Why are states either all-Democrat or all-Republican
Living in the Bay Area, in California, it's often hard to grok that there are states and areas that are as reliably red as we are blue. Governing website explores how the All-or-Nothing syndrome has translated into partisan electoral politics.
All over the country, chambers that once were up for grabs are now firmly controlled by one party holding what resembles an open-ended lease. There are exceptions, but in most states, either Democrats or Republicans have held power for years and are unlikely to give it up anytime soon. “There are only two split legislatures in the entire country -- Congress and Minnesota,” says Matt Walter, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee. “Everyone else lives in a state that is either red or blue.”
In American state politics these days, power results not from a contest of ideas, but rather from demographic identities. The country is divided along various, often overlapping lines, including race, age, gender, religious attendance and, increasingly, education levels. These various subgroups of Americans are increasingly sorted into separate geographic areas, a reality reflected in legislative results. These are close to winner-take-all situations for the majority party. Despite the upcoming presidential election and the round of redistricting that will follow, the map of legislative control isn’t likely to change much in the coming years.
Republicans currently control the legislatures in 31 states, while Democrats hold 18. In three-quarters of the states, the same party controls both the legislature and the governor’s office. It would be tempting to say that the era of divided government is over, except for the fact that governors, at least, are able to carve out personal profiles that sometimes allow them to cut against the partisan grain of their states. Popular Republican governors were reelected last year in otherwise blue states including Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont, while Democrats took back governorships in states that supported Donald Trump in 2016 such as Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin.
From Arkansas to Oregon, states that were competitive at the start of the decade have become strictly one-sided affairs. Nothing is forever in politics, but traditional swing states such as Colorado, Iowa and Nevada have all pledged their allegiance to one-party control. In the wake of the 2018 election, obituaries are being written for the Democratic Party in Missouri, another former presidential bellwether where the party lost a U.S. Senate seat and where two decades of GOP dominance in the legislature show no sign of abating. Meanwhile in California, no Republican running for statewide office managed to crack even 40 percent of the vote. Republicans elected a grand total of one new member to the state Assembly, the party’s loneliest freshman class since 1958. Democrats hold a 46-7 advantage in the congressional delegation, representing the smallest GOP share since 1883. “The California Republican Party isn’t salvageable at this time,” Kristin Olsen, a former GOP Assembly leader, wrote shortly after the election.
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when “compromise was not a curse word,” recalls Lena Taylor, a Democratic state senator in Wisconsin. That’s changed. All the political incentives run against cooperation, with voters looking for politicians to “stand up” against their enemies and “stand with” their partisan brethren. It’s become more difficult for politicians to get a hearing from voters on the other side, let alone change their minds.
Because partisan feelings are so strong, and voters are so well sorted geographically, almost every area is a stronghold, whether for Republicans or Democrats. The people who support gun control, access to abortion and gay rights tend to live in cities and dense suburbs, while those with opposing views live in small towns, exurbs and rural counties. For such reasons, the vast majority of legislative districts are not competitive. “People are locked into their voting patterns,” Taylor says.
If a mom picks up her kids from school in a BMW, odds are she’s voting Democratic. Conversely, the guy in a pickup truck who belongs to a union, or whose daddy did, is more than likely a Republican. The Republican Party has moved from the country club to the country, while the Democratic base has moved from the union hall to the faculty lounge. Democrats are far more likely to represent districts with a strong minority presence, while Republican areas continue to get older and whiter. “The most significant phenomenon is the concentration of Democrats in center city areas,” says Bill Bishop, the author of The Big Sort, a 2008 book that described the phenomenon of people increasingly clustering in like-minded communities. “It’s Democrats in central cities, and then they do poorly everywhere else. Essentially, you’re not going to vote for anybody with a ‘D’ beside their name in a Republican area.”
Bishop notes that, despite the growth in people identifying or registering as independents, most voters now are loyal partisans. Pollsters and political scientists have shown that individuals will change their positions on climate science, trade, immigration and the economy to jibe with their party’s positions. Recent studies have found that people are shifting their religious or secular affiliations to comport with their party. “Parties are about identity now, not about policy,” Bishop argues. “It makes it doubly hard for parties to get people to change.”
Partisan sorting and the nationalization of politics have made it more difficult -- often impossible, really -- for state legislators to convince voters from the other party to support them because of their independence, their fine work fixing roads and stoplights, or their approachability at the grocery store. “Not only are people sorting into the right party, but people are sorting geographically,” says Paul Rogers, the St. Louis University political scientist. “No matter what we do, it may be impossible to create more moderate states.”
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