Power-Building Strategy: Flip the Michigan legislature blue. Michigan was a top state legislative target for Democrats in 2020, and pre-election polling showed Democrats in a position to win the four seats they needed for the majority. On Election Night, Democrats were disappointed to see no net gain in the state…

Power-Building Strategy: Elect a Democratic governor in 2022. The electoral success of the “moderate” Republican governor lives on in Massachusetts under Charlie Baker. Governor Baker was first elected in 2014 during a GOP wave year, and then sailed to re-election in 2018 during a Democratic wave year. But Governor Baker…

Power-Building Strategy: Draw an 8–0 Democratic congressional map as part of the redistricting process. Democrats in Maryland: Pass the 8–0 map. Why not? Republicans just made it illegal to give people waiting in line to vote in Georgia water. The deafening silence from congressional GOP leaders as state Republicans like…

Power-Building Strategy: Pass the National Popular Vote Compact. Three times in American history has a Presidential candidate been elected without winning the popular vote. Each time it has divided the nation and resulted in a dangerous policy outcome — the end of Reconstruction, the unwinding of the Kyoto Protocol and…

Power-Building Strategy: Use Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards’s leverage to create an additional Black congressional district. As with Governor Beshear’s election in Kentucky that we highlighted yesterday, Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards’s re-election in 2019 was a bright spot for Democrats in the South. That year, Governor Edwards ran a…

Power-Building Strategy: Flip KY-6 blue. Kentucky is another state where the Democratic brand is heading in the wrong direction. Despite Mitch McConnell’s unpopularity (even within the state), Amy McGrath’s $100 million couldn’t unseat him in 2020. Democrats got shellacked at the state legislative level, losing 15 seats. A bright spot…

Power-building strategy: Continue to grow with college-educated voters. Kansas, once a Republican bastion, has seen Democratic gains over the last half-decade due to an extremely unpopular Republican agenda and the growing college-educated suburban population. It shifted five points leftward from 2016 to 2020 and elected a Democratic governor in 2018. …

Power-building strategy: Rebuild with non-college white voters. In the Senate section of the 2040 Project we give an overview of the demographics of battleground states, and Iowa has the distinction of having the second largest population of non-college white voters (after West Virginia). Collapse in support from this key population…

Power-Building Strategy: Flip IN-5 blue. Gains among college-educated voters in 2018 powered Democrats to a large congressional majority. In 2020, districts like IN-5, where over 45% of voters are college-educated, were next on the list for Democrats to flip. With an incumbent retirement, IN-5 seemed like a strong flip opportunity…