At LAT "Orange County has voted for the GOP in every presidential election since 1936. This year, it could go blue":
It was the home of Richard Nixon, the cradle of Ronald Reagan’s career and, for decades, a virtual synonym for the Republican Party of California.Keep reading.
Now, for the first time since the Depression, Orange County stands on the verge of choosing a Democrat for president, potentially ending the longest streak of Republican presidential victories of any county in the state.
That possibility symbolizes how the American political map has been upended by Donald Trump’s campaign: He has sped up a decade-long shift in which the GOP has gathered strength in white, blue-collar regions that once routinely elected Democrats, but traditional Republican suburbs increasingly have turned blue.
From Chester County outside Philadelphia to Gwinnett County east of Atlanta and on to Fort Bend County near Houston and Tarrant County west of Dallas, big, affluent suburban regions seem likely to shift significantly toward Hillary Clinton this year, according to analysts who track county-level voting trends.
That’s an immediate hurdle for the GOP, which has long counted on suburban strength to offset Democratic votes in the cities. It could be an even bigger problem in the longer term because those suburbs are among the nation’s most economically dynamic, growing regions.
The shift reflects changing demographics: As with Orange County, many of the nation’s suburbs have become racially and ethnically diverse, shedding their status as all-white enclaves.
It has been accelerated by Trump’s weakness among college-educated, white voters. That group has sided with the Republican in every presidential election since reliable polling began in the U.S. in the 1940s, but this year it has consistently shown a Democratic majority in polls...
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