A lot of coastal liberal activists probably don't want to acknowledge it, but their 2020 electoral college fortunes will be disproportionately decided by low-education swing counties in the Midwest. It will take a big reversion for this group to go back to the D party. A thread.
Expanding the map to TX, AZ & GA is an obvious next step for the Democrats, but it won't come close to solving for the disproportionate importance of Midwestern counties in the lowest decile for educational attainment. This is true in the short-term, though not necessarily 4eva.
It's true that this group isn't a whole lot of voters; 2016 was decided by just 70k votes. But this misses the broader point. So long as race and education are cutting lines in US politics, non-college whites will wield an unfair amount of influence, but also temper EC margins.
In the short-term, this means that elections will both be more competitive and more right-leaning than they "should" otherwise be.
Anyway, as far as 2020 goes, there's a very real and obvious tension between liberal Dems who want a Warren/Sanders-like candidate to tax the rich & pass M4A, versus those than want to win these unfairly important voters.
I think when you look at these data, concerns that the party might be moving too far to the left or occupying a identity that is too "Democratic" (coastal, progressive, non-white) become tangible and potentially decisive. (I'm not saying I agree, just that they exist).
Point being: For liberals, it's a harsh reality of US politics that non-college-educated conservative whites in the Midwest wield disproportionate influence over their political lives. The media sees this tension clearly when GEs roll around, but it's also here for the D primary.
thank you for coming to my centrist globalist neoliberal psephologist ted talk. i will have data to share on this on monday. have a nice weekend
