The blue wall is no more. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It’s stiff, bereft of life. It rests in peace.
About half an hour ago (as I write this) the Associated Press and NBC News put the final nail in the blue wall’s coffin when they called Michigan for Donald Trump.
BREAKING: Donald Trump wins Michigan, NBC News projects. pic.twitter.com/9fGsbnRxwd
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 6, 2024
Here’s the announcment from the AP:
BREAKING: Donald Trump wins Michigan. #APRaceCall at 12:54 p.m. EST. https://t.co/FjgpZFcJ4E
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) November 6, 2024
And Fox News also made the same call around the same time. As they note, this means Trump has swept the three blue wall states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
🚨BREAKING: Donald Trump wins the state of Michigan pic.twitter.com/5nmaN9MZBi
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 6, 2024
Politico has a story up on the collapse of the blue wall and what it could mean for elected Democrats in those states.
Harris’s team long acknowledged that the Blue Wall was key to her path, and they thought she could keep it by winning over Republican and moderate suburban women on abortion and democracy. It was a huge gamble that proved costly in the face of intense social and economic headwinds: Immigration backlash. Muslim and Arab American voters are irate about the current administration’s Middle East policy. Some of the worst inflation in decades. White, blue-collar workers increasingly embracing Trump, paired with erosion in Black and Latino support, especially among men…
“I did not expect the kind of numbers that you’re seeing in Pennsylvania. And I was optimistic that we were going to win,” said David Urban, a former Trump campaign adviser. “The economy was the number-one issue people cared about. And I think the economy and social issues kind of woven together helped build that coalition.”
Democrats also initially mistook high turnout in some areas as positive indicators. In reality, they were often signs that Trump was making inroads with key pieces of the Democrats’ coalition, especially Latinos, while holding off Harris’ advances in the suburbs…
Trump’s dominance across the Blue Wall means that Republicans will likely set their sights on the three Democratic governors’ seats in those states — especially Tony Evers in Wisconsin and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, who are up for reelection in 2026.
As you can see, this brings Trump up to 292 electoral votes.
BREAKING – Trump wins Michigan, expanding victory margin pic.twitter.com/zjtmwYBWoK
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) November 6, 2024
For reasons that aren’t clear to me, Alaska still hasn’t been called for Trump even though he leads with 71% of the vote tallied. Trump is also leading in Nevada and Arizona, though Arizona has only reported 63% of the vote. But if he eventually claims those three states, that would bring his total electoral votes up to 312. And along with that, it’s also looking as if Trump will win the popular vote this time. He’s currently up by nearly 5 million votes but only about half of California’s votes have been tallied so that total will drop over the next week.
What comes next for the Democrats is a deep dive into the reason for their own failure especially in those blue wall states. This will take months and, frankly, I’m not convinced Democrats will really get to the real reasons they lost. Still, it will be interesting to see what they come up with.
