Analysis: How the partisan landscape has shifted after the election

WASHINGTON — With Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory and narrow edge in the national popular vote, Republicans believe the president-elect has completely reformed the party coalitions.

Trump swept the swing states this year and cut his margins significantly in Democratic states. But how much has the state-by-state partisan landscape really changed?

According to Inside Elections’ Baseline metric, the latest shifts in partisanship have largely benefited Republicans, but Democratic gains in Georgia and Arizona over the past decade have pulled those states into swing-state status and pushed onetime toss-up territory such as Colorado and Virginia into the Democratic column.

The Baseline metric is a more comprehensive way to measure the partisanship of each state and district. Beyond comparing the most recent presidential result with the previous one, Baseline takes into account all statewide elections over the four most recent election cycles to measure how a typical Republican and Democratic candidate would perform. This limits the impact of outlier races or cycles and acknowledges that electoral trends are often gradual.

Vote-counting is still ongoing in a number of states but that is unlikely to change the Baseline calculation a great deal. Here’s a look at the partisan shifts across the country after the November elections:

States that shifted right

The biggest Baseline change compared with two years ago was in West Virginia, where Republicans extended their advantage by 11.5 points. That’s because the 2016 elections were dropped from the calculation to make room for this year’s results, which means Democratic victories for state treasurer and governor, and close-ish races for secretary of state and agriculture secretary are no longer included.

Other shifts compared with 2022 were more subtle and spanned the partisan spectrum. The battleground state of Pennsylvania moved 2.4 points to the right. Republican states that moved further right included Montana (3.8 points) and Missouri (2.1), while Democratic states that saw rightward shifts included Hawaii (4.3), New Jersey (1.9) and New York, which moved 3.8 points, fueled in part by GOP gains on Long Island.

The Baseline shift from 2020 to 2024 is more dramatic in the states that moved right. Beyond West Virginia, Arkansas is 8.5 points more Republican on the Baseline margin than it was four years ago, along with Idaho (6.7) and Wyoming (3.9).

While Democrats now have a Baseline advantage of 18.7 points in New York, that represents a 6.9-point shift to the right since 2020. And Florida, which was once a swing state, moved 4.7 points rightward over the previous four years to give Republicans a whopping 10.3-point Baseline advantage. Double-digit reelection victories by Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022, followed by double-digit wins by Trump and Sen. Rick Scott this year, helped drive this shift.

States that shifted left

Considering Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss at the top of the ticket, it’s not surprising that fewer states shifted left.

Republican states such as Alaska (3.8 points), Utah (2.7) and North Dakota (1.8) are slightly more Democratic on the Baseline margin now compared with two years ago, as is blue-leaning Washington state (2.7).

Colorado has seen the biggest leftward shift from 2020 and one of the biggest Democratic shifts in the past decade. The Centennial State has gone from a negligible 0.1-point Baseline edge for Democrats in 2014 to a 10.6-point Democratic advantage now. Ten years ago, Republicans won four out of five statewide elections. Now, they don’t hold any statewide offices, and Harris came close to matching Joe Biden’s 2020 margin in Colorado even though she slipped significantly in other parts of the country.

Virginia has also shifted from swing-state status in 2014 (i.e., no advantage for either party) to a 5-point Baseline Democratic advantage today. Even after the 2016 elections, Democrats had just a 1-point Baseline edge in Virginia, but that’s far from the case now.

Georgia and Arizona have shifted to the left over the past decade as well, propelling them from the GOP column into emerging battleground states. The Republican advantage has shrunk by 8.4 points in Georgia and 7.5 points in Arizona since 2014.

States that remain close

While the broader battleground has shifted, the closest states remain as they were.

Wisconsin was the most evenly divided state following the 2020 elections (just a 0.4-point GOP advantage), and it remains the most evenly divided following this year’s elections (a 0.9-point difference in Republicans’ favor), according to the Baseline metric.

More broadly, of the eight closest states in the 2020 and 2024 elections, seven are on both lists: Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Michigan. While Colorado was in the top eight four years ago, it’s since been replaced by Georgia.

While that lineup hasn’t changed much over the past four years, it’s quite different from a decade ago. After the 2014 elections, the most evenly divided states, according to the Baseline metric, were (in order of competitiveness) Virginia, Colorado, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Overall, there’s been a gradual decrease in the number of competitive states.

Following the 2014 and 2016 elections, there were 21 states where neither party had more than a 10-point Baseline advantage. That club dipped to 18 states after 2018, 16 following the 2020 elections and 14 after 2022. Now there are just 13 states with less than a 10-point difference between a typical Republican and Democratic candidate.

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