Two Demographic Shifts Are Rewriting the US Political Map

—Political analysts have identified two major demographic megatrends that are fundamentally reshaping American electoral politics in ways that will affect both parties for decades. The trends involve shifts in educational attainment's relationship to voting behavior and changing patterns of population migration between states, which are redrawing the competitiveness of formerly safe states. Democrats are gaining among college-educated suburban voters while Republicans are making historic gains among working-class and Hispanic voters. These movements are creating new swing states and potentially retiring some of the traditional battlegrounds that have defined recent presidential elections.