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It’s no secret that NPV was founded by an upset Al Gore supporter, nor that most of its recent support comes from Democrats similarly frustrated by 2016. Yet there aren’t enough blue states to put the compact into effect on their own (and many Democrats do support the Electoral College or at least see the plan’s legal and practicalflaws). This left the NPV campaign struggling to come up with a sales pitch to Republicans.

Enter the “blue wall”—a term coined in 2009 by left-leaning political journalist Ronald Brownstein to describe the 18 states that Democrat presidential campaigns had won consistently since 1992. In 2008, Democrats had won the White House and strengthened their majorities in both chambers of Congress. Scholars like Ruy Teixeira had promised an “emerging Democratic majority” based on demographic changes, and here it was. The blue wall was a floor of 18 states and 242 electoral votes that Democrats were sure to win for the foreseeable future.

This became a central claim of lobbyists hired by NPV to pitch Republican state legislators. NPV’s Saul Anuzis and Michael Steele made this case in Politico in 2019, claiming that NPV “may well be the best way, and perhaps the only way, for Republicans to have a reasonable chance of winning the White House.” They used Democrat talking points about the blue wall, and that Texas and Florida were turning purple, in their attempt to frighten Republicans into supporting the NPV compact. 

None of this worked, and now history has proved them wrong. There were already cracks in the blue wall in 2016, since it supposedly guaranteed Democrat wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (all states Trump won). But from those cracks, it all came crashing down in 2024 when Trump won each of those states again—and with larger (albeit still narrow) margins. He also shifted Florida and Texas solidly red, winning each state by more than 10 percent. Trump even did better in California and New York in 2024 than John McCain did in 2008.

What will NPV lobbyists tell Republicans now? Who knows, but at least their blue-wall claim has been solidly debunked.