Protesting Trump? Move to a Red State Instead

/ Sirius Bizinus

A little while ago I posted some thoughts on the aftermath of the Trump election. Included in those thoughts were the election results by state. For some extra results, you can navigate CNN’s graphics or click here for senate results and here for the House of Reps results. This is some important information, because it shows closer races in Congressional contests than in the overall Presidential election. That said, the races broke down under similar demographic lines as the Presidential race.

This means that it wouldn’t take much to turn red states blue.
Already this process has happened in Florida (via New York) and Colorado (via California). These shifts will turn Florida bluer over time, and they’re close to turning Colorado into a Democratic solid state. But what about other states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana? Can they shift blue as well?

The answer is yes, and it wouldn’t take many voters to do it. Even in my home state of Alabama, there are very blue sections in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, and Huntsville. Move 600,000 Democrats to this state, and there would have been a shift in the Presidential race, and it could have shifted 4 Congressional seats as well. Not only that, it could have affected the Senate race (and with Sessions’s appointment, a subsequent race too).

Alabama is just 9 electoral votes. Shift some other Solid South states blue, and suddenly the whole GOP landscape is in disarray. Shore up Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania with 100,000 voters each, and they would have gone for Clinton instead of Trump. All this could have been done with about half of the surplus voters in California. I’m not even talking about borrowing votes from New York, New Jersey, or Massachusetts.

This highlights a slight problem we have in our electoral process, though.
I’m not even talking about the Electoral College. Rather, I’m referring to the fact that more voters vote Democrat, and they still don’t get Congress. While some of this is because of gerrymandering, a lot of it has to do with the fact that a ton of Democrats are huddled on the coasts. It might be nice to hang out with a bunch of people who are like-minded, but it doesn’t do anything to actually put power in voters’ hands.

What I mean is that Congress has a finite number of seats right now. Changes in population might shift seats from one state to another, but combined with gerrymandering it means large states would have to get a ton of extra people in order to shift towards one party or another. In smaller states, that shift can happen with drastically fewer people. Or to put it more succinctly, it’s easier to influence a small state.

And before anyone objects that people moving from California to Mississippi would give more seats to Mississippi, remember that the districts would be drawn by the overall winning party. So if those are Democrats moving to Mississippi, the districts get drawn by Democrats and not Republicans.

What this has to do with protesting.
There are a lot of protests over Trump being elected. While it might seem like people in the streets might be making your voice heard, in reality it’s doing absolutely nothing to fix the problem. Protests are not votes. And they especially are not votes in places where it would do the most good.

Rallying in Democratic strongholds is preaching to the proverbial choir while serving as fodder for people who don’t live nearby. Someone in Alabama isn’t going to respect protesters hundreds of miles away. The people telling him or her about those protests uses phrases like “sore losers” and “whiny liberals” to describe what’s going on. It’s easy to dismiss something on a screen.

More importantly, red states could benefit from people who actually know what effective local government should look like. Southern states still have problems with poverty, education, and other social ills. Other red states outside the South are looking to race to the bottom (like Kansas going bankrupt for no good reason). These problems exist because the political climate is not contested.

Of course, I get that not everyone can just pick up and move.
And I understand that not everyone would want to move to a red state. However, thinking about it a different way, it would be a chance to share ideas that’s not inflammatory like some Internet locales. There are also a bunch of people here who do agree with some of what blue state people have to say, and it would be very nice to have some more friends.

14 thoughts on “Protesting Trump? Move to a Red State Instead”

  1. Thought-provoking post. I wonder how many decades, even centuries it will take for the South to change, though. It used to be solid Democrat, so going blue doesn’t really mean things will improve here. Example, two democratic legislators in the state I live in, Mississippi, want to make the Bible the state book.

    http://www.wlox.com/story/31209469/ms-legislators-push-to-make-the-holy-bible-state-book

    I agree that it’s going to take progressive outsiders moving here to improve it well-being status.

    Liked by 1 person

    • An assumption I’m making is that people who are left-leaning are going to stay left-leaning. I’m aware the South used to be solid Democrat, but that was when the Democratic party was the conservative party. Politically, nothing’s really changed in the South since before the Civil War.

      Liked by 1 person

      • If Colorado and Florida are two examples, then the change can occur within a couple of decades if it’s from mass migration.

        However, I’m also trying to look into demographic information with regards to younger voters in the South. If the trend of younger people voting for more left-leaning candidates continues, then there might actually be some other form of change on the horizon.

        Liked by 1 person

      • The Atlantic addressed a problem with young people (young liberals). They don’t vote.

        “ecause Generation Y is the largest generation in American history, it’s a big deal if it remains one of the most liberal generations ever. But there’s a huge, inescapable problem with the viability of Millennial politics today: Young people just don’t vote. Between 1964 and 2012, youth voter turnout in presidential elections has fallen below 50 percent, and Baby Boomers now outvote their children’s generation by a stunning 30 percentage points. Millennials might make a lot of noise between presidential elections, but in November, politicians remember what young people are: All throat and no vote.
        [snip]
        Young people treat electoral politics the way they treat Hollywood movies: They only show up for the blockbusters. But the math of democracy is unyielding. If you want a revolution, you have to vote for it. Not just every four years. Not just for cool candidates. Not just for political outsiders unsullied by the soot of experience. If young people want a liberal revolution, they have to vote again and again and again, in local elections, midterm elections, and presidential contests. To change the country, America’s young revolutionaries have to do something truly revolutionary: They have to convince their friends to vote like old people.

        http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-liberal-millennial-revolution/470826/

        Liked by 1 person

      • Actually, young people do vote – source. If you’re measuring from 1964, yeah, there’s a massive downward plummet. But in 2004, 2008, and 2012, people under 30 sustained turnout at or above 40%. Considering the 80’s and 90’s abysmal numbers, that’s something noteworthy.

        Midterm turnout is also lower among all age groups. That’s not going to get fixed until people recognize the importance of Congress.

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      • From your source, it shows voter turnout for age 18 to 29 below 20% and age 30 to 44 at 30%. In other As the Atlantic article pointed out as well as your source, older people (age 46 to 60+) have a greater turnout at the polls.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Fair enough, SB, but my point is that the data shows that this age group,18 – 44, consistently have the lowest voter turnout of any age group, and turnout continues to drop each election. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, at Tufts University – an initiative to study and boost youth voter turnout, stated “It seems young people when they’re young tend to be lax voters.”

        She further states that young people have the potential to influence elections, particularly in battleground states. But, it’s a matter of whether they show up on election day.

        http://www.npr.org/2016/05/16/478237882/millennials-now-rival-boomers-as-a-political-force-but-will-they-actually-vote

        I’m not posting this as an indictment directed at young voters. Clearly, they don’t feel inspired, but I also don’t think they fully realize their power.

        I also wanted to note: CIRCLE found that in 2016, young adults were more likely to identify as liberals but were less likely to identify as Democrats.

        Liked by 1 person

      • I gotcha. It’s just that I’ve been trying to convince my peers (even when I turned 18) that they should vote, and nothing gives. People my age who do vote basically need an epiphany to start realizing it.

        And it’s frustrating, because even in diminished turnout, people under 44 sway elections. I think that 2016 will show that from the negative side; lower young turnout gave Trump the edge he needed. And although I know a bunch of people who don’t affiliate with parties, they’re almost to the point of voting Democrat without even needing to look at the rest of the ballot.

        Liked by 1 person

    • Victoria I noticed your comment on younger folk not voting.

      I would really like to see anti Trump demonstrators broken into two categories, those who voted and those who did not. Fair enough for those who voted to demonstrate, but for those who did not vote, well they should be required to wear a dunce’s hat whilst protesting.

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