http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/opinion/campaign-stops/how-red-states-turn-blue-and-vice-versa.html 2016-10-13 16:18:43 How Red States Turn Blue (and Vice Versa) Politics can change more radically and rapidly than we often assume. === This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can Vermont has a claim on being the most liberal state in the nation – home to Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean and the site of President Obama’s largest 2012 victory outside of his native Hawaii. And yet Vermont’s blueness is recent. In every presidential election from the 1854 founding of the Republican Party through 1960, Vermont voted Republican. On the flip side, today’s solidly Republican Deep South never voted Republican for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As recently as 1988, West Virginia was one of the nation’s 10 most Democratic states. The point is, politics can change more radically and rapidly than we often assume. This year’s titanic struggle of an election, in particular, could accelerate change. White voters without a four-year college degree are becoming increasingly Republican, as my colleague FiveThirtyEight published It’s possible that Pennsylvania will change from blue to purple in coming years and that Iowa and Ohio will switch from purple to red. (Already, the Clinton campaign is treating On net, these trends favor the Democrats. Their groups – non-whites and college graduates – are growing. But there are also risks for the Democrats. The country still has a lot of whites without a college degree, and the Democrats have actually won support If the party writes off these voters – viewing them, to use Clinton’s distasteful word, as “