US Sun Belt presents a glittering target for Democrats
By Gavin Clancy, Senior Consultant
If the United States has a so-called Rust Belt – an unkind reference to the former industrial heartland in the north of the nation – it also has a ‘Sun Belt’.
That’s the title commonly given to the warmer climate of the southern-most states, stretching from the south-east coast, through the border states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, across to southern California.
The Sun Belt states have also been active in luring industries – and people – south for the advantages of climate and lifestyle.
As a result, those states also tend to record the highest population growth.
According to the US Census, between 2010 and 2019 the population of Texas rose from 25.1 million to almost 29 million, Florida (18.8 million to 21.4 million), Georgia (9.6 million to 10.6 million), South Carolina (4.6 million to 5.1 million) and Arizona (6.3 million to 7.2 million).
Apart from the swing state of Florida, and New Mexico and California, the Republican Party has generally owned these states in presidential races for more than 20 years.
In 2016, Donald Trump maintained the Republican dominance in the southern states that form the Sun Belt, including Georgia, Texas and South Carolina, as well as securing Florida.
New Mexico and the traditional liberal stronghold of California, however, stayed with the Democratic Party.
In the 2020 Presidential election, the Democrats face the challenge of not only regaining the swing states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the so-called Rust Belt, but also striking some electoral breakthroughs in the Sun Belt states.
That includes re-taking Florida, won by Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections, and taking other key seats in the South. Georgia, for example, hasn’t voted Democrat in US presidential races since President Bill Clinton’s win in 1992.
And the second-most populous state – Texas – last voted for a Democrat President in 1976, when Jimmy Carter swept into office.
Meanwhile Arkansas and Tennessee – the former home states of Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore – last voted Democrat when Clinton and Gore were comfortably returned to office in 1996.
Both were Southerners, of course. But Barack Obama hailed from the northern state of Illinois, while Democratic candidate Joe Biden is from Delaware, in the north-east.
Winning Texas, with 38 Electoral College votes, and the bellwether state of Florida, with 29 votes, would represent a major coup for the Democrats and a severe electoral blow for Republican prospects in the Sun Belt, and of course, for the White House.