnesota, Virginia, Nebraska-2nd, New Hampshire, and Maine get Trump to 355. If Trump is competitive in New York and New Jersey, we are discussing the first proper landslide election since 1988. This type of presidential realignment is deep, broad, and sustainable, no matter how much it angers the fading political and media establishment.
This is why Colorado and 16 other states have doubled down on lawfare. This effort will almost certainly be interrupted by the Supreme Court if the American constitutional republic is to survive at this point. Democrats no longer believe they can win in a fair fight or persuade enough voters, and they’re right about that. But the key will be for the populists not to sit on their hands the following year, especially in the four years after. It is vital to ensure the institutional Republican Party, from state chairs and committees to local clubs and precinct chairs, is taken over by those with the energy, talent, and understanding of this transformative moment in American history.