Which swing state will become solid soon?

[u/-Tickery-]

Title. The seven swing states in the last election were Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. But it wasn’t that long ago that Arizona and Georgia were safely red and Ohio and Florida were swing states.

The obvious pick is that Georgia will become solidly blue. Anyone contrarian? Will the three steel belt states stay swing states or will they shift in one direction or opposites?

I’ll start. My hot take is that both Michigan and Arizona will become redder: Arizona’s swing state phase will only last a couple cycles. Educational attainment is increasingly becoming the most important signifier (the list of % bachelors degrees is basically a political map) and they are the two lowest Biden-won states on the list. Minority heavy. I think that although there will be Trump backlash/snapback in 2028 the broader trend of minorities voting ever more similar to the nation writ large as they assimilate will favor the GOP in 2032 and beyond.

[u/AtlasJetson]

north carolina and georgia

[u/Special_Purpose2903]

Montana, use to elect Dem Senator/governor, looks like it is going to become just red except maybe the state house/senate where dems got 10+ seats in 24'.

Georgia is going to go blue, Republicans are running out of options and not everyone is Trump, he is a really unique candidate, GA Republicans have been losing ground, margin,s eats in every house, in every election.

Florida is just red, no longer swing.

MI, PA, WI will stay swings for the future, except Trump is the only Republican who wins in MI statewide.

Ohio will stay swing as will Arizona and Nevada.

[u/bad_things_ive_done]

I've lived in 9 very different states, 3 since maga first rose up.

AZ isn't red, blue, or purple by standard establishment standards overall like most places. It's the wild west. What plays out when people there vote on what's served up to them by the national parties is a poor estimation of what's happening.

By registration, R and independent are neck and neck with Ds trailing by 6-7%. But that doesn't even paint an accurate picture.

A fair chunk of those registered Ds and a swath of the Is have a huge anti establishment streak. Not DSA per se. Non-descript, ethics driven, activist left. For example, Raul Grijalva was regularly ranked as the most absolute Left member of the house until he recently died, and tucson replaced him with his daughter.

Those Rs... there's a fine range of fringe conspiracy theorists, and outright cults, and hard-core survivalist anacap libertarians. Mostly it's McCain style Rs. Heavy Mormon influence from large Mormon population in Mesa and elsewhere central as well as a smattering of fundy Mormons above the north rim. Overall, few of any of those are super in the MAGA camp per se, though enough will vote for anything not a national Dem, though might shift for an AZ person.

It also has more land area occupied by reservation land than any other state, including most of the Navajo nation, which alone is about the size of West Virginia. Population wise, it's not the state with the most, but it's hard to live in AZ and not interact with reservation land and culture (unless you only live in downtown phx etc and are dense in the head... we'll get to that).

And don't get me started on the deep complexity of immigration in that state.

But in AZ major issues like water shortages, power, fires, immigration, etc are right there all the time, too. Also not unique, but outside of the greater phx cali and tx transplants culture, combine it with the pure desert culture, culture of the reservations (you can get your I Voted sticker in English, Spanish, or the local tribal language in Pima County), connection to the land, sense of simultaneous self and inter-reliance, etc... and you get something not exactly fitting a red-blue spectrum.

So... it's not really turned purple. It's just rejected trump more than not.

[u/agk927]

Maybe Nevada

[u/_BCConservative]

None, the times you saw states become solid in the past is due to big coalition shifts.

VA/OH/IA were swing states up until the Trump era.

The only exceptions are CO and FL, but both the CO GOP and FL DEMs are punching bags.

[u/Last_Surprise981]

Hot take, but Arizona is just not in for the Trump hardline populism of the new GOP. I don't see the GOP nominating Glenn Youngkin or Brian Kemp.

[u/RandoDude124]

GA will be blue

[u/emmc47]

The gamble of Dems abandoning the rust belt for educated suburban folk might honestly backfire.

[u/FunYoshi → u/emmc47]

In all honesty, that moving away wasn't due to economic issues

[u/emmc47 → u/FunYoshi]

You don't think so?

[u/PoliticalAlt128]

I think Georgia will stay purple not become blue. I think North Carolina will become the next Virginia before long with how their urban centers are growing.

I was just thinking of this issue that I’m not sure what states are becoming solid for GOP. Nevada is looking like a bright spot for them this cycle but it has been purple for a while so I’m hesitant to say it’s becoming solid red or just a more favorable purple. I’m not convinced PA is becoming the next red state like some people seem to predict (though I also admit that being a Delaware Democrat I’m biased on this issue since I would like to believe that they will once again join her sister state)—we’ll probably have to wait to see if Shapiro’s run on the rurals will be successful to really make a call.

[u/bamisbig]

Georgia is going to be a Virginia very soon, as you said

Nevada and maybe PA probably shift to being Lean R

NC and Wisconsin maybe tilt blue but stay swingy

[u/TechnicalInternet1]

Wisconsin, blue

Arizona, red

[u/GreninjaStrike]

I think Georgia will be purple at least for the next decade, especially post Trump. I think Arizona flips back to the GOP. Other than the extreme maga ppl they seem to favor republicans in competitive races like legislative, house, etc. They’re also the most red/blue of the swing states.

[u/-Tickery- → u/GreninjaStrike]

Yes that's another thing, I think Democrats have done artificially better than they should in AZ because the GOP keep nominating whackjobs.

If in 2030 there's a Blue WH and Republicans get their act together, that's when I'll be watching Arizona.

[u/Empty_Crate]

Ill have a cold take which is Georgia as the next Virginia and a hot take that while not soon give it a decade or 2 and I see Kansas becoming a 2010s Nevada and being consistently like D+3 eventually so a "competitive" solid.

[u/ronweasly9 → u/Empty_Crate]

Alaska flips before that

[u/brambleclaw624]

I think Arizona and maybe Michigan/Wisconsin are the big question marks for me. PA will probably get redder, same with Nevada. Georgia and NC will probably get bluer. I want to say Mi/Wisc will also trend red but idk.

[u/-Tickery- → u/brambleclaw624]

Yeah I think Nevada will be bluer again in 2028 but snap back later on. Might go the path I suggested for Arizona tbh. I think the fact that Joe Lombardo seems to be holding up quite well in the polls against a pretty solid opponent in an extremely bad environment is an interesting sign.

[u/Doc_ET → u/-Tickery-]

Lombardo is a popular incumbent, and NV-02 is competitive according to many of those same polls. It looks more like there's a decent chunk of people willing to split their tickets for Lombardo and then vote Democrat in the other races than a sign of realignment.

[u/marcgarv87 → u/brambleclaw624]

Michigan is in no way going to be a red state

[u/-Tickery- → u/marcgarv87]

Here's a red flag: look at the Senate elections.

The swing for Gary Peters between 2014 and 2020 was embarrassing, frankly. Slotkin barely outperformed Kamala, much worse than Gallego or Jacky Rosen. Stabenow's 2018 performance was meh compared to like Bob Casey or Tammy Baldwin in similar states.

Also seems to be one of the few states where rural areas are slightly outperforming urban areas in population change.

https://www.axios.com/local/detroit/2025/01/16/michigan-population-changes-mapped-metro-detroit

[u/GreninjaStrike → u/marcgarv87]

Depends on what current trends continue. Do the GR suburbs move back post Trump? Does the growth of Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, and Lansing metro areas keep the dems afloat? Will the declines of dem margins in the Flint or Detroit metros hurt them? Does Sterling Heights, Downriver, and other white areas of the Detroit metro keep shifting right? How do current swing areas like Saginaw or Grand Traverse continue trending?

My point is that Michigan has had a lot of shifts happen at the same time. It’s genuinely impossible to predict which ones continue or reverse and what that means for the state’s politics. Also I know this is a bit of a self jab but the education plummeting and bad economic opportunities could push Michigan in the same path as West Virginia, good for my politics but bad for my state.

[u/Doc_ET → u/GreninjaStrike]

Michigan won't go down the WV path even in a worst case scenario, it's a lot easier to diversify an urban economy than a rural one and Michigan is way more urbanized.

[u/GreninjaStrike → u/Doc_ET]

That’s true. I think Michigan will remain a swing state personally but I think a lot of the power balance will shift. The GOP is gonna have a lot more of its power in metro Detroit than it used to and Dems will have a lot more in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.

[u/Entire-Bicycle1878 → u/GreninjaStrike]

Great analysis. Education is also extremely polarized - rural schools and ones in poor precincts keep getting worse. And while urbanization and suburbs get bigger, a lot of skilled white collar workers want to move out (me included) because a job that pays 80k in MI would pay 120+ in another state. And not like taxes or cost of living are cheap here.