The 2019 book Identity Crisis, by political scientists John Sides, [UCI political science professor] Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck, points to a large shift in party identification starting in 2010, triggered by the election of President Barack Obama. Following the election of the first Black president, a Democrat, white voters who are “racially conservative” fled the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. By the 2016 election, the historic Democratic “blue wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio was no longer so sound: All three states ultimately voted Republican.

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