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

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Ali Glisson

No 2623, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) from Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Regional development traps; electoral geography; Republican Party; Trump; Reagan coalition; voting; territorial inequality; political realignment; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 O18 P16 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10, Revised 2026-10
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:egu:wpaper:2623

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