2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Ezra Klein: Democrats don't need to convert Trump supporters [View all]TwilightZone
(28,834 posts)From what I've seen, we lost WI, MI, PA, because numbers in critical demographic groups were down, not because people switched from D to R.
One analysis, from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/the_myth_of_the_rust_belt_revolt.html
Their assertion is that Trump didn't flip votes - some of the Obama voters just didn't show up. Their numbers seem to largely back that up.
If that's the case, targeting Trump voters en masse won't help, at least not in those particular instances. We would instead need to improve turnout in the groups that reliably vote D, which, frankly, I think is a better approach anyway.
Obviously, we target everyone we can, but I'm not sure the "Obama voters flipped to Trump in significant numbers" assertion can be substantiated.