I could imagine this turning into a flexible system of alliances similar to the conference system in NCAA college football and other sports (see here for a nice illustrated history of the many changes over time). Just as conferences and schools negotiate membership based on the changing quality of their sports programs, ability to generate revenue, and so on, states could form coalitions that could be renegotiated based on changing populations or voter preferences.
Thinking from that perspective, one potential Schelling point could be a “Northwest” coalition of WA/OR/ID/MT/WY/ND/SD/NE. This is quite well-balanced, as these states combined to give 21 EV to each candidate. And although the state populations are higher in WA/OR (12.0M) than the six red states (7.4M), the combined vote totals actually show a small lead for Trump (4.1M vs 3.9M, with more votes remaining to be counted in the blue states likely to close the gap).
After this, maybe the remaining “Southwest” states (NV, UT, CO, AZ, NM) decide to join forces? Here a state by state analysis is less useful, especially since two of them still haven’t been called, but the current combined vote count is a very narrow Trump lead of 4.07M to 4.05M.
The eastern half of the country seems harder to predict—clearly there are large potential blocs of blue states in the northeast and red states in the southeast, but it’s harder to see clear geographical groupings that make sense.
Unlikely any of this happens of course, but fun to think about.
I could imagine this turning into a flexible system of alliances similar to the conference system in NCAA college football and other sports (see here for a nice illustrated history of the many changes over time). Just as conferences and schools negotiate membership based on the changing quality of their sports programs, ability to generate revenue, and so on, states could form coalitions that could be renegotiated based on changing populations or voter preferences.
Thinking from that perspective, one potential Schelling point could be a “Northwest” coalition of WA/OR/ID/MT/WY/ND/SD/NE. This is quite well-balanced, as these states combined to give 21 EV to each candidate. And although the state populations are higher in WA/OR (12.0M) than the six red states (7.4M), the combined vote totals actually show a small lead for Trump (4.1M vs 3.9M, with more votes remaining to be counted in the blue states likely to close the gap).
After this, maybe the remaining “Southwest” states (NV, UT, CO, AZ, NM) decide to join forces? Here a state by state analysis is less useful, especially since two of them still haven’t been called, but the current combined vote count is a very narrow Trump lead of 4.07M to 4.05M.
The eastern half of the country seems harder to predict—clearly there are large potential blocs of blue states in the northeast and red states in the southeast, but it’s harder to see clear geographical groupings that make sense.
Unlikely any of this happens of course, but fun to think about.