Noted electoral statistician and founder of FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel “Nate” Silver, has dismissed the notion that there is a “Blue Wall”, a block of 18 -20 states firmly in the grip of Democratic Party, influencing any future presidential election outcome. Some political pundits argue that a “Blue Wall” has been emerging in recent electoral cycles, securing at least 242 electoral votes for the Democratic Party – virtually destroying the possibility of any future republican victory.
Nate Silver, a successful sports analyst who gained public recognition after accurately predicting the 2008 presidential election, rejected the notion of a “Blue Wall” being propagated by many political analysts.
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According to Sliver, the concept of a “Blue Wall” is just as unreliable and misleading as the earlier belief in a “Red Wall”, popular among political commentators in the 1980s, denoting most of the states along the West Coast as well as few traditionally republican states. In 1992, Bill Clinton broke this myth by winning in nine of those republican “lock” states.
In his recent column in FiveThirtyEight, Silver argues that many political pundits are misreading recent democratic electoral successes. Many of the Democratic successes in recent state-level Electoral Colleges have been marginal. He cites Barack Obama’s impressive victory in Electoral College votes in 2012 presidential election – 332 electoral votes, compared to Mitt Romney’s 206 – although Obama had managed to win the popular vote only by few percentage points.
According to Sliver, the presidential race for 2016 is wide open for candidates of both the parties and the much mooted “Blue Wall” would not automatically secure an outright victory for Hillary Clinton or any other democratic candidate.
