Blue wall (United States)
[6] After the 2012 presidential election, Paul Steinhauser called "blue wall ... the cluster of eastern, Midwest and western states that have traditionally gone Democratic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
The blue wall's "big three" of Illinois, California and New York lost Congressional seats in 2020 and are likely to lose more in 2030, transferring their electoral votes to places like Texas and Florida, both of which had a pronounced red shift in the most recent election.
This means that, even if the Rust Belt states return to Democratic hands, the addition of Virginia, New Hampshire and Colorado may not be sufficient to win the presidency.
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.
