Blue wall (United States)

Ronald Brownstein claims to have coined the term "blue wall" in 2009.^[6] After the 2012 presidential election, Paul Steinhauser called "blue wall ... the cluster of eastern, Midwest and western states that have traditionally gone Democratic."^[7] The earliest description of the forces creating the blue wall comes from a Houston Chronicle blogger, Chris Ladd. A Republican, Ladd wrote in November 2014 that the seemingly impressive Republican win in the 2014 midterm elections had overshadowed another trend apparent in the results – a demographic and geographic collapse.^[8]

For Republicans looking for ways that the party can once again take the lead in building a nationally relevant governing agenda, the 2014 election is a prelude to a disaster. Understanding this trend begins with a stark graphic. Behold the Blue Wall.

The blue wall referred to a perceived Democratic demographic lock on the Electoral College resulting from the Republican Party's narrowing focus on the interests of white, rural, and Southern voters. According to Ladd, the presence of the blue wall means "a minimally effective Democratic candidate" is all but assured of winning 257 electoral votes^[a], just 13 short of the threshold needed to win the Electoral College and the presidency.^[8] Ladd's analysis became popular when MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell featured it on a post-election episode of his show The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.^[9] George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 because they could only pick up Iowa and New Mexico (12 votes) in 2000 and New Hampshire (4 votes) in 2004 in addition to the blue wall. A similar "red fortress", within which lie states solidly Republican, has also been posited to exist.^[8] But, having fewer electoral college votes, it would be theoretically easier for a Democratic presidential candidate to win without breaching it, as had been done in 2012.

Behind this "blue wall" lay states, many carrying a double-digit number of electoral votes, which appeared to be solidly behind the Democratic Party, at least on the national level. Republican presidential candidates could only contest a small selection of these states, as only a few swing states would have sufficient votes to make up the 270 threshold. States behind this wall lay generally in the Northeastern United States, the West Coast of the United States, and some of the Great Lakes states. In each of the six presidential election cycles prior to 2016, the Democratic Party had won 18 of these states (as well as the District of Columbia), totaling 238 of the necessary 270 votes need to win. The "big three" Democratic stronghold states include California, New York, and Illinois.

States falling behind this blue wall generally included those the Democrats had carried since the 1992 presidential election until the 2016 presidential election^[7][10] that included (in order of decreasing population and followed by current number of electoral votes): California (54), New York (28), Illinois (19), Pennsylvania (19), Michigan (15), New Jersey (14), Washington (12), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), Minnesota (10), Wisconsin (10), Oregon (8), Connecticut (7), Hawaii (4), Maine (4), Rhode Island (4), Delaware (3), and Vermont (3), as well as Washington, D.C. (3); this is a total of 238 votes. Had Al Gore won New Hampshire (4) in 2000 or if John Kerry had won New Mexico (5) or Iowa (7) in 2004, those states could also have become part of the blue wall states since 1992; New Mexico and New Hampshire would further support the Democratic nominee in 2016, 2020, and 2024, while Iowa would not in any.

More recently, the states of Virginia and Colorado are on a five-election Democratic voting streak since 2008, after voting for George W. Bush in 2004. Virginia had been consistently Republican since 1968, while Colorado had only voted Democratic during 1992 in the same period, demonstrating the opposing trend to the blue wall.

Ronald Reagan's landslide re-election in 1984 carried all states except for Minnesota, which last voted Republican with Richard Nixon in 1972; and the District of Columbia, which has voted for the Democratic candidate in every election since it was admitted to the electoral college for the 1964 election. As such, the blue wall began to materialize with the 1988 United States presidential election; states that voted solely for Democratic Presidents since 1988 were New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Oregon, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. The remainder of the blue wall was built in the 1992 United States presidential election: California, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Maine, Delaware, and Vermont.

Three other states — the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — were also considered part of the wall, but the advent of Donald Trump showed a weakening of the Democratic hold on these states.

 

The Democrats' "lock" on these states had been called into question between 2012 and 2016, as several had been competitive in recent elections, and many had Republicans currently holding elected statewide office, generally either senator or governor.^[11] Blue wall states with a Republican senator included Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine. Those with a Republican governor included Massachusetts, Maryland, and Michigan. In addition to these 18 states, three others, Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Mexico, had only voted for the Republican once in the same six election cycles, giving their votes to George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004 by a margin of no more than 10,059 votes. If included in the total, the votes behind the blue wall numbered 257, just 13 short of what is needed to win. Some in the mainstream media did, however, suspect the Democrats might lose Pennsylvania.

Nate Silver had criticized the idea of the blue wall, pointing to a similar "red wall/red sea" of states that voted Republican from 1968 to 1988. He argued that the blue wall simply represented a "pretty good run" in elections, and that relatively minor gains in the popular vote could flip some of its states to Republican.^[12] This was seen in the 2016 election, where voters from manufacturing states traditionally behind the blue wall voted for Donald Trump, providing him the victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine's 2nd congressional district.^[13] Others have also posited that the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin had never definitively been "safe" for the Democratic Party, citing the close margins in those states in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections and opining that the outsized margins of victory secured by Barack Obama in the elections of 2008 and 2012 may have created a false impression of their safety for Democratic candidates.

During the 2020 United States presidential election, Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. However, Biden carried these states only by 0.5–3 point margins, a considerable underperformance compared to Obama's margins in these states in 2008 and 2012. Long-term trends seem less favorable to Democrats in these states as they all voted to the right of the national average and many working-class white voters there have been moving towards the Republicans.^[14][15]

Biden also broke into the red wall/sea by winning Arizona, Georgia, and the 2nd congressional district of Nebraska.^[16][17][18] However, Maine's 2nd congressional district voted for Donald Trump. Pundits saw former battleground states such as Colorado and Virginia becoming solidly Democratic-leaning after the 2020 election, partially as a result of demographic patterns. Biden won both of these states by more than 10% in 2020.^[15]

During the 2024 United States presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump was able to regain the White House, largely due to the reclaiming of the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (as well as Maine's 2nd congressional district).^[19][20] He would also win the popular vote for the first time due to a significant collapse of Democratic turnout.^[21] Part of his victory in Michigan was attributed to the large population of Arab and Muslim voters who did not vote for the Democrats over their continued involvement in the deaths in Gaza and Lebanon; Harris saw a drop-off of more than fifty thousand votes compared to Biden's performance in 2020.^{[22][23][24][25][26]} The attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania invigorated turnout upwards of 150 thousand votes in that state,^[27] and as such Wisconsin was hence the most Democratic of the trio, where both candidates made gains. Trump's margin of victory in those states was less than two percent, very close to the national margin, but the victories added 44 electoral votes to his total.^[28] In general, the improved Republican turnout coinciding with a severe drop in Democratic turnout presented a nationally weak performance for the Democratic ticket, where over 90% of counties nationwide swung towards the Republican party. Most of the turnout drop was in Democrat stronghold states, partially due to the perception of being "safely Democratic", resulting in performances such as New Jersey being in striking range of 5%, and San Francisco, California voting more than 15% for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, the highest share for a Republican presidential candidate in San Francisco in 20 years.^[29]

 

Much like Reagan's landslide defining the start of the blue wall, the red sea was defined by Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 landslide victory. The five Solid South states Johnson lost would be won by Jimmy Carter in 1976, and hence the Democrats had won every state except Arizona at least once between these two elections.

The states which Republican candidates have won in the twelve federal elections from 1980 to 2024 are: Texas (40), Alabama (9), South Carolina (9), Oklahoma (7), Mississippi (6), Utah (6), Kansas (6), Nebraska (4) (excluding Nebraska's 2nd congressional district), Idaho (4), South Dakota (3), North Dakota (3), Alaska (3), and Wyoming (3), giving a total of 103 votes. Additionally, Tennessee (11), Missouri (10), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Arkansas (6), West Virginia (4), and Montana (4) have been won by Republicans in the last seven elections (from 2000 to 2024), making more recent additions to the red wall/sea, bringing the total electoral votes up to 154. Other states with a 11-out-of-12 (from 1980 to 2024) Republican record include North Carolina (16) and Indiana (11), whose 27 electoral votes added to the 154 of the preceding twenty red sea states make for a total of 181 electoral votes. Both were won narrowly by Obama in 2008 and North Carolina remains a battleground state with decisive margins under five percent in the following four elections. Former red wall/sea states include Georgia^[b] and Arizona,^[c] which had been won by the Republicans in nine of the eleven elections from 1984 to 2024, but now considered swing states.

Presidential votes in blue wall states since 1876:

Key

Bold denotes candidates elected as president

• Bible Belt
• Blue wall (British politics)
• Jesusland map
• Left Coast
• Political culture of the United States
• Red states and blue states
• Red wall (UK), the equivalent of the blue wall for the Labour Party
• Rust Belt
• Sixth Party System
• Solid South
• Southern strategy
• Sun Belt
• Swing state

• Mich. GOP eyes plan for cracking 'blue wall'—The Detroit News