President-elect Donald Trump officially flipped Lake County, California, one month after the November 5 election. Trump’s electoral win in Lake County is the latest indication of the landslide victory he enjoyed in the 2024 cycle.
Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote in two decades, even sweeping all seven swing states. The last candidate to win all battlegrounds was former President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
‘It could actually be the beginnings of a Reagan-style political realignment if the Democrats don’t make adjustments and do so in a hurry.’
Trump also flipped over 50 counties this cycle while Vice President Kamala Harris failed to flip any in her favor. Of those counties that flipped in Trump’s favor, roughly half of them had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate this century. Trump also managed to shift every single state toward Republicans. Roughly 300 counties shifted more Democratic, without any actually flipping blue, while over 2,600 shifted more Republican.
“The data suggests that this was more than simply a decisive victory for Donald Trump,” Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland, told Blaze News. “It could actually be the beginnings of a Reagan-style political realignment if the Democrats don’t make adjustments and do so in a hurry.”
One of Trump’s most notable flips was South Texas’ Starr County, a predominantly Hispanic border county. This ended one of the longest Democratic voting streaks in history, with the county voting for a Democrat in every presidential election since 1896. Trump also made inroads with Latinos in Florida, enjoying a double-digit swing in Miami-Dade County compared to his results in 2020.
Democratic support slipped across every demographic the party has historically held onto. Even with a black female candidate and a white working-class running mate, voters turned to Trump.
“We are losing, in front of our very eyes, some of the core elements of the Democratic coalition that we have held onto, to varying degrees, since the age of Roosevelt,” Foxwell told Blaze News. “We have become a party of inner suburban wine clubs and book clubs. A relatively small, culturally homogeneous group of inner suburban, highly educated, relatively affluent liberals and progressives.”
“That, to be sure, is a part of a strong Democratic coalition, but it cannot be the only part,” Foxwell continued. “It cannot and it must not be the centerpiece around which we base our national political strategy, and I’m afraid that’s what we’re at risk of becoming.”
Foxwell points out that the downfall of the Democratic Party is largely because it demands a highly stringent form of political and social orthodoxy from its voters that has become incompatible with many moderates. Although Democrats have championed diversity of identity, the party has remained intellectually homogeneous, which is exclusionary by nature.
“Democrats used to be the party of disruption, debate, and change, and now we have become a more intellectually homogeneous party in which we are not necessarily supposed to look alike, but we are certainly expected to think alike,” Foxwell said. “When that happens, you become intellectually stagnant, and I honestly believe that this is one of the major reasons why the Democratic Party is losing its natural advantages.”
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