From Reagan to Trump: regional development traps and the remaking of American electoral politics

This paper examines the territorial reconfiguration of American electoral politics since the 1980s, tracing the remaking of Republican support from Reagan’s 1984 landslide to Trump’s three presidential campaigns (2016, 2020, 2024). Drawing on panel data for every presidential election from 1984 to 2024 across 722 commuting zones, we test whether regional development traps, defined as enduring economic underperformance, explain both the shift from Democrats to Republicans and the Republicans’ internal realignment. Mundlak/Correlated Random Effects estimates show backlash is overwhelmingly driven by structural, not cyclical, decline. Short-term economic fluctuations do not predict Republican swing, while long-run territorial position does so decisively. Voters are not responding to recessions. They are registering alienation from an economic order that has failed their communities for a generation. Trump’s gains concentrated in places persistently left behind, whose peripheral position has become entrenched.