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WHY JUST NINE STATES MAY DECIDE THE 2024 ELECTION
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent
Happy primary day!
Republican voters in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio are poised to give former President Donald Trump more delegates to further seal the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination.
That will put him in history as only the second person to leave the White House and go on to recapture a major party nomination for president. (The other being Grover Cleveland.)
In other words, the 2024 presidential general election is underway.
We thought this a good time to lay out some basic contours of this rematch. The major party candidates — Trump and President Joe Biden — are the same, but there are some important, nuanced differences in this year’s race.
Our starting point: The electoral math has changed.
This is because of the 2020 Census, which reallocates congressional seats and electoral votes based on population shifts.
For the number-crunchers, here’s the math:
- Five states that Biden won — California, Illinois, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania — each lost an electoral vote due to population shift. Just two Biden 2020 states gained — Colorado and Oregon.
- Thus, Democrats start down three electoral votes compared with 2020.
- Based on these new districts, the 2020 electoral college tally, as the Washington Post calculated, would be Biden 303 -Trump 235. (Rather than 306-232.)
Based on those totals, Trump would need to gain 35 votes to earn the 270 majority a presidential candidate needs to win the White House.
OK, what do we watch to see who can win? I’ve been speaking with both Democratic and Republican national campaign teams.
First priority are the five states forming the core battleground. In these five states, the 2020 race ended in “squeakers,” meaning margins of 2 percentage points or less. Between them, 72 electoral votes are at stake.
- Arizona. 11 electoral votes.
- Georgia. 16 electoral votes.
- North Carolina. 16 electoral votes.
- Pennsylvania. 19 electoral votes.
- Wisconsin. 10 electoral votes.
Next comes a next tier of potentially persuadable states. Margins here were between 3 and 6 percentage points. They account for a whopping 91 electoral votes.
- Florida. 30 electoral votes.
- Michigan. 15 electoral votes. Note: Republicans see Michigan as a prime target in 2024.
- Nevada. 6 electoral votes.
- Texas. 40 electoral votes. Note: Trump’s 5.6 point margin in Texas in 2020 is significant. I am keeping it on my watchlist, despite the many failed years of Democratic attempts to flip statewide votes there. This is because Democrats have repeatedly narrowed the margin here. It was 5.6 points in 2020, much closer from Trump’s 9-point Texas win in 2016 and Romney’s 15-point-plus win in 2012.
There are other places of interest, and we will talk about them as this year unfolds. But these nine states are the most likely to determine who will be the next president.
In Joe Biden’s favor. Of the four core battleground states he lost in 2020 (Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin), Trump needs to flip at least two, and possibly three, to win.
This assumes Trump keeps North Carolina, which is not a certainty. But even with that, the former president still has to flip a number of hard-fight states to win. (There are numerous other paths, but for our purposes today, let’s focus on the core states.)
In Donald Trump’s favor, Biden’s winning margins were smaller in 2020 than Trump’s were on average. Trump has more states that he must win, but he may have less work than Biden to flip key states.
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