Former President Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has been helped in no small part by his winning of multiple so-called “blue wall” states that are traditional Democrat strongholds.

“It appears Trump has breached the blue wall, or at least enough of it, to win the presidency,” David Schultz, an author and political science professor at Minnesota’s Hamline University, told Al Jazeera.

As the Electoral College voting map gradually turned red after polls closed and votes were being counted, observers initially suspected the “red mirage” effect, which can be produced as more Republican voters (denoted by blue) tend to go to the polls in person and more Democrats (denoted by red) mail in their votes.

Once Trump crossed the line of 270 Electoral votes, however, Democratic hopes of catching up to his lead in the early counting stage were dashed.

What is the red mirage?

Historically, more mail-in ballots are sent by Democrats while more Republicans vote in person.

During the 2020 election, the electoral map looked similarly red in the early hours of counting, leading Trump to claim an early victory, before results in critical battleground states had been announced.

When results concluded after mail-in ballots were counted, Democrat Joe Biden emerged as a winner, after counting of postal votes showed he had won back Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, some of which are blue wall states and all of which had been won by the Republicans in the 2016 election.

Similar blue shifts after an initial red mirage were expected by some analysts this year. However, by 6am ET (11:00 GMT) on Wednesday, the Associated Press (AP) had projected 277 Electoral College votes for Trump, seven more than the 270 required to secure a presidency.

Later on Wednesday, that number ballooned further, after Michigan, one of the so-called blue wall states, was also called for Trump.

What is a blue wall state?

A blue wall state is one the Democrats have reliably won through most of US modern history.

Precisely, these are states that voted for Democrats in every election between 1992 and 2012. They include California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware and Vermont as well as the District of Columbia.

In 2016, Trump breached the blue wall, flipping several of those states to red in the election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. These included Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – all three of which were again major battleground states during the latest election.

In 2020, President Joe Biden won back all three of these states, seemingly resurrecting the blue wall.

What happened in the three swing states behind the blue wall?

Away from the swing states, AP called reliable Harris wins in all the other blue wall states. However, AP called Trump wins in the three critical battleground states behind the blue wall – enough to cost Harris the presidency.

Here is how Trump fared in the three swing states considered to be behind the blue wall this year:

• Pennsylvania: AP has called a Trump win in Pennsylvania, which has 19 Electoral votes, by three percentage points. Ninety-eight percent of the votes have been counted.
• Wisconsin: AP also called a Trump win in Wisconsin by more than one percentage point, with about 99 percent of the votes counted. Wisconsin has 10 Electoral votes.
• Michigan: By Wednesday evening, AP also called Michigan for Trump. He is leading the state by 1.4 percentage points, with nearly 99 percent of the votes counted. Michigan carries 15 Electoral College votes.

How did Trump breach the blue wall?

People are over the pandemic

Schultz said he believed Biden was able to reclaim blue wall swing states from Trump in 2020 in part because of the way Trump handled the COVID-19 pandemic during his presidency.

More than 1.1 million people died during the pandemic in the US – from the time of the emergency declaration in January 2020 until when it was lifted in May 2023.

During the early months of the outbreak, Trump undermined scientists and spread false claims about the coronavirus on his social media platforms, such as the idea that children are “almost immune” to it.

Anti-vaccine misinformation spread and people in many Republican-led states started rallying for relaxed quarantine restrictions and questioned mandatory vaccine requirements.

In February 2021, a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Trump’s health policy found that 40 percent of deaths from the virus in the US could have been averted if the US death toll corresponded with that in other high-income Group of Seven (G7) countries.

Cost of living and the economy

Now, however, “economic issues along with feelings of being ignored drove the Trump victory”, Schultz said. Democrats “failed to execute well in the three blue wall states”, focusing too much on abortion over other issues such as economic policies that would appeal to working-class voters, he said.

A preliminary national exit poll conducted by data provider Edison Research showed that 51 percent of voters trusted Trump with handling the economy compared with the 47 percent who trusted Harris.

According to the exit poll, 31 percent of voters said the economy mattered most in shaping their decision to vote, whereas only 14 percent cited abortion.

“The Harris campaign did not necessarily do a good job of explaining how her policies would help the middle class, or at least that message wasn’t really resonating with a lot of voters,” Melissa Deckman, a political scientist and the CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, told Reuters news agency.

Choice of running mate

Deckman added that Harris’s VP choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was one of “several mistakes” made by the Democrats in the run-up to this election. This is because Walz did not help Harris win any swing states. Minnesota has voted blue in every single election since 1976.

In 2016, third-party candidate Jill Stein won 132,000 votes across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, inroads that are believed to have contributed to Democrat Hillary Clinton losing the race.

So, what cost the Democrats vital blue wall states in this election?

Pennsylvania: Failing to ‘speak’ to working-class voters

“Harris lost Pennsylvania because she failed to speak to working-class voters and thought abortion would drive enough women to the polls to help her win,” Schultz said.

The Democrats campaigned more heavily on women’s rights issues than the Republicans in this, the first election since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade court ruling and ended a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy all over the US. Laws regarding abortion were effectively returned to individual states to decide.

However, early exit polls released while polling was still continuing showed that Harris had won the support of 54 percent of women in the state – less than Biden did in 2020, when he gained the support of 57 percent of women.

Wisconsin: Worries about healthcare

Wisconsin was reliably blue for decades, but Trump defeated Clinton there in 2016 by appealing to largely white, working-class voters who were concerned about rising healthcare costs as well as wages and poverty.

This time, “Harris lost Wisconsin because she lost the working class and did not win women, suburbs and young voters,” Schultz said.

In particular, the opioid crisis in the US – rampant addiction and overuse of prescription opioids and illegal opioids such as heroin – has badly rattled Wisconsin, where multiple polls this year suggested that healthcare had become a key issue for voters in the state.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, the opioid epidemic in Wisconsin started more than two decades ago because there was overprescription of medical opioids and because heroin, an illegal opioid, had become cheaper and more widely available. In 2022, 1,828 people in Wisconsin died of a drug overdose, more than double the number from 2015. The synthetic opioid fentanyl was found in 73 percent of all overdose deaths in Wisconsin, according to a state attorney’s office report in August 2024.

Harris ran on the promise that she would lower the cost of pharmaceutical drugs and cancel medical debt as well as bolster the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which provides health insurance to middle and low-income Americans. Trump, on the other hand, said he would find an alternative to the ACA.

Michigan: Democrats’ support for Israel in war on Gaza

Michigan was not considered a swing state before 2016 because it did not flip-flop between the two parties – from 1976 to 1988, Republicans always won in Michigan. However, the presidential contest in Michigan has always been competitive.

In the second edition of his 2019 book, Presidential Swing States, analyst Rafael Jacob also wrote that since 1980, the winner in Michigan has always been the overall election winner, with just two exceptions – George W Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Jacob added that even when voters in Michigan chose Democratic presidents, they voted for Republican governors in state-level elections, concluding that Michigan voters are not very partisan.

During this election, Israel’s war on Gaza has emerged as a key issue in Michigan. According to the World Population Review, Michigan is the US state with the highest number of Arab Americans – 211,225 – as of this year, and there are an estimated 2.1 million Arab Americans in total in the US.

These voters expressed discontent with Trump and Harris since both candidates have expressed unequivocal support for Israel in its war on Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023 after a Hamas-led assault on villages and army outposts in southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,139 people and the capture of 251. Since the war began, at least 43,391 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombardments and ground assaults in Gaza, while many thousands more are lost and presumed dead under the rubble.

Many Arab Americans instead said they would vote for Jill Stein, this year’s presidential nominee for the Green Party, who campaigned on the promise of pushing for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and holding Israel accountable to international law.

Did Green Party candidate Jill Stein take vital votes from the Democrats?

The Democrats, as well as European Green Party members, warned that Stein would dent the Democrat vote, enabling Trump to win swing states and hence, the presidency.

As ballots are still being counted, it is not known exactly how many votes Stein has won. Between October 30 and October 31, she was polling at 1.7 percent in Michigan, 1 percent in Wisconsin and 0.8 percent in Pennsylvania, according to Brazil-based analytics and data intelligence website AtlasIntel.