Sunday, January 15, 2017

Should Liberals Spread Out More?


The presidential races in Texas have been getting tighter over the years. Last year Democrats lost the state by just 9.2 points, and 813,774 votes.


One complaint about how the electoral college works is that since liberals tend to be concentrated in densely clustered urban areas, their electoral votes tend to be counted less. One vote in Wyoming is equivalent to about four votes in my state of New York. This is due to the fact that low population states have higher electoral votes to voter ratios than high population states like California, New York, and Florida. So, the argument goes, in order to help get more Democrats in the White House liberals should spread out more.

One possible strategy of this is if enough liberals moved to Texas, they could flip Texas from red to blue and that would all but ensure no Republican would ever get elected to the White House ever again. Just 1 million more voting liberals in Texas could, in theory, make that happen. This is something possible in the 10 years or so.

I thought Republicans were never going to win another presidential race just a few years ago, but that was obviously before Trump came along. But he of course ran to the left of Hillary Clinton on many economic and trade issues which no other Republican would have ever done. It goes to show you the popularity of traditionally liberal views on trade and healthcare and their appeal to Republican voters. What will be the strategy for Republicans moving forward after Trump? Will they be able to embrace traditional old republicanism once again? Who knows. But if we're going to keep the antiquated electoral college system, a geographic shift of liberals might be needed.

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