In terms of red states going blue, Texas gets most of the ink (I myself wrote a recent piece on possibilities for a blue Texas). That’s understandable. Moving Texas and its 38 votes out of the red column would sunder Republicans’ already tenuous path to an Electoral College majority.

But Georgia’s 16 electoral votes are not trivial and would, if lost, also do grievous damage to Republican prospects. Yet we hear relatively little about possibilities for a blue Georgia, despite the fact that Georgia is, in many respects, a more plausible candidate than Texas for changing colors. Zac McCrary and Bryan Stryker’s strong argument, as well as some of my own research, suggests that we might see Georgia’s votes go to the Democratic candidate as soon as the 2020 Presidential election.

Start with the basic facts on electoral performance as rehearsed by McCrary and Stryker:

In 2012, Georgia was the second most competitive state carried by Mitt Romney (+7.8 percent Romney) — behind only North Carolina (+2.0 percent Romney). Romney’s margin in Georgia was narrower than his winning margins in 2008-cycle swing states Missouri (+9.4 percent Romney) and Indiana (+10.2 percent Romney) as well as in forward-looking Democratic target states Arizona (+9.1 percent Romney) and Texas (+15.8 percent Romney). And in 2008, Georgia was the third most competitive state won by McCain, behind only Missouri and Montana.

The 2012 numbers aren’t accidents. A slate of underlying demographic trends are pushing Georgia in a bluer direction.

In the last decade, Georgia had a rapid rate of increase in its minority population, going from 37 to 44 percent minority over the time period. The increase in the minority population accounted for 81 percent of Georgia’s growth over the decade. Unusually, the biggest contributor to minority growth came from blacks, who alone accounted for 39 percent of Georgia’s growth. The next largest contributor was Hispanics, whose numbers increased at a scorching 96 percent pace and accounted for 26 percent of the state’s growth.

By 2020, along with Nevada and Maryland, Georgia is almost certain to join the ranks of majority-minority states. These ongoing shifts should continue to move Georgia in a more competitive direction.

The geographical locus of that change will likely be in the burgeoning Atlanta metropolitan area, whose share of the statewide vote continues to grow (up to 54 percent in the 2012 election). It is here that the new Georgia is taking shape most clearly. As summarized by McCrary and Stryker:

Of metro Atlanta’s roughly one million new residents over the past decade, 90 percent are non-white (54 percent African American / 31 percent Hispanic). This growth reduced the metro area’s white percentage from 60 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2010. Conversely, African Americans (from 29 percent to 32 percent of the area’s population) and Hispanics (from 6 percent to 10 percent) have undergone a population boom.

Reflecting these changes, Obama carried the Atlanta metro in both 2008 and 2012, by 4 points and 1 point, respectively. That’s a 21 point Democratic swing from the 1988 Presidential election. The changes—and the improvements for Democrats–are generally even gaudier in the metro area’s (and the state’s) most populous counties: Cobb (138 percent of growth from minorities, 34 point margin shift toward Democrats since 1988); DeKalb (143 percent of growth from minorities, 55 point shift toward Democrats); Fulton (94 percent of growth from minorities, 16 point shift toward Democrats) and Gwinnett (118 percent of growth from minorities, 42 point shift toward Democrats).

With figures like this, it’s not hard to see a blue Georgia taking shape in the near future — probably nearer than Texas, despite its slightly higher Democratic support among whites and slightly higher minority share of voters. The secret ingredient: Georgia’s minority voters are dominated by extremely pro-Democratic African-Americans. That pushes overall Democratic support among minorities in Georgia about 20 points higher than in Texas. That makes a huge difference and explains why Georgia has been so much closer in the last two elections than Texas.

But how near is this near future we’re talking about? Could be pretty near. Projections we have done at CAP suggest the minority percentage of eligible voters in Georgia should rise by about 3.5 percentage points between 2012 and 2016. All else equal, that could cut the Democratic deficit by as much as 5 points (that is, reducing Obama’s 8 point deficit in 2012 to a mere 3 points). And by 2020, if trends continue, a blue Georgia seems eminently possible.

But, of course, all else might not be equal. That’s why the quest for a blue Georgia, just as the quest for a blue Texas, is going to have to be built on a three-legged stool, only one leg of which is ongoing demographic change. The other two are matching minority, particularly Hispanic, turnout to white turnout and elevating white support for Democrats. In the former area, the Democrats have an advantage relative to Texas because such a higher proportion of the minority vote is black and blacks have been turning out a high rate. But that has to continue post-Obama. Moreover, a greater proportion of the Georgia minority vote in the future will be Latino and these voters, according to recent data, turn out at a rate 17 points lower than blacks. Closing that gap will be an important part of any blue Georgia strategy.

In the latter area, if the Democrats can simply get their support among whites into the 25-30 percent range (support was probably around 20 percent in 2012) — in other words, make the typical GOP landslide among Georgia whites just a little bit less of a landslide — they will be in a good position to stand firmly on the three legged stool and take blue Georgia from aspiration to reality.

Rhodes Cook recently posted an excellent, data-rich take on the new Democratic Presidential majority. His data break down the specific reasons that that the national Democratic advantage is durable and further suggest that the demographic trends behind it it are also having trickle-down effects on other elections in purple states like Virginia and Colorado.

Cook builds his analysis by comparing Obama’s performance in 2012 to Dukakis’ performance in 1988, the last election before the Democrats went on their current run of popular vote victories (five of six elections). Cook remarks:

Democrats have made great strides on the electoral map since 1988. They have established firm bases of support on both coasts, more than held their own in the battleground states of the industrial Midwest, and made inroads into Republican terrain in the South and the Mountain West. But the Democratic vote share has not increased everywhere since 1988, when Michael Dukakis lost the popular vote 53.4% to 45.6% to Republican George H.W. Bush. In a total of 19 states, Dukakis drew a larger share of the vote in 1988 than the victorious Barack Obama did in 2012. These states were predominantly rural in complexion and scattered about the country — in Appalachia, the South and border South, the upper Midwest, the Plains states and the Mountain West.

Cook provides a map that usefully summarizes these disparate trends between 1988 and 2012:

Driving these trends within and across states have been sweeping changes in how urban, suburban and rural residents vote. As Cook puts it:

It is no mystery how the Democrats transformed themselves from an also-ran in presidential politics in the 1970s and 1980s to a dominant force since 1992. In the last two decades, they have expanded their majorities in the nation’s major urban centers and flipped populous suburban counties adjacent to such cities as New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in their favor. But Democrats have tanked of late in rural America, from the “God and guns country” of western Pennsylvania and the Appalachian states to the small towns of the South and the Plains.

Cook illustrates these trends with a handy table:

Cook concludes his analysis with a look at the stunning transformation of Northern Virginia. In 1988, Dukakis could only carry the liberal bastions of Arlington and Alexandria. But in 2012, Obama carried every major suburban jurisdiction in Northern Virginia, running up a margin of a quarter million votes in the area, more than enough to counterbalance his 80,000 vote loss in the rest of the state. Cook provides a table that documents this transformation:

Cook’s data on Virginia are particularly interesting to contemplate in light of the recent self-inflicted wounds incurred by the state’s GOP. Instead of adapting to an ongoing wave of change, they are hurtling in the opposite direction. The Virginia GOP’s caucus nominated a far right winger, E.W. Jackson, for lieutenant governor. Jackson is so poisonously extreme that his nomination may effectively eliminate the chances of his running mate, the extreme-in-his-own-right Ken Cuccinelli, to win the Virginia governorship. In addition, the state party cannot yet come up with anyone to run against Democrat Mark Warner in next year’s Senate race and may wind up effectively ceding the seat to Warner.

This disarray, as Josh Kraushaar pointed out in a recent National Journal article, is mirrored in Colorado, another fast-changing state contributing to the new Democratic Presidential majority:

The [Colorado] party’s brightest recruit, Rep. Cory Gardner, just opted to pass up a Senate campaign against Mark Udall, leaving the GOP empty-handed. Even more startling is the reemergence of immigration hardliner Tom Tancredo as a legitimate gubernatorial candidate, jumping in the race this month against Gov. John Hickenlooper. (Tancredo won 36 percent of the vote as a third-party candidate in 2010.) If Republicans can’t contest the Senate and governorship in 2014, it would mark eight straight setbacks in presidential, Senate, and gubernatorial contests dating back nearly a decade.

Remarkable. It’s almost like the party’s in shock — and the faster the change, the greater the shock and disorientation. Unless the GOP shakes off its current state, the new Democratic Presidential majority could be with us for quite awhile.

As I pointed out on TP Ideas last Thursday, the new Census voting data show that the GOP’s problem in 2012 was not “missing white voters”, but rather the ongoing march of demographic change. In fact, if we want to talk about missing voters, it makes more sense to talk about missing Latino voters.

Latino turnout lagged white turnout by a very substantial 16 points (48 percent vs. 64 percent). These missing voters are helping the GOP at this point, blunting the impact of demographic change on Republican electoral fortunes. But that might not last forever: this gap represents a potential tranche of votes which, if tapped by successful mobilization efforts, could make GOP’s situation much worse than it already is.

How much worse?  Reid Wilson at National Journal did the math, using census data to show how many additional Hispanic votes would be generated by state if Hispanic turnout matched white turnout:

Of course, Obama won anyway in 2012, even with all these missing Hispanic votes.  But in closer elections, they could be critical. Perhaps one day, mobilizing these Hispanic voters might play a significant role in turning Texas purple, Arizona blue and Colorado and Nevada even bluer.

Maybe instead of worrying about missing white voters, Republicans should start worrying about missing Hispanic voters. And what might happen if they started showing up.

There are two keys to achieving real political dominance for the Obama coalition.  First, the Obama coalition must be mobilized beyond Presidential elections.  That means between elections in the struggle to achieve legislative victories and in Congressional elections, where turnout patterns must align more closely with Presidential elections.  Second, the Obama coalition must be widened to take in a larger share of the white working class.  Otherwise, the hostility of these voters will undercut public support for the President’s agenda, as well as remaining a lurking threat in every election, particularly Congressional ones.

Both of these objectives will be seriously compromised if strong growth does not return to the American economy and soon.  Take white working class voters.  These voters are primarily looking for material improvements in their lives, improvements that are not possible without strong economic growth and the jobs, tight labor markets and rising incomes such growth would bring.  In a low growth environment, these voters will remain exceptionally pessimistic and inclined to blame Democrats and government for their lack of upward mobility.

Even more serious, core groups of the Obama coalition will be weakened by continued slow growth.  Obama was well-supported by these groups in 2012, but a sluggish economic environment, where unemployment continues pushing 8 percent will try these voters’ patience.  How much enthusiasm will Hispanics, blacks, youth, single women, etc., whose unemployment rates are considerably above the national average, continue to have for a party that cannot do more to improve economic conditions?  Attrition in support will be inevitable in such a scenario and the opportunity to consolidate a dominant coalition will be lost.

So the stakes in the battle for more and faster growth are high.  But you would not guess that from the issues preoccupying Washington.  Instead, in the very same week when we received a dreadful jobs report—just 88,000 jobs were added to the economy—President Obama has made yet another attempt to revive a Grand Bargain with Republicans by outlining a budget plan that replaces the automatic sequestered spending cuts with other spending cuts while also raising $580 billion in revenue and making cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Whatever the other merits of this proposal may be, it will do nothing for economic growth and, in fact, will continue the ongoing pattern of spending cuts that are undermining our recovery and thereby the future prospects of the Obama coalition.  Grand Bargains are no substitute for growth and both consumers and voters know the difference.

It’s common to observe that unmarried women are a key part of the progressive coalition these days. And it is true that Obama carried this group by a wide 67-31 margin in 2012, not far off his 70-29 margin in 2008. Unmarried women were also a larger share of voters, 23 percent vs. 21 percent in 2008. Pretty impressive.

But is far less widely noted that unmarried men have also become a significant part of the progressive coalition. Despite the unflattering portrayals in the media of single guys as aimless yahoos, they do in fact have some definite—and progressive—politics. In the 2012 election, unmarried men favored Obama by a healthy 56-40 margin, close to the 58-38 margin they gave him in 2008. And their share of voters went up even more than unmarried women, increasing by 4 points to 18 percent.

Unmarried men’s progressive leanings are not unique to the last two elections either. As the chart below shows, these voters supported Clinton twice, as well as Gore and Kerry. The last time they supported a Republican candidate was in 1988, when they gave George H.W. Bush a modest 3 point margin over Michael Dukakis:

The country has changed a lot since then….and so have single guys. Time to rethink our stereotypes.

Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and the Center for American Progress, where he focuses on political demography. He is the author, with John Judis, of The Emerging Democratic Majority.

State Senator-Elect Cecilia Tkaczyk (D-NY)

Progressive Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk has been elected to the New York State Senate over former Assemblyman George Amedore (R), after a successful court challenge led to the counting of 99 previously uncounted ballots from the November elections. Amedore, a wealthy real estate developer, saw his 37 vote lead become a 19 vote loss as the ballots were counted Thursday and Friday.

Tkaczyk ran a strongly progressive campaign in the Albany-area district, emphasizing her support for public education, LGBT equality, equal pay for women, reproductive choice, environmental protection, and campaign finance reform. Though she was heavily outspent by Amedore, she benefited from outside spending by supporters of public financing for candidates. In a December op/ed, she observed: “If I do get sworn in, I’ll know my support for public financing is a central reason I won the job.”

Amedore, on the other hand, was a strong conservative who opposed marriage equality, abortion rights, equal pay for women, and increasing the minimum wage. He consistently opposed campaign finance reform as an Assemblyman and attacked the idea of public financing of campaigns.

A coalition of Republicans and Independent Democrats share power and jointly control the 63-member Senate. But with Tkaczyk’s newly-determined victory, Republican Conference Leader Dean Skelos will have a minority of seats — strengthening both the influence of the five-member Independent Democratic Conference and the likelihood of progressive legislation passing the body. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver are both Democrats.

The legislature is expected to take up campaign finance reform this session. LGBT advocates are also hopeful that the long-delayed Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act will finally be enacted to provide employment protections for transgender New Yorkers.