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    The 10 swing state counties that tell the story of the 2020 election | Ben Davis

    Looking at the results of the 2020 election at the more granular level of counties and precincts, it can mostly be defined by one thing: stasis. But beneath that stasis the results of this election and the changes from previous elections say an enormous amount about where the country is and is going. The counties that swung the most mostly fall into two categories: Latino areas swinging strongly towards Trump, and white-majority suburban areas swinging towards Biden. These 10 swing state counties were crucial to the final results, and help tell the story of what happened in 2020.Maricopa county, ArizonaHome of Phoenix and environs, Maricopa county is perhaps the most important individual county to the 2020 presidential election. The county makes up an absolute majority of the population of the swing state Arizona, and the winner of the state almost always wins the county. This year, Biden was able to flip Arizona by just over 10,000 votes, his margin coming entirely from winning Maricopa county by around 45,000. It was the first time the county had voted for the Democratic nominee for president since 1948. In many ways, Maricopa was a microcosm of the election: narrowly won by Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, containing urban and suburban areas, and having large communities of both college-educated white moderate voters and Latino voters. Maricopa was one of the linchpins of the Biden strategy of flipping white suburban voters – which he did just enough to win. Precinct results show Biden doing clearly better than Clinton in the white-majority suburban areas. They also show the result of Democrats’ failure to keep their margins among working-class Latino voters, especially in the seventh congressional district, which was carried by Bernie Sanders in the primary. Within Maricopa we can see the results of the trade-off Democrats made to win this election.Hidalgo county, TexasOn the border with Mexico, Hidalgo county, centered on McAllen, is over 90% Hispanic. Working-class and with very high rates of poverty, historically solidly Democratic Hidalgo represents the center of Biden’s failures with Latino voters and working-class voters more broadly. Hidalgo swung 23 points towards Trump, destroying any hopes Democrats had of winning Texas. Hidalgo saw a 27% increase in turnout, as Trump was able to break expectations by activating low-turnout voters to his side. Young, rapidly growing and working-class, Hidalgo is exactly the type of place Democrats need to win to enact any sort of progressive agenda in the future. For many years the conventional wisdom was that turnout in places like Hidalgo would benefit Democrats, but the consequence of Democrats’ focus on flipping white suburban voters was that these new voters were ignored by the party and Trump was able to capitalize. Like most working-class Latino areas, Hidalgo voted for socialist Bernie Sanders in the primary. Going forward, Democrats need a message of class-focused populism to build a base in communities like Hidalgo and build a progressive governing majority.Collin county, TexasThe flip side of Hidalgo county, Collin county in suburban Dallas is an example of the places that powered Biden to competitiveness in Texas and other suburb-heavy sun belt states. Collin county, like other suburbs in Texas, has long been a Republican bastion, giving enormous margins to GOP candidates up and down the ballot. George W Bush twice won Collin by over 40 points, and Mitt Romney won by over 30 in 2012. This year, however, Collin went for Trump by just four points, a 13-point swing to the Democrats from 2016. Collin and Hidalgo counties represent the twin patterns of this election: affluent white suburban areas swinging towards Democrats and working-class Latino areas swinging to Republicans.Miami-Dade county, FloridaMiami-Dade county is fairly unique politically, but you can’t tell the story of the 2020 election without talking about it. Miami and the surrounding area are heavily influenced by the politics of the Cuban diaspora, but the county is also home to many other communities. Miami-Dade saw one of the strongest swings in the country towards Trump, from going to Clinton by 30 points to Biden by just seven. While much of this was powered by Cuban-majority areas, Biden lost ground all over the county, including Black-majority areas. The immense losses in Miami-Dade are one of the biggest swings, and biggest shocks, of the election, costing two Democratic seats in the House of Representatives and putting Florida nearly out of play. The story in Miami-Dade is that the Republicans can mobilize massive numbers of working-class people who usually don’t vote. This has scrambled the entire American political landscape, and put Democrats in a precarious position going forward.Gwinnett county, GeorgiaGwinnett county, in suburban Atlanta, was key to Biden flipping Georgia. The suburbs were the first area of Georgia to support Republicans as the state moved from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican, and are now in the vanguard again as the state has moved back into the Democratic column. Gwinnett voted Republican every year between 1980 and 2012, voting for George W Bush by over 30 points twice. After going narrowly to Clinton in 2016, the county followed the pattern of suburban realignment more strongly than almost anywhere else in the country, voting for Biden by 18 points, a 75,000-vote margin. Winning big in places like Gwinnett was the key to Biden’s strategy for victory, and he was just able to do it.Lackawanna county, PennsylvaniaLackawanna county is the home of Scranton, Joe Biden’s home town, and is a longtime working-class Democratic stronghold. Lackawanna tells two stories in 2020: one of Biden doing just enough for victory and another of a permanent realignment of historic Democratic working-class areas away from the party. Lackawanna voted for Biden by eight points, a five-point swing towards native son Biden that helped push him just over the top in Pennsylvania. Biden was able to recapture enough support in north-east Pennsylvania and places like it in the midwest and north-east, combined with his increased support in the suburbs, meant that he was able to recapture the states Trump so surprisingly captured in 2016. But under the surface, the result in Lackawanna shows a long-term realignment brought about by decades of neoliberalism and declining union density and accelerated by Donald Trump. Obama was able to win Lackawanna twice by over 25 points. The 2020 result is a swing of nearly 20 points since the Obama era, despite Biden’s local connections. It is clear that many working-class regions have permanently moved away from solid Democratic status.Chester county, PennsylvaniaChester county, in suburban Philadelphia, is one of the GOP’s historical bastions, voting Republican every year but the landslide of 1964 until 2008. This year, Biden won Chester by 17 points and nearly 54,000 votes. Biden’s strength in the Collar counties around Philadelphia was crucial to his win in the state, and is the main thing keeping Democrats competitive since their collapse among voters in rural and post-industrial areas. Places like Chester form the heart of the new Democratic coalition, and Democrats will have to keep and improve Biden’s margins – and match his margins in down-ballot races – to put together governing coalitions in the future.Mahoning county, OhioMahoning county, home of Youngstown, is maybe the most powerful symbol of Democratic loss in the working-class midwest. After voting Democratic by enormous margins for decades, Mahoning went to Trump this year, the first time a Republican has won it since Nixon in 1972. Mahoning went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Obama by over 25 points twice, and even Michael Dukakis by over 25 points. Biden’s shocking loss this year shows a combination of further erosion among white working-class voters and among black voters. Mahoning represents perhaps the final nail in the coffin of the class-based New Deal coalition that has shaped American politics since 1932.Waukesha county, WisconsinCrucial Waukesha county, in suburban Milwaukee, has long been a bastion of Republicanism. This year, however, Biden’s strength with suburban voters closed the gap just enough for Biden to win the state. While Trump won by 21 points, the swing in Waukesha and the rest of the Milwaukee suburbs was just enough for Biden to win the state by around 20,000 votes. While the movement in suburban Milwaukee and the suburbs more broadly was enough to win the election for Biden, it was not as much as many Democrats expected.Northampton county, North CarolinaNorthampton county is a strong example of a serious problem for Democrats: erosion among black voters. These losses may indeed have cost Biden the state of North Carolina. Northampton county is 60% black, and this year went for Biden by 20 points. This was a five-point swing against the Democrats, and the smallest margin for Democrats in the county since the Republican landslide of 1972. Losses among black voters this cycle should be very worrying to Democrats.While the results of the election mostly show stasis, within these results, there was some confounding of expectations. First, the sheer scale of Latino defections to Trump was shocking to many. On the other hand, the swing toward Biden was enough to win the election, but below the expectations of many Democrats, and these voters often split their ticket for down-ballot Republicans, costing the Democrats a chance at a governing majority. Furthermore, the stasis in rural, white areas was a surprise itself. Many of these areas swung dramatically towards Trump in 2016, and it was expected that Biden would rebound at least a bit as there was no more room to fall for Democrats. Instead, these areas mostly stayed the same or even swung to Trump a bit. The results of 2020 confirm the huge swings and coalitional realignment of 2016 are here to stay. We head into the future with a Democratic party weaker than ever among working-class voters of all races and more reliant than ever on a wealthier, whiter and more affluent coalition. More

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    Covid rampages across US, unifying a splintered nation as cases surge

    The Disunited States of America are united once more. After a brutal election that exacerbated bitter partisan divisions and left the country feeling as though it had been torn in two, it has at last been thrown back together.For all the wrong reasons.The great leveler is coronavirus. Covid-19 is rampaging across the US as though it were on a personal mission to unify the splintered nation in an unfolding catastrophe. Of the 50 states of the Union, all but one – isolated Hawaii – is seeing alarming surges in new cases. The virus is on the rise so uniformly across the vast landmass of the US, that records are being shattered daily.Almost 12m cases have been recorded. In just one day the US notched up 184,000 new cases – six times the total number of infections in South Korea since the pandemic began.Almost 80,000 Americans are currently in hospital fighting for their lives, and the death rate is soaring inexorably towards 2,000 a day – close to the peak reached in April.This week the country passed the grimmest landmark so far: 250,000 dead Americans. And already the total has gone up significantly beyond that tragic milestone.As Michael Osterholm, a member of the coronavirus advisory team assembled by Joe Biden, put it: “We are in the most dangerous public health period since 1918.”The result of this terrifying march of untrammeled disease is that panic has begun to set in at state level. Governors and mayors from coast to coast have been scrambling to batten down the hatches, from New York City where the country’s largest public schools system was closed on Thursday barely two months after it reopened, to California where governor Gavin Newsom announced he was “pulling the emergency brake”.It is in the heartland states that the true horror of the current crisis is unfolding. Here Donald Trump’s historic mishandling of the pandemic is coming home to roost.Across the midwest, Trump’s playbook towards Covid-19 has been avidly embraced by Republican governors, from Kristi Noem in South Dakota, to Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, Kim Reynolds in Iowa, and Mike Parson in Missouri. They have mimicked the president’s relentless downplaying of the virus, lying about the pandemic being under control, and spurning of mask wearing.The results are now plain to see – runaway infection levels, staggering positivity rates and hospitals at breaking point.Only now, when the virus is pummeling the midwest like a tornado, have some of the Republican governors begrudgingly begun to change tack. Take Reynolds, the pro-Trump governor of Iowa. More

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    Biden got a lift from young Black Americans on the road to victory

    Joe Biden almost dropped out of the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee this year after several disappointing results in early voting states – until Black voters in South Carolina delivered him a resounding win.And while the race between Biden and Donald Trump remained too close to call on Thursday evening, it appears Black Americans once again stepped up to give the Democrat the backbone of his support, especially in key battleground states including Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.Record turnout among African American voters could be the difference between a Biden win and a Biden loss.“What we’re all re-learning, both the pundits in DC and uninspired Black voters, is the value of our net worth when we show up at the ballot box,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina. “Even when we’re suppressed, depressed, or misinformed, we still show up.”Even when we’re suppressed, we still show upAccording to exit poll data, Black voters overwhelmingly backed the Democratic candidate by a margin of 87% to Donald Trump’s 12%. But Seawright had “been saying Black voters will decide the election since 2017”, last predicting South Carolina’s loyal Black moderates would propel Biden to victory in the state’s February Democratic primary.With ballots still being counted, mail-in or absentee ballots from Democratic-leaning counties, most with large Black populations, are likely to be the deciding factor in who becomes the next US president, amplifying the power of the Black electorate.Analysts pinpoint a surge in turnout among young people of all races, but especially Black Americans.Early voting data already showed young people turning out in record numbers, and with four in 10 eligible Black voters being millennials or from generation Z, the push in urban centers like Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit was critical for Biden.“Every major movement in this country has been fueled by young people and Black people on the frontlines defining what change looks like,” Seawright said. “This election is going to be defined as a movement election for the American experiment.”As racial justice protests ignited throughout the country this summer after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota in May – then accelerated with the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August – Americans took sides divided mostly along racial lines. More

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    Which party will hold the keys to states’ legislative and congressional maps?

    While the race for the White House is sorted out across tight midwestern battlegrounds, Republicans can already claim an important victory further down the ballot. The GOP held state House and Senate chambers across Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Kansas, and many other key states. This ensures a dramatic edge when it comes to redrawing new state legislative and congressional maps next year, following the completion of the census count.
    This year, Democrats had hoped to avenge the GOP’s 2010 Redmap strategy, which drove Republicans that year to control swing-state legislatures in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida, and majorities they have not relinquished since. That also allowed Republicans to draw, on their own, nearly five times as many congressional districts nationwide as Democrats.
    Tuesday’s election offered both parties the last chance to gain influence over maps that will define the state of play for the next decade. States have different rules on this: almost three-quarters of all states, however, give their legislatures the prominent role. That heightens the stakes of state legislative races in years ending in zero. On Tuesday, in the two states with the most at stake – Texas and North Carolina – Democrats fell far short, despite millions of dollars invested by the national party and outside organizations.
    In Texas, Democrats needed to gain nine seats in the state House to affect redistricting. They may not net any. Republicans picked up several open seats, and GOP incumbents held on in almost all the battleground districts enveloping the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston. In House district 134, which includes part of Houston, Democrat Ann Johnson ousted GOP incumbent Sarah Davis. But otherwise, the party ran far behind expectations.
    The consequences could linger until 2031, if not longer. Texas Republicans may look to redraw state maps next year based on the “citizen voting-age population” or CVAP, and depart from the longtime standard of counting the total population. A 2015 study by Thomas Hofeller, the late GOP redistricting maestro, found that such a switch “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” and create a relative population decline in Democratic strongholds in south Texas and in otherwise fast-growing parts of Dallas and Houston.
    In North Carolina, meanwhile, even a new, fairer state legislative map – albeit one that still slightly favored Republicans – couldn’t help Democrats break the GOP’s 10-year hold on both the House and Senate. Democrats netted one Senate seat – they needed five – and lost ground in the state House. Republicans will not only have a free hand to draw maps next year, but they also appear to have gained seats on the state supreme court – which will adjudicate any dispute over these maps – and cut the Democratic majority there to 4-3. (Democrats did make gains on both the Ohio and Michigan state supreme courts, both of which could be asked to weigh in on the constitutionality of maps later this decade.)
    As a result, Republicans will have a free hand in drawing new districts across both states, providing the GOP with a renewed decade-long edge and also paving the way for conservative legislation on voting rights, health care, reproductive rights, education funding and much more. Any new voting restrictions, meanwhile, could assist Republicans in maintaining electoral college dominance in these states, as well.
    Democrats in Kansas had hoped to simply break GOP supermajorities and sustain a Democratic governor’s veto power over a GOP gerrymander that could devour the state’s one blue congressional seat. But they appear to have been unable to muster either a one-seat gain in the House or the three seats necessary in the Senate.
    Wisconsin Democrats, however, did successfully preserve the veto of Democratic governor Tony Evers, ensuring that the party will have some say over maps that have provided Republicans with decade-long majorities even when Democratic candidates won hundreds of thousands more statewide votes. Wisconsin was one of the most gerrymandered states in the country after the Republican takeover in 2010.
    Democrats flipped the Oregon secretary of state’s office as well, which plays a determinative role in redistricting should Republicans deny Democrats a quorum to pass a map. The party also denied Republicans in Nebraska’s ostensibly nonpartisan unicameral chamber a supermajority that would allow them to gerrymander the second congressional district in Omaha, which carries an electoral college vote.
    There was mixed news for gerrymandering reformers in two states where fair maps were on the ballot statewide. In Virginia, voters overwhelmingly approved a redistricting commission that will consist equally of lawmakers and citizens to draw lines next year. But in Missouri, by a narrow margin of 51% to 49%, voters repealed a 2018 initiative that would have placed maps under the control of a neutral state demographer. That will leave Republicans in full control of the process.
    After 2010, Pennsylvania has elected a Democratic governor, and Michigan has adopted an independent commission, suggesting less partisan maps next year. But by holding Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio, Republicans appear likely to draw at least four times as many congressional seats by themselves.
    That advantage, in turn, will endure long after whoever won Tuesday’s presidential election has left the scene. More

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    Democrats fail to persuade swaths of rural America's heartlands

    America’s rural heartland stuck firmly with Donald Trump on Tuesday, dashing Joe Biden’s hope of a decisive victory that would have allowed him to claim he had reunited the country, as well as undercutting Democratic expectations of winning the US Senate.
    Results across the midwest showed the US still firmly divided as Trump again won a solid victory in Iowa, a state that twice voted for Barack Obama, and the Republicans held on to crucial Senate seats targeted by the Democrats.
    Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, a close Trump ally, proclaimed that the Democrats were now history in her state as the president’s base turned out in force.
    “We have proven without a doubt that Iowa is a red state,” she told a rowdy victory rally in Des Moines where few Republicans wore masks.
    Trump was ahead in Iowa by more than seven points with over 90% of the vote counted, a victory just two points short of his 2016 win.
    In Iowa and Missouri, Trump’s support in rural counties generally held up or strengthened. In some states that delivered him victory. In others, such as Wisconsin, Biden triumphed after a surge of urban votes.
    But the president’s solid performance in rural America could cost the Democrats control of the Senate after what the party regarded as its best shot at two midwestern seats in Iowa and Kansas flopped.
    Iowa’s Republican senator, Joni Ernst, beat her Democratic rival, Theresa Greenfield, by more than six points in a race that opinion polls for many months said would be closer. Ernst won the seat from a Democrat in 2014.
    Results showed that the president dominated in rural counties that he took from the Democrats four years ago. Opinion polls said that in recent weeks voters’ primary concern shifted from coronavirus to the economy which helped swing independent voters the president’s way to supplement his core support.
    “The economy was doing well before coronavirus. That was a big thing for me, said Elysha Graves as she clutched her toddler after voting for Trump in Urbandale, Iowa.
    “They tried to blame him for the pandemic. I don’t know how anybody else would have handled it. It’s a hard situation. He just seems real. He’s not a politician. He’s more relatable. I trust him more than I trust Biden.”
    Left: Elysha Graves and her son Parker Peters of Urbandale Iowa pose for a photo after Graves cast her vote on election day in Urbandale, Iowa. Right: A sign informs residents of a voting location on election day in Urbandale, Iowa on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Photographs by KC McGinnis/The Guardian
    Democrats disappointed
    Iowa is not a crucial state for Biden but his failure to significantly reduce the size of Trump’s 2016 victory there is evidence that the Democrats failed to persuade swaths of rural America that the party had much to offer them or was even paying attention to their communities and concerns.
    Biden was counting on the president defeating himself with his style of governing and handling of coronavirus as the economy collapsed. But large numbers of midwestern voters were prepared to forgive Trump his hostile tweeting and other sins because, in a widely heard refrain, “he is not a regular politician”, a quality they regard as central to their support of him.
    They also did not blame Trump for the economic downturn, saying it would have happened no matter who was in the White House. While the president’s handling of coronavirus was widely scorned in other places, there is a popular view in the rural midwest that Trump got it right when he opposed lockdowns as too economically damaging. More

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    US election 2020: Biden sees narrow lead over Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin as results awaited – live updates

    Key events

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    10.18am EST10:18
    Democrats: ‘Results indicate we are on a clear path to victory this afternoon’

    9.16am EST09:16
    AP running vote tally shows Biden holds a narrow lead in Michigan for first time

    8.08am EST08:08
    Former Trump adviser John Bolton calls president’s election comments ‘a disgrace’

    7.54am EST07:54
    Paths to victory remain for both Biden and Trump – but Biden has more

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    10.18am EST10:18

    Democrats: ‘Results indicate we are on a clear path to victory this afternoon’

    In a live address Joe Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon has said Joe Biden is on course to become the next president of the US. She said:

    We believe we are in a clear path to victory by this afternoon, we expect that the vice president will have leads in states that put him over 270 electoral votes today. The vice president will garner more votes than any presidential candidate in history, and we’re still counting. He has won over 50% of the popular vote. We are on track to win in Michigan by more than Donald Trump did in 2016. To win in Wisconsin by more than Trump did in 2016. To win in Pennsylvania by more than Trump did in 2016. And we flipped one of his states, Arizona.

    10.14am EST10:14

    The Democratic party are about to broadcast what they are calling a ‘Election protection briefing’. Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon and former Counsel to president Barack Obama Bob Bauer will be talking shortly.

    Joe Biden
    (@JoeBiden)
    We won’t rest until everyone’s vote is counted. Tune in as my campaign manager @jomalleydillon and campaign adviser Bob Bauer give an update on where the race stands. https://t.co/Rwz4iR25B3

    November 4, 2020

    10.11am EST10:11

    Here’s the state of play – excuse the pun – in the states that have not yet been declared for one candidate or the other. We are expecting results from at least Wisconsin and Michigan later today. The others may take a little longer. More

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    Voting proceeds smoothly across US despite fears of unrest

    Across America millions of people went to the polls amid an election campaign fraught with anxiety over the prospect of voter intimidation and the chance of civil unrest after a historically divisive election.But as polls started to close on the east coast of the US, reports from across the country reflected a day of peaceful voting with only sporadic reports of incidents of intimidation or misinformation or technological problems with voting machines.The leader of a group of 42,000 legal volunteers deployed for the election said so far there had not been “major, systemic problems or attempts to obstruct voting”.Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said early voting, voter education efforts and earlier litigation had made for “a relatively smooth election day across the country”.The committee operates the Election Protection hotline, which provides information and assistance to Americans who encounter problems while voting. Clarke said there was an increase in complaints about voter intimidation and electioneering compared to past elections, but those problems were at a smaller, less intense scale than had been expected.“While we have seen these complaints, in many instances they are lone wolfs, individuals, maybe two people, but not large groups that would otherwise have a stark chilling effect on the electorate,” Clarke said. “And I think many voters this season have come out determined.”Clarke cautioned that this could be the “calm before the storm,” and that the committee was bracing for issues over whether absentee ballots were properly handled and counted in the coming days. More

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    'Democracy is broken': state races aim to undo decade of Republican map-rigging

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    The small farming communities of Wisconsin’s 32nd state senate district, with names like Romance and Avalanche, sit nestled along the Mississippi River. It’s within these rural towns that millions of political dollars are pouring into small counties to influence a local race for state senators who are paid a far more humble amount.
    That’s because in Wisconsin, like several other states this year, both Democrats and Republicans are trying to rack up seats in the state legislatures to hold influence over the political maps which are redrawn every 10 years after the decennial census count.
    “One race should not have this kind of significance,” says Ben Wikler, the Democratic state party chairman tasked with wrestling back majority rule in a state where Democrats won 54% of the overall assembly vote in 2018, but won just over 36% of the seats. “But democracy in Wisconsin is broken.”
    interactive
    Republicans asserted their dominance in 2010 by targeting 107 state legislative seats in 16 key states through a $30m national strategy appropriately called REDMAP. It worked: the hi-tech maps the GOP produced have kept every one of those swing-state chambers red throughout this decade, even in years when Democratic candidates won more votes.
    Legislatures in these states, contrary to popular opinion, then worked quickly to undermine collective bargaining, erode voting rights, enact draconian new limits on reproductive rights, refused to expand Medicaid and much more.
    But if Republicans flip the open seat in Wisconsin’s 32nd district – carried by a Democrat in 2018 by just 56 votes – they could block the Democratic governor’s agenda and claim complete control over drawing the next decade of legislative and congressional maps. They could cement their majority in the legislature, and continue implementing restrictions on voting like they are this year, potentially impacting which way Wisconsin goes in the presidential election.
    “It’s all on the line,” Wikler says. “Imagine that? It can be a lot to run for local office and feel like the future of your state and maybe even the electoral college rests on your race.”
    While races for the White House and control of the US Senate demand the largest headlines and the wildest fundraising sums, the stakes of America’s down-ballot races are huge. In three states in particular, Texas, Wisconsin and North Carolina, these local races will determine nothing less than the next decade of the states’ politics, and also influence the electoral college state of play into the 2030s.
    “Collin county, Texas, and outside Dallas, Houston, Waco, even,” says Jessica Post, who leads the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “Overland Park, Kansas. Livonia, Michigan. Those are the places that will change the country.”
    North Carolina: ‘They know what’s at stake’
    Just how important are these district lines? A 2016 report by the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard measuring the health of American democracy gave North Carolina a seven on a scale of 100, the worst in the nation, and a rating in line with Iran and Venezuela. North Carolina Republicans locked themselves in power, then enacted a “monster” voter suppression bill that targeted black voters with “surgical” precision. They passed the infamous transgender bathroom bill. And when voters elected a Democratic governor in 2016, they curtailed his powers in a shocking lame-duck session.
    Those maps not only kept Republicans in power with fewer votes, it allowed them to command 10 of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts, more than 70%, again, even when voters preferred Democratic candidates.
    Chart showing North Carolina voters voted for Democrats but Republicans had the majority in the state house.
    State Democrats broke the GOP’s gerrymandered monopoly in 2018, when they gained two seats in the state senate and nine in the house. Then, the following year, a North Carolina court tossed out the map, calling it an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution. A new, fairer map was introduced – but it is now up for replacement.
    The state elections this year are the last chance for Democrats to win a seat at the table for next year’s redistricting. The new, fairer map will be gone. If the GOP wins both chambers, Democratic governor Roy Cooper can’t veto the Republican plan.
    “We’re going to have maybe 15 races where we’ve spent half a million dollars, just on the Democratic side, for a [state senate] job that pays $14,000 a year,” says state Representative Graig Meyer, who has led Democratic recruitment efforts to win back at least one chamber of the North Carolina legislature ahead of redistricting. “It’s all about the maps.”
    Meyer and state Democrats made a strategic shift as they recruited candidates. Instead of seeking out veteran Democratic officeholders – quite likely a “slightly older than middle-aged white guy who was pretty boring,” Meyer says – they looked for people with deep community connections and a high degree of emotional intelligence. As a result, the ensuing slate is younger and features more women and candidates of color.
    That’s the case here in state senate district 18, which includes Franklin county, in central North Carolina, and also some of the growing far outer suburbs of Raleigh. Rising home prices in the capital region pushed more families into these once quiet rural towns. Population shifts, newcomers from the north, and now a newly drawn state senate map that now reaches deeper into the outer Raleigh rings in Wake county could bring even more change.
    In 2018, Republican state senator John Alexander held this seat by just 2,639 votes. When the court mandated a new map, however, the new district that had been carefully crafted to tilt red no longer included Alexander’s home. This newly open seat is now far more blue-leaning, and one of the seats Democrats see as a must-flip. In almost any scenario, if Democrats are to take the senate, the road runs through these towns of Zebulon and Wake Forest.
    “It’s a lot of pressure,” says Democratic senate nominee Sarah Crawford. “If I lose, I might have to consider moving out of state. I might not be able to show my face. It’s about the future of North Carolina. It’s about the next decade.”
    The mother of two and nonprofit executive said the skewed maps have taken a toll on the state.
    “In a 50/50 state, you shouldn’t have one party with an extreme majority over another,” Crawford says. “What it’s meant for North Carolina is that public education has suffered. We haven’t expanded Medicaid. Now we have a whole new layer of inaction with the Covid-19 pandemic. All of these bad things have come out of gerrymandering.”
    Just over an hour west sits the newly redrawn 31st senate district, encompassing the rural, tobacco environs surrounding Winston-Salem. This district has changed dramatically as well – from a Republican plus-18 seat to just a Republican plus-four on the new map. For the last decade, the only action has come in heated Republican primaries, followed by a November coronation.
    “We haven’t had a history of competitive elections,” says Terri LeGrand, the Democratic challenger. But this seat is winnable. The new district not only cuts deeper toward blue Winston-Salem, it includes 20 new precincts – almost all of them Democratic-leaning – that had been buried inside a neighboring Republican district.
    “My opponent is on record, very open about the fact that she supports gerrymandering. She has absolutely no problem with it. So, it’s not something that we want to leave to chance.”
    Republicans aren’t gambling, either. Millions in dark money from Republican donors have been funneled into North Carolina through something called the Good Government Coalition. It is registered to an address at a UPS store in suburban Virginia, according to Raleigh television station WRAL, and the custodian of records is listed as Matthew Walter – formerly the president of the Republican State Legislative Committee, which pioneered the party’s REDMAP efforts in 2010.
    The funds have gone toward negative ads being hurled against LeGrand, for example, incorrectly suggesting that she supports defunding the police. Similar ads have targeted other Democratic contenders in close districts, in a strategy mimicking REDMAP ads that identified a hot-button local issue, then buried mailboxes under a weeks-long avalanche of misleading negative ads.
    “It’s grinding and vitriolic,” LeGrand says. “They’ve thrown everything at me because they know what’s at stake.”
    Texas: ‘It’s not a red state. It’s a suppression state’
    Deep in the upper-middle-class suburbs north-east of Dallas are the well-manicured towns neighboring the ultra-wealthy enclaves that George W Bush and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban call home. Here, Brandy Chambers holds one of the nine keys to Democratic hopes of flipping the Texas house for the first time in nearly two decades.
    White people, for example, make up just over 40% of all Texans, according to 2019 census figures, yet still control nearly 70% of the state’s congressional and state legislative seats. In 2018, Texas Republicans won just over 50% of the statewide vote for Congress, but nevertheless won two-thirds of the seats.
    That could change in 2021, and the 112th district could make all the difference. Nine seats separate Democrats from winning an all-important ticket to the redistricting table next year. They are increasingly competitive in Texas and had been able to flip 12 seats in the 2018 midterms.
    If they succeed, Democrats would influence the drawing of as many as 39 congressional districts gerrymandered by the GOP dating back to the early 2000s redraw, which divided liberal Austin into four districts with four conservatives. There could also be a strong impact on national politics, because Texas could receive at least three new seats in Congress following census reapportionment next year.
    A Democratic state house would provide a brake on voter suppression efforts that sunk Texas to 50th in voter turnout in 2018 and limited massive counties the size of New England states to one dropbox each this fall.
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    “It’s not a red state. It’s a suppression state, and by God, my governor and my attorney general are doing their damndest to keep it that way,” Chambers says. “But when Texas goes blue, we take our 38 to 41 electoral votes with us, and then there’s no math in which a Republican can win the White House without Texas. If they draw the maps? We could be stuck like chuck for another decade.”
    According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which rates state legislative races Moneyball-style, with an eye toward pushing donations toward the most meaningful races to impact redistricting, Texas’s 112th district is the most valuable in the state. “I was able to get so close in a historically very red district,” Chambers tells me. “If my race goes, a couple other races go, and we get a new House majority.”
    This year, determined Texans have withstood suppression efforts and set turnout records. More than seven million voted early, and numbers were highest in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and the surrounding environs that mirror the fast-growing, wealthy suburbs that have turned against the Republicans and Donald Trump.
    “The story this year is the Texas voter overcoming these obstacles inspired by the women by and large who are running for the Texas house,” says Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman who lost a Senate battle to Ted Cruz in 2018, but has organized nightly phone banks aimed at flipping the chamber. “I’ve never seen this level of organization and capitalization and strategic deployment of resources in my life.” More