Next Stop: 2032

The next Chair of the Democratic National Committee has a key job: Bringing a laser focus on 2032.

For as long as I’ve worked in politics, my party’s path to the White House has included three basic imperatives: Win Wisconsin, Win Michigan, and Win Pennsylvania.

The states have come to stand for “The Blue Wall,” and for good reason. The basic math of the current alignment is simple: a competitive Democrat is going to start at 226 electoral votes. Add these three states - and their combined 44 electoral votes, which prior to 2024, had gone Democratic in every election since 1992 - save one, 2016, and Democrats reach the magic electoral number to win the Presidency: 270.

The Blue Wall crumbled in 2016, only to be rebuilt by Joe Biden in 2020, only to fall again in 2024 - and after four more years of Trump, I wouldn’t be surprised to see if bounce back again in 28.

But absent some massive and unforeseen shift in population trends over the next six years, 2028 will be the last election that math works. Starting in the 2032 election, the “Blue Wall” will guarantee a path of 255-260, but no more. To win the White House on any consistent basis after 2032, my party will have to start winning in states where we aren’t winning.

It is both a huge challenge — and a massive opportunity. I’ll explain this all in a bit. But first the math.

The 2030 Census

The most recent census projections show a continued shifting of Americans from cold weather climates to warmer ones, as well as a halting of growth in California. Those shifts will mean that electoral votes will shift from states that typically vote Democratic at the Presidential level to states that typically vote Republican.

According to the last analysis by The American Redistricting Project, states that make up the classic Blue Wall map will lose 11 Congressional seats, and states that make up a classic GOP map will gain 11. More bluntly, the current path to 270 will be a path to 259.

Obviously, these are just projections, but shifts from this projection are just as likely to benefit Republicans as they are Democrats. In fact, the next seat mostly likely to fall is another from California, which based on the 2024 projections, would inure to the benefit of North Carolina.

And even if Nevada falls back in the blue tent, the math remains short. We will have to win somewhere else.

The 2032 Core Democratic Map

For arguments sake, let’s assume two things: the core Democratic map loses the 11 electoral votes as projected by the American Redistricting Project, and Nebraska’s Republican legislature eventually returns the state a winner-take-all, the Democratic path to the White House will look something like this.

Core States: California, 51; Colorado, 10; Connecticut, 7; DC, 3; Delaware, 3; Hawaii, 4; Illinois, 18; Maine* 3; Maryland, 10; Massachusetts, 11;Minnesota, 9; New Hampshire, 4; New Jersey, 14; New Mexico, 5; New York, 26; Oregon, 7; Rhode Island, 3; Vermont, 3; Virginia 13; Washington, 12: 216

Blue Wall: Michigan, 14; Pennsylvania, 18; Wisconsin, 9: 41

Total: 257.

(*Maine has four electoral votes, but because they allocate 2 by congressional district, only 3 of their electoral votes can be considered base)

The 2032 Expansion Map

The road to 270 after the next census will mean winning at least one state that my party more often than not loses in Presidential races. The one exception is Nevada. More on this later.

First the states:

Arizona (won in 1996 & 2020): 12 electoral votes

Florida (won in 1996, 2008, and 2012): 34 electoral votes

Georgia (won in 1992 & 2020): 16 electoral votes

Nevada (won 92, 96, 08, 12, 16, and 20): 6 electoral votes

North Carolina (won 2008): 16 electoral votes

Texas (no wins since 1976): 44 electoral votes

Nevada is on this list for two reasons: One, winning it alone won’t fix the math problem. Secondly, given the challenges my party is having with Hispanic voters, there is no guarantee it will bounce back without a lot of work.

I am sure people will question the inclusion of Texas and Florida on here, to which I would make two points. First, 2032 is eight years away. The whole point of this exercise to begin a conversation about what we need do as a party to prepare for a new reality when it comes to the map. Secondly, these two states combined account for 84 electoral votes, or 31% of the total needed to win the White House. Forcing the other side to work for that chunk of votes makes sense.

More on this later.

The Challenges of the New Map

The “Blue Wall” states have voted the same way in every election going back to 1992, because in many ways, they are very similar. All three have much smaller non-white populations than the rest of the battleground maps. All three have similar college attainment rates.

But as similar as all three are to each other, they are quite different from the states in the 2032 expansion map, which are all substantially more diverse. The chart below shows the share of non-white vote from the 2024 exits in each state.

And specific to arguably the biggest strategic imperative facing Democrats looking forward: getting right with Hispanic voters, in four of the six states, the Hispanic vote share is 18% or higher, and in all six, Democratic support among Hispanics dropped.

The bad news: the trend lines are bad. The good news: if you know the problem, the problem can be fixed.

Building The Road Forward

I write this piece simply to shine a light.

As I said in the piece I wrote for Bulwark last month, the one thing we can count on is Trump will overreach. First, he is Trump, and history shows he can’t help himself, and secondly, every President over-reads their own mandate. The question isn’t if those things will happen, but how we will use them to re-center our own argument to voters.

The 2024 election didn’t happen in a vacuum. For example, the cracks in our Hispanic support were seen pretty clearly in 2020, and the trend lines with non-college white voters have been heading downward since 2012. But just like after 2004, when many Republicans thought they would govern for a generation, or after 2012, when Democrats (and many Republicans) thought demographic trends would render Republicans a minor party, the only truism of modern politics is nothing is permanent.

And this to me is the opportunity for the next DNC Chairman - to put a marker down in how we build towards 2032. Starting with that as the end point will lead to 3 very important outcomes:

• It will force us to understand and reckon with what has happened to our support in non-white communities - and getting this right not only helps us win in these states, but it will help us find our voice with these voters nationally - including in our own base states that we saw trend Republican in 2024.

• By investing in these states in a robust way now, we are also setting ourselves up to be more competitive down the ballot. The shifting of electoral votes will also lead to a shifting of Congressional seats, meaning our ability to win a majority in the US House of Representatives will require winning more seats in states like Texas and Florida - which is one of the key reasons to invest there, even if the statewide races remain uphill.

• Giving ourselves eight years in these states allows us to build creative plans, to test new strategies, to engage new voices, and build real and permanent partisan infrastructure — something that is relatively non-existent in many of these states.

There are other states besides the six listed above worthy of consideration. I could make an argument that in an 8-year play, we should look at states like Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina (and others). The truth is if we want to be in a place to win majorities in the Senate and House, we have to broaden the map in a fairly robust way. If we only win Senate seats in states that we win at the Presidential level, we will never win another majority.

The good news is there are people who are succeeding in all of these places, and we should learn from them. There are plenty of people winning down the ballot, whose strategies we should listen to, and learn from. For example, I would love to start a series of conversations with blue success stories in red communities — guys like Zeb Smathers, the mayor of Canton in rural Western North Carolina, and my old friend Gwen Graham, who is one of the last Democratic candidates to beat a Republican Congressional incumbent a non-urban southern district. There are lessons from their success. There are also smart operatives that we can and should invest in, and community leaders we can engage. We should listen to people who are winning.

Being in a position where there is no President to defend, and no Congressional majority to maintain, we have a unique opportunity as a party to do something we rarely, if ever do, and that’s look down the road. And that’s exactly what we should do.