American political realignment

The 2020's and 2030's saw rapid yet very major paradigm shifts in America's political system. During the first decades of the 21st century, the success of the Democratic Party was limited to the Northeast, West coast, and Upper Midwest. In 2008, Barack Obama flipped Colorado and New Mexico into the Democratic column, where they would remain for many years. The same happened in Virginia, as the growth of the D.C. suburbs pushed the state from red to blue. However, Donald Trump stunned everyone by winning huge upset victories in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania- states that were supposed to be in the Democratic column. In 2020, all three of these states flipped back into the Democratic column, and Joe Biden thus defeated Trump. (Biden also won narrowly in Arizona and Florida) However, the major political shifts in America were just beginning.

America in the 2020's was marked by a stable and more transparent government, but also by an economy that was stagnant, if not decaying. The COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020/2021 was a catalyst for this, although there were other factors as well. New York City's economy in particular was devastated by the pandemic, and it never fully recovered. Over half the restaurants were permanently closed, many local museums shuttered permanently, and the city began hemorrhaging it's population. To make matters worse, hurricanes in the mid-Atlantic became much more frequent- enough so that the American east coast became known as "the hurricane coast." From 2020 onward, every state on the eastern seaboard- from Florida to Maine, would experience at least one major tropical storm or hurricane every year. Although most beaches erected flood barriers, each hurricane would devastate the suburbs, knocking down trees, snapping power lines, and overflowing rivers and brooks. This would cause most communities to experience power outages for days, if not weeks every summer. This also caused many people to flee to inner states where hurricanes were not an issue. As such, almost the entire east coast began shrinking in population in the 2020's.

Meanwhile, California's economy was also in tatters as the results of increased hurricanes but primarily because of wildfires. By 2030, roughly 15% of the entire state had been scorched by at least one wildfire. Residents from there also began to move to other states. This caused major increases in population of states such as Arizona, Colorado, Montana, and even Wyoming. Likewise, central and northwestern Texas also experienced a population boom. Evacuees from the east coast also caused the populations of Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, and several other major cities to swell.

With the once vibrant and bustling east and west coasts becoming increasingly decrepit, this obviously caused a major shift in the political paradigm. Although states like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts would always remain firmly in the Democratic column, other states became surprisingly competitive, such as New Hampshire and Maine. Georgia, once a reliably Republican state, would become an easy win for Democrats by 2030. The same applied to states like Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. States such as Ohio and Iowa, once major bellwethers, shifted hard to the right after 2016, while the Great Lakes States would replace them as the central battlegrounds in elections.