[Wake up: Trump has fundamentally reshaped the electorate. This is
good news for the fight against MAGA fascism.]
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THE EMERGING ANTI-MAGA MAJORITY  
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Michael Podhorzer
June 8, 2023
Weekend Reading
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*
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_ Wake up: Trump has fundamentally reshaped the electorate. This is
good news for the fight against MAGA fascism. _

,

 

In 2016, Trump shocked the world by tearing down the “Blue Wall”
states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Quickly, a new
consensus congealed around the idea that despite having lost the
national popular vote, and only barely having won the Electoral
College, Trump had improved Republicans’ fortunes for the
foreseeable future with his unique appeal to “uneducated” voters.
Suddenly, white non-college voters became the “it” constituency.
For the last seven years, even as their proportion of the population
shrinks, the focus on them increases, most recently with assertions
that Democrats have been continuously hemorrhaging working class
voters. Despite everything we know about Trump, earlier this year
there were a rash of stories about how Trump could win again in 2024
despite being the only president to ever incite a deadly attack on the
Capitol to overturn an election he lost. In all those stories,
“working class” voters were the basis for those predictions. 

Yet, since 2016, Republicans have lost 23 of the 27 elections in the
five states everyone agrees Democratic hopes in the Electoral College
and the Senate depend on. When Trump was sworn in, Republicans held
four of those five states’ governorships, and six of the ten Senate
seats. Moreover, Republicans defied history by losing nearly across
the board in those states last year, the only time anything like that
has happened to a Party running against such an unpopular president in
a midterm. 

How could all of this happen?

As the unique voter file analysis in this post confirms, it didn’t
happen because very many of those who had voted for Trump in 2016 had
buyers’ remorse. (Indeed, the number of 2016 voters switching sides
has been historically low, and a wash as some have moved from Clinton
to Trump.) Instead, Republicans have lost because of the emerging
anti-MAGA majority consisting of those who did not vote in 2016. The
literally unprecedented surge in new voters over the last three
elections has two components: 1) young people are aging into the
electorate, and are voting at a higher rate than previous generations
at their age, and reject MAGA by 20-point margins, and 2) those who
skipped 2016 (the so-called “Obama-none” voters) have returned.
Those margins with young voters have two components – that young
voters are much more diverse than the rest of the population, and
young white people are far more anti-MAGA than their parents. 

How has this eluded nearly all the political analysts?

The conventional wisdom prefers national surveys to election results
– a demographic essentialism that insists it is more sensible to
anticipate how any demographic group in, say, Wisconsin, will vote by
looking at how that group is voting in the latest national survey,
than it is to pay attention to how voters in that state have been
casting their ballots in the last three elections. There is no room
for region or vote history in this Procrustean
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Subscribe
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THE EMERGING ANTI-MAGA MAJORITY

This post is based on the Catalist voter files for the eight elections
beginning in 2008 and including 2022. All of the figures for this post
are based on the 178 million people who are currently registered and
have cast at least one vote between 2016 and 2022. 1
[[link removed]] The
key concepts I will be using are: 

*
VOTE HISTORY. The just-referenced 178 million people fall in either of
these two categories: 

*
_Legacy voters_. They cast a ballot in 2016, and are still registered
to vote in the state they cast that ballot in. They constitute 70
percent of the 178 million.

*
_Post-2016 voters_. These are people who did not vote in 2016, cast a
ballot after 2016, and are still registered to vote in the state they
cast their last ballot in. Half of the Post-2016 voters are young -
either Gen Z or Millennials. The other half consist of returning
voters (they voted before 2016, but skipped 2016) and those who could
have voted before 2016, but didn’t. 

*
DEMOCRATIC MARGIN. Catalist computes what they call VCI (Vote Choice
Index) 2
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which intends to express each voter’s partisanship. When aggregated,
VCI consistently tracks Democrats’ performance in House races
throughout the eight cycles. While Catalist’s figures are by far the
best we have to go on, any partisanship score is still a model. For
that reason, throughout, I usually express results graphically to show
that the highlighted differences between groups of voters are well
outside any possible margin of error.3
[[link removed]] Whenever
I say, “Democratic margin,” I have just shortened “Democratic
margin based on VCI” for clarity and style. 

*
REGIONS. Regular readers know that I think it’s essential to think
of Red, Blue, and Purple states as separate groups of states –
that, in fact, America is more like two separate nations (Red and
Blue) with two different ways of life, and that this has defined our
politics since the founding.4
[[link removed]] In
all my other writing, I define a state as Red, Blue, or Purple based
on which party controls the state government.5
[[link removed]] In
this post, however, I follow the conventional taxonomy of Red, Blue
and Purple states, based on states’ voting patterns over the last
several cycles. 

The following graph of VCI by state and vote history explains why Red
states and Blue states are so consistently Republican and Democratic,
respectively, in federal elections – and helps us understand the
most important reason that Purple states are always up for grabs. In
most Red and Blue states, the days of competitive statewide federal
elections are gone. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, nearly every Senate race
in a Red or Blue state rated as among the most competitive on Election
Day by Cook and others was decided in favor of that state’s
“color” even when the loser was an incumbent.6
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Here is how the chart is organized: 

*
ORDER. The states are arranged from the most Republican (based on VCI)
– Wyoming – to the most Democratic – Vermont.7
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*
DEMOCRATIC MARGIN. The orange dot represents the Democratic margin
among Legacy Voters (again, those who voted in 2016). The green dot
represents the Democratic margin among Post-2016 Voters. 

The two dashed lines demarcate Red states (above the line), Purple
states (between the lines) and Blue states (below the second line). 

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This one graph serves as a powerful MRI we can use to diagnose the
nation’s partisan divisions. Here are the major takeaways: 

*
In every state but Hawaii, Washington, and West Virginia, Post-2016
Voters are more Democratic than Legacy voters.

*
In every Purple state but Pennsylvania (barely), Legacy voters tilt
Republican and Post-2016 voters tilt Democratic. _THIS IS THE
DEFINING TENSION IN ELECTORAL DYNAMICS TODAY._

*
In every Blue state, both Post-2016 and_ _Legacy voters are
Democratic. (As we would expect.)

*
In every Red state but Kansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Iowa, both
Post-2016 and Legacy voters are Republican. And in those four Red
states, Post-2016 voters are so barely Democratic that it is of no
consequence for Democrats’ electoral prospects. This shows that
voting cohorts do not predict partisan ideology as much as region. 

*
The partisan gaps between Post-2016 and Legacy voters are generally
much narrower in Blue states than in Red and Purple states.

*
The Red states in which new voters are most Democratic are also the
states that are doing as much as they can to make it more difficult
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students to vote. And that’s where voter suppression has been shown
to be the most easily effective. The difference in turnout if you have
a polling place on campus or not, for example, is substantial. 

We can now see clearly that in Purple states, _DEMOCRATS CAN ONLY WIN
WHEN ENOUGH POST-2016 VOTERS TURN OUT_. Which is why the Red Wave
never washed over those states. Had analysts wanted to look, even
their go-to source for the Midterms, AP’s VoteCast exit poll, made
that clear.

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Voters coming of age in the last eight years are having a unique
generational introduction to politics. Everybody understands the
lasting partisan impact inspirational leaders like FDR, Jack Kennedy,
Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama had on the generations coming of age
when they were president. But for this generation, Trump is the
opposite – they are coming of age at a time when everybody around
them, as well as the popular culture, loathe and ridicule him.
Especially in the Blue states, where MAGA candidates dominate the
uncompetitive GOP primaries, there is no exemplar of a reasonable
Republican to be seen.

Furthermore, it’s crucial to understand that young people in Red
states are much less Democratic than young people elsewhere, so this
analysis does not suggest that by itself, this backlash will dislodge
Republicans in Red states. The following graph shows the Democratic
margin of each of those groups by region. In each category, those in
Blue states are very Democratic, and those in Red states are either
Republican or break even.  

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I wrote about this before the election, and after the results but
before the voter files were available (Red Wave, Blue Undertow
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MAKING AMERICA VOTE AGAIN

Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory triggered the greatest
increase in voting in midterms in American history and nearly the
greatest increase for presidential elections. Turnout in the last
three elections has literally been off the charts. 

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Since Reconstruction, turnout rates have varied little over long
stretches of time (excluding the elections immediately after first
women and then 18 year olds were given the vote, when the denominator
grew suddenly, and during World War II). But every now and then,
turnout rates suddenly increase or decline by more than 5 points.
Whenever that has happened, it has signaled the beginning of a new
“turnout era,” in which turnout stabilizes at either a higher or
lower level than before. 

THE THREE TYPES OF POST-2016 VOTERS

So far, I have discussed Post-2016 Voters as a single category. But,
in fact, the group has three components: 

*
YOUNG VOTERS. This component consists of those Gen Z and Millennials
who voted for the first time after 2016. They constitute half the
Post-2016 Voters. 

*
RETURNING VOTERS. These are voters who had voted before 2016, but
skipped 2016. As you’ll see by their partisanship, they are to a
great extent the Obama-to-nobody voters. They constitute about
one-fifth of the Post-2016 Voters.

*
RECENT JOINERS. These are voters who were old enough to vote before
2016 and didn’t, but did so after 2016. Depending on the region and
demographic, these are less Democratic-leaning, and in some cases are
even Republican-leaning. This group could include both those more
extreme in ideology who were apathetic to the two-party candidates
prior to Trump, or those who were apolitical until Trump gave them a
compelling reason to be political. They constitute about 30 percent of
the Post-2016 Voters. 

Again, here is the Democratic margin of each of those groups by
region. 

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I want to draw special attention to the Recent Joiners in the Purple
states, who shed light on something I was writing about in October
2020. At that time, all the polling averages had Biden much further
ahead than he actually was. In this October 4, 2020 “Weekend
Reading” email, I drew attention to signals in administrative
records that strongly suggested that in those states, Trump was
bringing new voters into the electorate. Turnout is a behavior, not an
opinion, which means that behavioral signals are much more reliable
than polling (Turnout RCTs
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It’s also why special elections are such good signals as well. 

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THE BLUE-ING OF THE ELECTORATE

Picture the 2016 electorate as a seesaw, with (net) Democrats from
Blue states on one side and Republicans from Red on the other –
it’s in near perfect equipoise. But then add those who have voted
since 2016 – Democrats gain more from Blue than Republicans gain
from Red, and Purple has moved over to the Democratic side.

Now, let’s look at how this developed over time. The first column in
the chart below reflects the Democratic margin among those who voted
in 2008 and are still on the file, and the last column reflects the
Democratic margin among all those on the file who did not vote in 2008
but have voted at some point since then. The six columns in between
show how Blue became Bluer, Red became somewhat less Red, and Purple
flipped. 

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Notice that in every cycle except 2018, new voters in Red states were
still net Republican. The chart above also makes clear that the Trump
effect actually began with the 2016 election. 

To provide some context as to how the numbers and trends of new voters
have changed through the course of the period shown above, the
following graph shows the number of new voters in millions (left) and
their VCI Democratic margin (right) by the first year they voted in
the state they live in now.8
[[link removed]] Note
that here, new voters include those who moved to their current state
in that period as well as those who aged into the electorate. The 2008
election is not shown in the left panel since there is no way to
separate those who voted for the first time in 2008 from those who had
voted in previous elections. About half of those currently on the file
voted in 2008.
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The VCI of Legacy voters who voted in 2016 is just D+1. The Post-2016
voters are D+10. But, that pattern has varied greatly by region. 

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The following chart breaks down Democratic partisanship by region and
vote history. (How to read: 46 million voters in Blue states are
identified as Democratic by VCI and 29 million as Republican, or D+22
points.) As you can see, the nationwide Democratic margin by VCI (4
points) is slightly lower than Biden’s actual margin in 2020 (4.5
points), which reflects his slight advantage over congressional
Democrats in 2020 (2.7 points). 

Again, Post-2016 voters in Blue and Red states still substantially
favor Democrats and Republicans, respectively. On the other hand, _IN
PURPLE STATES, NEW VOTERS FAVOR DEMOCRATS,_ _WHILE LEGACY VOTERS
FAVOR REPUBLICANS. _

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RED STATE, BLUE STATE

This graph shows how stable presidential preferences have been in the
states over the last two presidential elections. Remarkably, not only
do the states array in nearly the same order as the VCI Margin,
there’s little difference from year to year in states, and the
margin in nearly every state is between D+5 and R+5.

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As it turns out, where you live is more strongly associated with how
you vote than most of the demographic categories we hear about in
election analyses. It is true that _in general_, we know that those
with a college education are more Democratic than those without;
people who live in cities are more Democratic than those who live in
rural areas; women are more Democratic than men; Black, Latino, and
AAPI voters are more Democratic than white voters; and that younger
voters are more Democratic than older voters. But when we look at
these categories in the context of which region of the country voters
live in, the picture gets more complicated.  

It shouldn’t be surprising that the neighborhood you grew up in, the
parents you have, the schools you went to, and the general politics
that you are introduced to are big factors in how you vote later in
life. If you grow up in Brooklyn, no matter how old you are, you are
swimming in Blue water – and the same goes for someone growing up in
rural Alabama swimming in Red water. Yet, aside from the rural/urban
divide, regional variation is almost never mentioned in stories about
what “Americans” believe based on national surveys.

The following four graphs show Democratic margin, as well as
composition of the electorate, by two of the most used demographic
categories – race/ethnicity and generation. The left panels,
Democratic margin, follow the same drop down across the regions
we’ve seen already, but the right panels show that there is little
to no regional variation in those categories. In other words, Biden
didn’t win the Blue states by two dozen points while Trump won the
Red states by more than a dozen points because the states are
different demographically; that happened because they are
fundamentally two different political ecosystems – two nations, as
I’ve described them.

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Yet instead of recognizing that regional divide, much has been made in
recent years about the growing “diploma divide
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between more-educated Democratic voters and less-educated Republican
voters. But, as this next chart based on Nationscape
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education levels by region throws a wrench into the conventional
understanding about education and partisanship. Biden’s margin
with _white non-college voters_ in Blue states (0) was 13 points
better than with _white college voters_ in Red states (-13)._ _

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Here’s a thought experiment: Let’s look at the 2020 presidential
map as if each race-education group in each state had voted as that
group voted nationally. For example, Biden won 37 percent of the white
non-college vote nationally, so we will give him 37 percent of the
white non-college vote in each state, and the same for the other 9
combinations.9
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the national figures were typical of any given state instead of the
average of very different figures in every state, we would expect this
exercise to yield a calculated outcome not much different from the
actual outcome.

But doing the calculation shows how far off these averages are from
any given state. Had each race-education group voted as it did
nationally in each state, Biden would have beaten Trump by an even
greater Electoral College margin (344 to 194) – and the map would
have been upside-down from what we would expect: 

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We see this sort of trend with nearly every one of the demographic
categories that we typically think of as being more or less Democratic
or Republican across the board. In many cases, the less-Democratic
group in a Blue state (like non-college voters) is more Democratic
than the more-Democratic group (like college-educated voters) in a Red
state.

CONCLUSION

After Trump won in 2016, it was clear that Democrats had to find a
path to winning more votes in the battleground states. In that panic,
many argued that Democrats had to win back the alternately labeled
“Obama-Trump” voters, “working class” voters, etc. But seven
years later, two things are clear:  

*
The 10 million people who did not vote in 2016, but have since, have
rejected Trump and MAGA in every one of the last three elections by
large enough margins to overcome Republicans’ original advantage in
those states; and

*
Despite literally billions of dollars of effort, very few of those who
defected to Trump in 2016 came back, and those basically are a wash
with those who have defected from Clinton to Trump. 

Thus, there’s no reason to listen to those who still think Democrats
need to focus on winning back Trump-leaning voters instead of simply
doing everything necessary to maintain the support of those who have
already rejected Trump/MAGA and continue to turn them out, along with
mobilizing those voters aging into the electorate. Nor is there any
reason to listen to those who panic at any survey which shows Biden
substantially behind, unless that survey also shows massive defections
from people who voted for him in 2020. 

Invariably, those prophesying doom unless new Trump-leaning voters are
brought over rely on polling results that reflect the generalized
disaffection of the moment
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all politicians, rather than election results which consistently show
that the voters in the key Purple states reject MAGA/Trump when the
choice is clear. But those doomsayers stubbornly ignore those facts,
arguing that the path to victory requires Democrats to split
themselves between left and center, rather than emphasize the
differences between themselves and a party advancing a fascist
movement’s agenda.

_(Note: This piece has been updated since its initial posting, with
additional edits for clarity and new graphs on race/ethnicity and
generation.)_

1
[[link removed]] Another
45 million are registered but have not cast ballots and are not
included in this analysis. 

2
[[link removed]] From Catalist
[[link removed]]: “Vote Choice Index is a
ranked, modeled score running from 0 to 100 estimating how likely a
voter is to cast a ballot for a Democratic candidate at
top-of-the-ballot races. In states with partisan voter registration,
Republican or Democratic or independent status is a matter of public
record. These data inform Vote Choice Index scores when they are
available.”

3
[[link removed]] For
more on Catalist’s methodology, see their just-released What
Happened in 2022 [[link removed]]. Fortunately,
Catalist has done an unparalleled job maintaining the vote history of
those registered to vote beginning with the 2008 election.

4
[[link removed]] For
more on this thesis, read Ron Brownstein’s “America is Growing
Apart, Possibly for Good
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in The Atlantic, or listen to my interview
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Felicia Wong and Michael Tomasky on the “How To Save a Country”
podcast.

5
[[link removed]] For
governing purposes, the 17 Blue states are California, Colorado,
Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon,
Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The 27 Red states are Alabama,
Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska,
North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South
Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming. The six Purple
states are Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
Wisconsin. Note that Arizona and Georgia remain Red states in terms of
governing even though they have become Purple in terms of voting for
statewide office.  

6
[[link removed]] Consider
2022: Senators Bennet, Hassan, and Vance were in what were considered
marginal races, but won by 14, 9, and 7 points, respectively. In 2020,
Senators Gardner, Ernst, Daines, Graham, Sullivan, Cornyn and the open
Kansas seat were considered competitive, but all were settled by
margins of 6.6 to 12.7 points – four of those races being won by
more than a 10 point margin (Gardner lost). In 2018, four Democratic
senators in Red states (Nelson, Donnelly, McCaskill and Heitkamp) lost
in their own party’s wave election. 

7
[[link removed]] DC
is even more Democratic, but not on the chart for aesthetic reasons.
(Showing it would force the axis so far to the right that the
distinctions in the rest of the states would not be as clear,
especially in a Substack format.)

8
[[link removed]] This
does not include people who voted in this period but are no longer on
the voter file.

9
[[link removed]] Catalist
provides national estimates for five race/ethnicity groups (AAPI,
Black, Latino, white and other), so there are 5 x 2
race/ethnicity-education combinations. 

_Michael Podhorzer writes about politics, economics, history, and
democratic crises. @MICHAELPODHORZER_

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