>

No.
It would require enough diehard states flipping that there would have to be a truly serious swing in political discourse.
Long time blue states would have to suddenly go red, or long time red states would have to suddenly go blue.
Could you seriously see a Conservative candidate winning California or Alabama going Democrat?
The short answer is No.  The long answer is Heeeelllll Nooooo!!  
It's sad, but we're in a very different political world than we were 30 years ago. >

It's not sad. The last candidates that got that many votes (Reagan, Nixon) were terrible. Like. Really terrible. >

It’s always funny to see people on Reddit bash Reagan, when the real world opinion of him is still overwhelmingly positive. I often wonder how many people shitting on him actually lived through any of his presidency. >


when the real world opinion of him is still overwhelmingly positive

You got any evidence for that assertion?

I often wonder how many people shitting on him actually lived through any of his presidency.

If you weren't alive, your opinion is irrelevant?
EDIT: lol this person below really responded to me and then blocked me immediately
The link busean posted below proves them wrong
Giddyup claims I asked for evidence of an opinion, but that never happened. >

Nope. The country is way too divided for landslides like that to ever happen again. Honestly, even Obama’s 2012 numbers (332 electoral votes) seem hard to reach these days. >

No. 350 is the new 400.
But, Democrats have a more reasonable path to it than the GOP does.
Start with Biden's map from 2020. Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio gets you to 406.
Spot the GOP Trump's map from 2016, give them every swing state, and even states like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, Colorado, and Nevada, and they're still stuck at 350ish.
You'd have to have a candidate so broadly acceptable, or such a weak opposing candidate, as to defy logic. Even a divisive candidate will get you 230 EV or so. >

To hit 400, the GOP would need to run an old-school Rockefeller Republican who, somehow and someway, would put New York in play.
But yeah, won't happen in our current political climate. >

If they did that, there would very likely be a 3rd party challenge from a conservative, a MAGA, or both. >

if we go to war it is more likely the president might get 400 votes. otherwise, no
There is a rally and pull together effect , in my opinion, that would unite the country as we fight off the threat. >

Question: Would that work both ways? i.e. would a Democrat get the same benefit from this as a Republican? I suspect not. >

i believe so. Though personally i was happy we had a gop president when 9/11 hit..even though I thought he was not very intelligent and a dry drunk I always had thought the gop were more hawkish. And if war occurs that might be a good thing. However now that the potential threats from some countries are more apparent and some countries are labeled enemies or implicity labeled enemies from both sides of the aisle I believe either side is likely to do well. Now there is a basic understanding among all that diplomacy and treaties, over the course of history, delay but do not stop war. That is an important understanding. >

In our current political climate? No. But Democrats have a better shot of taking Texas than Republicans do of taking California. So by this logic, Democrats will have an easier time capturing 400 than Republicans. 
If we look back to the 2016 map, you can see that Trump dominated the Midwest. If a future GOP candidate repeated this, but also happened to pick up Virginia, Nevada and New Mexico (the three next swing states), that person still wouldn’t have beat Obama’s 2012 electoral victory (never-mind his even larger 2008 ‘landslide’ win). 
But, conversely, looking at Biden’s 2020 map, if a future Dem candidate expanded on it by picking up the three next closest states (North Carolina, Texas, and Florida), then that Democrat would have won 373 votes, even beating Obama’s 2008 landslide win.
This is why the GOP’s structural advantage in the EC is not permanent. They can get past 270 easily (for now), but getting above ~330 gets immensely more difficult. The moment Texas becomes a swing state, the GOP will struggle to get 270 without a dramatic shift in policy. >

I think If the GOP loses Texas twice in a row they will dramatically shift policies. Unfortunately, that's an 8 year time period. And hopes they can't enact enough voter suppression to keep this from happening too much longer. >

Don't a lot of people move for jobs? There are pockets that are very different. >

Not on a first go. The country is too split. But a candidate for either party could get it on the second go depending on how they govern. >

IMO that's unrealistic. Trump governed corruptly and incompetently and look at the 2020 results. >

Not to mention that they'd need a massive wave in their first election so that they could implement any meaningful policy that would convince doubters to vote for them. >

In a true 2 party contest, I don’t think it’s doable as of right now. But the Sword of Damocles that hangs over this discussion is Trump’s footsie/pseudo-threat to form a third party or encourage his supporters to sit out an election where he’s not the nominee. Having turned the GOP into a policy-free grievance cesspool, there’s a sizable chunk of the Republican base that would not care about the policy impact of splitting the vote on the right. All it would take is 10-15% of self ID’d Republicans (and the MAGA die hard independents who in reality are anything but) staying home/writing in Trump/protest voting and every pink state/EV would be in play (FL, IA, ME-2, NC, OH, TX…if it was toward the high end of that estimate perhaps even AK, KS, MO, MT, SC). No such threat exists on the Democratic side (indeed—having lost the White House twice in a single generation because of factional left wing candidates has likely silenced left of center spoiler candidates for the rest of my lifetime). 
So I doubt it’s doable, but to the extent that it IS, it would be a Democrat who did it. >

Most likely scenario is a halfway decent president running for re election during wartime, regardless of party. By that I mean actual war, like something caused by a Pearl Harbour situation, not us back door supporting Ukraine >

It's a pendulum.
It will swing back the other way again.
Everyone over 60 grew up in a white supremacist world, and the Republican Party can use that dog whistle effectively. Until enough of them die.
People younger than 60 grew up in a world in which white supremacists were steadily, but noisily, losing power and influence.
For people 45-60, we witnessed the changes each stage of our lives, as the Elder racists constantly tried to punish us unless we supported them, and later, it was about pressuring us to support the Republican Party as code for the "proud heritage" of the past.
For people 30-45, they were encouraged to believe that people of color were coming to kill them, and that permanent warfare and one party rule was the only way to save themselves. Thankfully, most of them didn't buy that bullshit.
For people in their 20s, they don't need any dog whistling to tell them anything. They grew up seeing first hand how the Elders behaved like toddlers because the president was a black man.
To the Elders who have been waiting all their lives to see this change: THANK YOU. You stood up to the racists when they controlled the whole country. You aren't the majority of the Elders, but you did your best and you taught us well. >


Everyone over 60 grew up in a white supremacist world, and the Republican Party can use that dog whistle effectively. Until enough of them die.

Voters over 65 broke about evenly Trump 51% to Biden 48%.

For people 45-60, we witnessed the changes each stage of our lives, as the Elder racists constantly tried to punish us unless we supported them, and later, it was about pressuring us to support the Republican Party as code for the "proud heritage" of the past.

Voters 45-64 broke about evenly Trump 51% to Biden 48%.

For people 30-45, they were encouraged to believe that people of color were coming to kill them, and that permanent warfare and one party rule was the only way to save themselves. Thankfully, most of them didn't buy that bullshit.

Well the 18-29 age grp in 2008 is roughly analogous to the 30-44 age grp in 2020, and went from voting 66-32 Dem to 55-43 Dem. I wonder why......

It's a pendulum. It will swing back the other way again.

If you want to understand why voters would vote for an incompetent douche like Trump its because they (likely correctly) find your brand of politics to be worse. >

2008 was a special case because Obama was a youth hearthtrob with JFK level charisma.  Not to mention in 2008 the economy fell apart under Bush's watch and young people hated the Iraq War.
If you compare 18-29s from 2004 to 30-44 2020, that 10-15 point D advantage is similar.  Both those elections featured a boring blah white guy Democrat against a divisive Republican. >

Gen X was extremely disenchanted that the Elders, who outnumbered them, voted for Reagan and Republicans.
Not enough of them have come back to voting, even now. But that will change in the next two elections. >

Well, depends if memetic weapons get into the game. If so? Expect every election to be highly contested unless you go authoritarian with information controls (and to be honest, this will happen no matter what given the fact that the technological context has shifted in such a direction). If not, then a maybe after the GOP falls apart. >

Not in a head-to-head matchup.  Most likely way for this to happen is for someone else to beat Trump in the primary, and Trump runs a successful third-party campaign.  You could see Dems win a deep red state with 40% of the vote, so long as the GOP and Trump split the other 60%.  Biden would likely clear 400 votes if that happens. >

The biggest thing is that the technological context has generally changed, and people ignored the warning signs or papers that basically predicted what has happened so far (like MIT's 1996 paper Electronic Communities: World Village or Cyber Balkans, which is readable for free if you want to take a gander though, spoiler warning, we're living in the 'Cyber Balkans' portion), and we've all made to suffer for that.
​
In addition, memetic weapons are now in play, and that means 'fun' in the most sarcastic sense of the word without what amounts to -in the previous technological context- authoritarian information controls. Why make policy when you can just cook up some memetic ordinance to basically hack the population to vote for you no matter what? I mean, that last part has already happened back in 2016 between Brexit, the rise of Far-Right in Europe, and the Trump election (all part of a Russian military intelligence operation no less). >

Thanks so much for the MIT paper reference. I can’t wait to read. >

At the present time it does seem highly unlikely.  But a truly severe scandal (that even their own side thinks is horrific) could do it if it breaks very close to the election.  It'd have to be awfully extreme though, as well as awfully blatant so that it can't be rationalized away or doubted. >

Its hard to even imagine a scandal of that magnitude being possible, it feels like after 1/6 nothing can pierce that bubble on the right.
Edit: removed words that were redundant >

Maybe if there was like video proof of a presidential candidate molesting kids or something that got released the day of or day before an election so the party couldn’t drop the nominee. Beside something of that magnitude and timing, you’re right. Almost nothing would move the needle that far. >

I'm almost curious to see what'd happen if a Republican or Democratic presidential candidate has some third rail type scandal (e.g., incestuous relationship) drop at the last minute, if only to witness people's rationalizations in real time. >

No, they cannot get more than 400 votes today unless there was a truly catastrophic collapse of the GOP in TX or the democrats in CA.  I agree that a third party could make it possible but I honestly feel like it would need to be a third-party candidate that was running to the left of the democratic candidate so as to divide the far left vote from the moderate left vote.
That said, this is predictable as during the 50', 60's, 70's, and 80's political scientists actually argued that the political parties were failing in their duties to give the people a real choice as each party had a liberal, moderate, and conservative wing so much of the election came down to personal qualities of the candidate and not their actual policy positions.  This led to obscene results where Nixon and Reagan won more than 500 EVs but never controlled all branches of government.  Now we have situations where, in 2020, it was the first time that the Senate race and the Presidential winner were the same in every state that also had a Senate race so it seems that we have massively over-corrected on this issue. >

I'm going to counter the sentiment in these comments and say yes. I wager the... Political desperation present in so many different factions is precisely the kind of thing that leads to politically risky or short-sighted gambits (like a 3rd party candidate gaining steam) that could throw the EC entirely towards one party's candidate. >

Yes, definitely if there is a 3rd party spoiler.  
Democrats have a shot.  So also yes if there is some kind of depression that hits that Republicans are blamed for.
Ie: the Biden states + the closest red states from 2020 would add up to 412.  They are, in order of closeness: 1) North Carolina, 2) Florida, 3) Texas, 4)Ohio, 5) Iowa.  
I don't think the Republicans have a shot at 400 unless something extraordinary happens. Giving them Bush's states from 2004 which includes VA, CO, NM, NV only gets them 296.  Add Trump's flips from 2016 - WI, MI, PA, gets them 340. Add NH and MN that's 355.  Even giving them the very outside possibilities of winning the next closest blue states, which are in order 1) ME, 2) NJ, 3) OR,  only gets them to 380.  
The next closest is IL.  That only gets them to 399!  Gotta give 'em Delaware to get to 402.
NY, IL, and CA are helluva drugs in terms of electoral weight.