Pres. Trump Has Redrawn the Electoral Map. How Will Dems Respond?

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, ANCHOR: Now, to an in-depth look into America’s changing electoral map, which has seen swaths of working-class voters turn to the Republican Party each time Donald Trump has been on the ballot, including in areas with sizable black and Hispanic populations. Or so argues Shane Goldmacher, national political correspondent for The New York Times, whose latest report explores these changes in voting behavior. He joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss what he found and how we got here, and the hurdles Democrats face to regain some lost ground.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. Shane Goldmacher, thanks so much for joining us. You’re a national political correspondent for The New York Times, and you’ve written several interesting stories, and I don’t want to go through a couple of them. But one that caught my eye recently is that your latest analysis, you looked at every U.S. county across the last four presidential elections. First of all, why before kind of the what you found.

SHANE GOLDMACHER, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, I think the goal here was to answer the question, not just what happened in 2024 and why did Donald Trump win, but whether this was a one- off, whether Trump’s victory was the result of, you know, a set of circumstances that happened just last year. Was it inflation? Was that Joe Biden was too old? Was it the Democrats switched candidates? Is it something that Kamala Harris did wrong? And I’m not discounting any of those factors. Those are obviously all factors in a race that was as close ultimately as last year’s election was. But I wanted to look back at the totality of the results since Trump has been on the ballot instead of baseline, which is why it’s four elections. So, 2012, the last time before he was on the ballot, and then each time he was. And the findings were pretty stark. It was that Trump has improved in nearly 50 percent of the counties in America every single time he’s been on the ballot. And that’s not like — that includes a race in which he lost, right? So, even in 2020 when he lost, he was improving in nearly half the counties in America on his previous election. And that kind of march in one direction, really tells the story of the political realignment happening in the Trump era.

SREENIVASAN: OK. And juxtapose that to, are there any places or how many places is the left or Democrats improving?

GOLDMACHER: I mean, very, very few. So, all told Trump improved continuously, something we’re calling these triple trending counties in 1,433 counties in the country. On the other hand, the Democratic Party improved three times in a row in only 57 counties. And when you put this on a map, you see this giant sea of red arrows and these small little pockets of blue ones, right, in a few little areas. And the fact that those numbers are really disparate is sort of scary enough for the Democratic Party is actually the particulars of the places that I think is causing even deeper concern at this point.

SREENIVASAN: So, tell me a little bit about that. What’s an example of a triple county that has continued to trend towards Trump and maybe on the inverse, what was the county that has moved away from?

GOLDMACHER: I mean, the thing that makes the realignment happening for Trump so significant politically is the breadth of counties that are realigning his direction. I think people sort of have this intuitive understanding that Trump has done well in white rural areas, and it is true. Not only did he do well in 2016, he has strengthened those areas. So, those most Republican bastions are becoming even redder. But the other side of this story, and I think One of the more interesting findings, frankly, is his growing strength in the most diverse parts of America. That includes small towns in the south that are heavily black. It includes the border counties all along Texas, where he had some of the greatest improvements in the entire country, and it includes inner cities. It includes Philadelphia, New York City, Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Honolulu, right? There’s a wide range of places where Trump is improving. And what he’s doing is he’s squeezing the Democratic Party. He’s growing his numbers in the Republican strongholds, he’s shrinking the democratic numbers and the Democratic strongholds. And the only places that Democrats are improving continuously are the wealthiest and best educated corners of the country.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. Let’s talk about the demographics here. I mean, is there kind of a class or education theme that underlies these flips?

GOLDMACHER: For sure. I mean, I — for a long time in America, one of the most important predictors of your sort of political alignment was race. It was, if you’re in a black neighborhood, it’s heavily democratic. A Latino neighborhood, very, very democratic. And that’s still true, but Trump made that less true and really realigned along class divisions. Class in terms of both income and in terms of education. One of the numbers that really was striking to me is how 1,433 triple trending Trump counties, right? Of those, only three of them were in places where the median income in the county was a hundred thousand dollars. So, basically, an infinitesimal amount of the Trump trending counties are these really, really wealthy jurisdictions. On the flip side, again, only 57 for the Democrats have moved their direction continuously, 18 of the 57, so far more of the democratic counties are those wealthiest places in the country, and that’s where the party’s been improving. And that’s true nationally. And as you break it down state by state, it’s true after state after state that I looked at, oh, what is the one county that the Democrats did better in, in Iowa? It turns out it’s the wealthiest county and the best educated county. Similar stories all across the country.

SREENIVASAN: It’s interesting when you look at the longer arc of what people considered the base of the Democratic party and the base of the Republican party. I mean, when I was growing up, it was, what you’re describing was absolutely inverse, right? The most wealthy people tended to be and trended to be Republican. And the working class sector or the, you know, less educated at times sector, union jobs, et cetera, blue collar workers all tended to be Democrats. And what you’re describing here, just in a very short amount of time, in 12 years, that stereotype is being eroded.

GOLDMACHER: Absolutely. And, and this is why Trump’s election in 2024 is best seen as sort of a culmination of changes. Again, we didn’t just look at how much the counties have shifted over time, that tells a similar story, but a little bit different. This is places that marched in one direction, right? It includes a year that Trump lost. So these are places he strengthened even in losing that, that 2020 race. And yeah, I mean, I think that the reason, you know, my focus right now is really on the Democratic party and how they’re trying to rebuild themselves. And the results of the 2024 election have caused this, I dunno what the right word is. It is sort of this introspection soul searching about that question: How has the party for Democrats that has long been defined as the working class party, as the party of diverse communities, how are they seeing their support in those core communities eroding?

SREENIVASAN: You know, I’m here in New York and Queens and I know, you know, when the results came back, I think a lot of people were surprised at Flushing, which is a highly Chinese area or the Bronx, which is a highly Latino area that swung so much more towards Trump and or became purple in an otherwise kind of a blue field. Right? But you know, tell me, nationally speaking, when it comes to Black Americans, how has, how have these counties trended? And also you point out a county in your reporting on the Texas border?

GOLDMACHER: Yeah, so lemme tell you about that Texas County too, because I think it is maybe the most striking single county in the country. It says Starr County in Texas, borders Mexico. And this county from 2012 was an overwhelmingly democratic county. Barack Obama won in a landslide. And in 2024, this county flipped and Trump won it. The total spread between 2012 and 2024 is an 89 percentage point swing. This isn’t like a small movement, this is a political earthquake. And what makes Starr County so interesting, it’s not just on the border where immigration is such a central issue. It’s not just a heavily Latino county. It is the single most predominantly Hispanic county in America. Now, of course, we know counties aren’t people, right? They’re white voters in every county. But this is a place where basically everyone is Hispanic, and this is the county that moved the most. So all across these heavily Hispanic counties, they all moved in the Trump direction. Really, there are no exceptions. There’s no heavily Hispanic area that shifted to the left in the last few years. And look, not that long ago, the Democratic party was talking about the growth of the Latino population. This idea that demographics were destiny. That the Democratic Party was destined to succeed because of the increasing diversification of the country, especially the growth in the Latino population. And what you see now is, yes, in many places Democrats are still winning the Latino vote, but they’re winning, but they’re winning it by such a small margin that’s not enough to win elections.

SREENIVASAN: So, you know, some of this comes down to people thinking, OK, this was a phenomenon called Donald Trump. Would any other member of the Republican Party be able to pull off this slide? And I think that perhaps people — or Democrats are on the left have some optimism that, oh, we will make up for this in the midterm, but you’re looking at a much longer arc and a much bigger trend line than something that flips every two years.

GOLDMACHER: Yes. I mean, I think that there is some reason for Democrats to be hopeful along those lines. Donald Trump is such a singular figure. His reputation is different than the Republican Party, even as the Republican Party has been sort of remade in his image, he sort of stands alone. We’ve seen past elections when he’s not been on the ballot. Other Republicans haven’t built the same coalition that he has, right? The 2018 midterms, it moved in the Democratic direction. The 2022 midterms, Democrats outperformed expectations. And they’re feeling confident heading into the next year’s midterms. I think the question is, how damaged has the Democratic Party’s brand been in this period of time? How are voters perceiving Democrats and how are they perceiving Republicans? Because I don’t think the Democratic Party’s going to solve its problems simply by the Republicans changing candidates, simply by Donald Trump going away.

SREENIVASAN: One of the veins of reporting that you have, which is fascinating to read, is what is Democrat response, so to speak. And what you’re finding in some of your stories is that they’re really not of a singular mind in how to proceed forward, how to respond to this strategically over a period of years, or even in the short-term. So, what have you found?

GOLDMACHER: Well, there’s really — there’s two fights I think happening simultaneously among Democrats to figure out what is the path forward. One of those is the sort of traditional one we know, it’s the left versus the center. Do we moderate? Do we go more populous? Do we do — what do we do? Do we try to rev up the Democratic base or do we appeal to the middle? And that fights has been happening — I think it is happening now, and it’s happened for many, many years. I think that there’s a different, and frankly, more interesting fight that’s also happening right now, which is, what is the posture of the Democratic Party? I think it’s come to be perceived by many voters as backing institutions, the establishment, the status quo, and there’s a big push to say, it’s time to have some of the attitude that Donald Trump had that, look, the political system in America, the economic system in America is not working for people. Most Americans don’t feel confident that they and their children are going to be better than their parents were, right? This a shift, and the party is trying to figure out a way to meet where voters are. That frustration with the political system, at the same time is trying to defend the system from Donald Trump and the changes he’s bringing about, and it’s a real tension right now between, well, how do you become the anti-establishment party when you have really come to embody the establishment, the elites, the college educated workers? And I think that this a big fight that isn’t necessarily happening on that typical sort of left center right axis.

SREENIVASAN: Are there particular strategies that they’re trying to deploy or employ to reconnect with certain demographics? Like there’s been an interesting conversation about how young men trended, for example, towards Trump in this last election in a way that I don’t think Democrats expected.

GOLDMACHER: Yes, I think for a long time, Democrats have seen the idea of a gender gap as benefiting the party in general, and almost every election women outnumber men at the ballot box. Women tend to vote in higher numbers and women have tended to voted, and women have tended to vote for Democrats more frequently than Republicans said. Well, this great. We’ve got a greater share of the greater number of voters. And while Trump did continue to lose support among women in the 2024 election, he ramped up the margins among men in a way that is sort of frightening for Democrats because they thought they were the only ones benefiting from this gender gap. So, yes, there, there are a lot of strategies, right? There are groups out there trying to come up with ideas. There are focus groups almost every day across the country in small pockets to the corner where Democrats are trying to like listen and say, how are you getting in your information? How do you perceive the Democratic Party? And what can we do to fix it?

SREENIVASAN: And so, is there anybody that has got a voice in the Democratic Party now that resonates among maybe their peers, the donor class, young people? because on the one hand you have, you know, AOC and Bernie filling arenas around the country on their speaking tours. And then, on the other hand, I don’t know what the specific sort of people that the moderates are pushing are, but what are the examples of candidates that might be not just a counterweight to Donald Trump and the Republican Party, but also to this emerging force on the left.

GOLDMACHER: I mean, I think that it’s important to look at what Bernie Sanders, who is not running for president again and AOC are doing, they are filling arenas and they’re filling arenas in red states or red corners of the country, and they’re showing an energy not just for the left ideologically, but for that fighting anti-establishment part of the party. But there are certainly I think a number of governors that are already out there sort of testing the waters, you know, national figures. Andy Beshear is the governor of Kentucky, Democrat, who’s one in one of the red states in the country. He’s been traveling the country. Gretchen Whitmer won in a swing state. She also has been sort of furnishing her national profile. There’s a number of people sort of beginning to position themselves. I think what’s so early in the presidential cycle to pick particular candidates. Right now, I think the fight is over who can de define the party heading into the midterms? And can Democrats come up with something that is more than just being against Donald Trump? Because, look, the advantage for Democrats is in the midterm elections, guess who turns out? It’s the better educated voters. It’s the wealthier voters on average. And so, that gives the party a chance, a chance to do even better, pick up the House more likely than not. But the concern from a lot of people I’ve talked to is, well, what if we do that and don’t make fundamental changes? Don’t make big changes to the party, how people perceive Democrats? And then, you wake up in 2028, and all of a sudden, guess what? You didn’t make those changes. And Republicans have continued to make gains in those less frequent working-class voters that delivered them the White House this last time.

SREENIVASAN: You pointed out, for example, that we might have a false sense of security in the Democratic Party based on the midterms and who comes out. But is there, you know, a larger kind of something that they’re missing in terms of what’s going to happen in a couple more years that they should be preparing for now?

GOLDMACHER: I mean, I think that the smart fingers in the Democratic Party are deeply concerned about this trend line, not just for 2028, but to get a little wonky with this for a second, but beyond, right, the congressional – – the census redraws the congressional lines every 10 years. And the population growth, it’s been in red states. So, the path that was available for Kamala Harris to win the White House in 2024, in all likelihood, that won’t exist in 2032 if you can’t make inroads in those growing diverse states, places like Florida and Texas. This where the Democratic Party needs to be competitive. And guess what those states have? A lot of working-class voters, a lot of Latino voters. The voters that the party is losing ground with is the places they most need to gain ground.

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GOLODRYGA: That was Shane Goldmacher, the national political correspondent for The New York Times.