Tennessee and Kentucky are far more purple than conventional thought gives them credit for.
Fr not only do they lose the popular vote… even the red states aren’t all 80/20… there are miserable intelligent Americans everywhere and nobody gives a shit. I’ve lived in blue bubbles my whole life and spent a ton of time in red places with red people (stop, you know what I mean), and there are always normal blue people. And most red people are only a disinformation or two away from being with it. Unfortunately that’s all it takes in a two party system and they game it well. Take away angels and abortion and before the hell cult, most Americans are half decent and not Nazis.
That was the thing about Arizona it took the Democrats realizing it was a purple state and they should vote. That’s why these states seem to flip so suddenly. Then of course it’s a decade or two wait to get a state legislature that’s not gerrymandered to hell and back.
With the abortion issue there’s new organizing going on in a bunch of previously locked down red states.
Take away Memphis and see how much the hue of Tennessee shifts towards 0°.
Take away New York, or Baltimore, or Detroit, or any city really. It has long since ceased to be a state level thing. The system however is still running like it’s the 1840’s.
Tennessee is somewhat of an outlier, as its other major cities skew red, though at least in part artificially so. Nashville, for example, is part of three different districts now, the 5th, 6th, and 7th. It’s been lost to gerrymandering. Knoxville, in the 2nd, and Chattanooga in the 3rd are heavily Republican cities.
The 4th contains conservative-leaning private universities and suburbs of Nashville and Chattanooga.
The 9th District, colloquially “Memphis” in my previous statement, is the only district in the state that currently has a significantly strong Democratic voter base. If anything, it became even more blue after the 2023 re-districting moved part of East Memphis to the already conservative 8th district.
Of the districts other than Memphis, the 5th, which can be thought of as the ghost of Nashville, is the closest to even resembling purple; even so, it has a CVPI of R+9.
