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The "blue wall" is a term coined in 2009 in the political culture of the United States to refer to the several states (along with Washington, D.C.) that reliably "voted blue" i.e. for the Democratic Party in the six consecutive presidential elections from 1992 to 2012. Conversely, the terms "red wall" and "red sea" are less-commonly used to refer to states that Republicans consistently won in the same timeframe; states which have not voted consistently for one party are called “purple” or swing states.
During the 2016 presidential election, the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, was a heavy favorite to win the electoral college,[1][2] but Republican nominee Donald Trump challenged the status of the "blue wall" Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which became swing states in the next three elections. The Trump victories in 2016 and 2024 included flipping these three states (the 2020 Biden victory won all three states with lower than three percent margins, and Biden was the first Democrat since the 1990s to win the states of Arizona and Georgia).[3][4][5]
The Southern United States had previously voted Democratic so reliably that it had been termed the "Solid South" until Republicans implemented the Southern strategy.
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Ronald Brownstein claims to have coined the term "blue wall" in 2009.[6] After the 2012 presidential election, Paul Steinhauser called "blue wall ... the cluster of eastern, Midwest and western states that have traditionally gone Democratic."[7] The earliest description of the forces creating the blue wall comes from a Houston Chronicle blogger, Chris Ladd. A Republican, Ladd wrote in November 2014 that the seemingly impressive Republican win in the 2014 midterm elections had overshadowed another trend apparent in the results – a demographic and geographic collapse.[8]
For Republicans looking for ways that the party can once again take the lead in building a nationally relevant governing agenda, the 2014 election is a prelude to a disaster. Understanding this trend begins with a stark graphic. Behold the Blue Wall.
The blue wall referred to a perceived Democratic demographic lock on the Electoral College resulting from the Republican Party's narrowing focus on the interests of white, rural, and Southern voters. According to Ladd, the presence of the blue wall means "a minimally effective Democratic candidate" is all but assured of winning 257 electoral votes[a], just 13 short of the threshold needed to win the Electoral College and the presidency.[8] Ladd's analysis became popular when MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell featured it on a post-election episode of his show The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.[9] George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004 because they could only pick up Iowa and New Mexico (12 votes) in 2000 and New Hampshire (4 votes) in 2004 in addition to the blue wall. A similar "red fortress", within which lie states solidly Republican, has also been posited to exist.[8] But, having fewer electoral college votes, it would be theoretically easier for a Democratic presidential candidate to win without breaching it, as had been done in 2012.
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Behind this "blue wall" lay states, many carrying a double-digit number of electoral votes, which appeared to be solidly behind the Democratic Party, at least on the national level. Republican presidential candidates could only contest a small selection of these states, as only a few swing states would have sufficient votes to make up the 270 threshold. States behind this wall lay generally in the Northeastern United States, the West Coast of the United States, and some of the Great Lakes states. In each of the six presidential election cycles prior to 2016, the Democratic Party had won 18 of these states (as well as the District of Columbia), totaling 238 of the necessary 270 votes need to win. The "big three" Democratic stronghold states include California, New York, and Illinois.
States falling behind this blue wall generally included those the Democrats had carried since the 1992 presidential election until the 2016 presidential election[7][10] that included (in order of decreasing population and followed by current number of electoral votes): California (54), New York (28), Illinois (19), Pennsylvania (19), Michigan (15), New Jersey (14), Washington (12), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), Minnesota (10), Wisconsin (10), Oregon (8), Connecticut (7), Hawaii (4), Maine (4), Rhode Island (4), Delaware (3), and Vermont (3), as well as Washington, D.C. (3); this is a total of 238 votes. Had Al Gore won New Hampshire (4) in 2000 or if John Kerry had won New Mexico (5) or Iowa (7) in 2004, those states could also have become part of the blue wall states since 1992; New Mexico and New Hampshire would further support the Democratic nominee in 2016, 2020, and 2024, while Iowa would not.
Ronald Reagan's landslide re-election in 1984 carried all states except for Minnesota, which last voted Republican with Richard Nixon in 1972; and the District of Columbia, which has voted for the Democratic candidate in every election since it was admitted to the electoral college for the 1964 election. As such, the blue wall began to materialize with the 1988 United States presidential election; states that voted solely for Democratic Presidents since 1988 were New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Wisconsin[b], Oregon, Hawaii, and Rhode Island. The remainder of the blue wall was built in the 1992 United States presidential election: California, Illinois, Pennsylvania[c], Michigan[d], New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, Maine, Delaware, and Vermont.
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The Democrats' "lock" on these states had been called into question between 2012 and 2016, as several had been competitive in recent elections, and many had Republicans currently holding elected statewide office, generally either senator or governor.[11] Blue wall states with a Republican senator included Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine. Those with a Republican governor included Massachusetts, Maryland, and Michigan. In addition to these 18 states, three others, Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Mexico, had only voted for the Republican once in the same six election cycles, giving their votes to George W. Bush in either 2000 or 2004 by a margin of no more than 10,059 votes. If included in the total, the votes behind the blue wall numbered 257, just 13 short of what is needed to win. Some in the mainstream media did, however, suspect the Democrats might lose Pennsylvania.
Nate Silver had criticized the idea of the blue wall, pointing to a similar "red wall/red sea" of states that voted Republican from 1968 to 1988. He argued that the blue wall simply represented a "pretty good run" in elections, and that relatively minor gains in the popular vote could flip some of its states to Republican.[12] This was seen in the 2016 election, where voters from manufacturing states traditionally behind the blue wall voted for Donald Trump, providing him the victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Maine's 2nd congressional district.[13] Others have also posited that the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin had never definitively been "safe" for the Democratic Party, citing the close margins in those states in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections and opining that the outsized margins of victory secured by Barack Obama in the elections of 2008 and 2012 may have created a false impression of their safety for Democratic candidates.
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During the 2020 United States presidential election, Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. However, Biden carried these states only by 0.5–3 point margins, a considerable underperformance compared to Obama's margins in these states in 2008 and 2012. Long-term trends seem less favorable to Democrats in these states as they all voted to the right of the national average and many working-class white voters there have been moving towards the Republicans.[14][15]
Biden also broke into the red wall/sea by winning Arizona, Georgia, and the 2nd congressional district of Nebraska.[16][17][18] However, Maine's 2nd congressional district voted for Donald Trump. Pundits saw former battleground states such as Colorado and Virginia becoming solidly Democratic-leaning after the 2020 election, partially as a result of demographic patterns. Biden won both of these states by more than 10% in 2020.[15]
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![[icon]](#/media/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2024) |
During the 2024 United States presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump was able to regain the White House, largely due to the reclaiming of the battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (as well as Maine's 2nd congressional district).[19][20] He would also win the popular vote for the first time due to a significant collapse of Democratic turnout.[21] Part of his victory in Michigan was attributed to the large population of Arab and Muslim voters who did not vote for the Democrats over their continued involvement in the deaths in Gaza and Lebanon; Harris saw a drop-off of more than fifty thousand votes compared to Biden's performance in 2020.[22][23][24][25][26] The attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania invigorated turnout upwards of 150 thousand votes in that state,[27] and as such Wisconsin was hence the most Democratic of the trio, where both candidates made gains. Trump's margin of victory in those states was less than two percent, very close to the national margin, but the victories added 44 electoral votes to his total.[28] In general, the improved Republican turnout coinciding with a severe drop in Democratic turnout presented a nationally weak performance for the Democratic ticket, where over 90% of counties nationwide swung towards the Republican party. Most of the turnout drop was in Democrat stronghold states, partially due to the perception of being "safely Democratic", resulting in performances such as New Jersey being in striking range of 5%, and San Francisco, California voting more than 15% for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, the highest share for a Republican presidential candidate in San Francisco in 20 years.[29]
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The states which Republican candidates have won in the twelve federal elections from 1980 to 2024 are: Texas (40), Alabama (9), South Carolina (9), Oklahoma (7), Mississippi (6), Utah (6), Kansas (6), Nebraska (4) (excluding Nebraska's 2nd congressional district), Idaho (4), South Dakota (3), North Dakota (3), Alaska (3), and Wyoming (3), giving a total of 103 votes. Additionally, Tennessee (11), Missouri (10), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Arkansas (6), West Virginia (4), and Montana (4) have been won by Republicans in the last seven elections (from 2000 to 2024), making more recent additions to the red wall/sea, bringing the total electoral votes up to 154. Other states with a 11-out-of-12 (from 1980 to 2024) Republican record include North Carolina (16) and Indiana (11), whose 27 electoral votes added to the 154 of the preceding twenty red sea states make for a total of 181 electoral votes, although North Carolina is usually a swing state that leans slightly towards Republicans, enough to prevent Democrats from winning it except for Obama when he narrowly won the state in 2008. Former red wall/sea states include Georgia[e] and Arizona,[f] which had been won by the Republicans in nine of the eleven elections from 1984 to 2024, but now considered swing states.
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Presidential votes in blue wall states since 1876:
- Key
| Democratic Party nominee |
| Republican Party nominee |
| Third-party nominee[o] |
Bold denotes candidates elected as president
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- Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2024.
- Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2024.
- Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2024.
- Bill Clinton and Joe Biden won the state in 1992 and 2020, respectively.
- Bill Clinton and Joe Biden won the state in 1996 and 2020, respectively.
- The District of Columbia did not vote in presidential elections until 1964, after ratification of the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution.
- These were all named nationally as the “Progressive Party”, though the 1924 version was not a continuation of the 1912 one.
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