A Brief Look at Red-State Polling
What polls of red states reveal about shifting coalitions, and why they might offer good news for Biden.
There’s been no shortage of attention paid to polls of the key states that will determine the 2024 election. And rightfully so, given that just five or six swing states will almost certainy decide whether Biden or Trump wins this fall. But it would be a mistake to only consider polls of the most competitive states, especially if we’re trying to reach broader conclusions about how each party’s coalition might look different this fall compared to 2020.
Down the road, I’ll discuss the polling for the major swing states, but for now, I thought it’d be worth taking a look at a handful of Republican states that almost never get any attention in a presidential election. Thankfully, even these states are occasionally polled, though obviously not to the same degree as their competitive counterparts.
Perhaps the most interesting non-competitive state at the moment is Utah. Yes, I do, in fact, mean Utah, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 50 points back in 2012. According to 538, which is a great website for tracking state-level polling, there have been two polls so far of the Biden-Trump matchup in Utah:
Both of these polls show a Trump lead in the low dougle digits, though with plenty of undecided voters. For reference, Trump won Utah by roughly 20 points in the two most recent presidential elections, though in 2016, Evan McMullin, running as an independent, received about 22% of the statewide vote. Like most other western states, Utah tends to have higher levels of third-party voting, and the relatively low percentages seen for Biden and Trump above hint at the potential for a strong third-party showing again this fall.
It’s noteworthy that two separate polls of Utah paint a broadly similar picture of a very red state being much closer than expected, even if there’s approximately zero chance that it will flip this fall. There are a few possible explanations for the poll findings:
1.) Utah is a fairly well-educated state, with nearly 38% of its 25 and older population having at least a college degree in 2022. Educational attainment has become one of the best predictors of electoral trends since 2016.
2.) Utah has by far the largest Mormon population of any state, and though Mormons have long been a strongly Republican group, Trump has received lower levels of support from them than past GOP candidates.
3.) Migration from nearby states, notably California, has pushed Utah’s politics in a Democratic direction. I’m not a big believer in migration patterns dramatically changing a state’s politics (and it’s possible that due to self-selection, those moving into Utah are less liberal than we’d expect), but given that Utah’s a rather small state (roughly 3 million residents), a modest influx of West Coast folks could perhaps be making a difference.
What’s that, you say? Utah is an idiosyncratic state that tells us little about red states in general? Well, I’d agree with that, actually! But the thing is, other red states, where Biden is polling unusually well relative to the 2020 presidential election results, tell a similar story.
Below, I have links to 538’s list of polls for several other red states. For comparison’s sake, I’ve noted what Trump’s winning margin was in each state in 2020, as well as the percent of adults with a college degree (or higher) in 2022:
Alaska: Trump won by 10 points; 31% have at least a college degree
Iowa: Trump won by 8 points; 32% have at least a college degree
Kansas: Trump won by 15 points; 36% have at least a college degree
Kentucky: Trump won by 26 points; 28% have at least a college degree
Louisiana: Trump won by 19 points; 27% have at least a college degree
Nebraska: Trump won by 19 points; 35% have at least a college degree
Unfortunately, as with Utah, these states have generally been underpolled, but the polling that we do have indicates Biden isn’t likely to perform much worse than he did in 2020 in these Republican states (I found the Alaska polling to be of special interest, though as a disclaimer, it’s a politically quirky state). The fact that these states are located in different regions of the US and vary quite a bit in their educational attainment suggests a fairly robust pattern.
Some of these polls do show Biden falling a little short of his 2020 performance, with Iowa perhaps being the best example from that list. However, it’s worth noting that for several months now, Biden has been polling poorly in general, and he typically doesn’t even lead in national head-to-head polls against Trump. Given that reality, his relatively decent polling in these states is notable. In fact, it provides some evidence that Biden is retaining 2020 levels of support from white voters in the aggregate, although it’s likely that his gains among college-educated whites are merely canceling out losses among working-class whites.
Even though not one of these states is about to flip blue, the red-state polling has implications for the swing states. If Biden is indeed holding onto his 2020 levels of support in predominantly white, rural Republican states, it suggests that these types of areas within battleground states might behave similarly this fall. For instance, in a key state such as Pennsylvania, the rural counties (home to around a quarter of PA’s population) may hold firm for Biden, giving him about the same margin as they did four years ago. Or, to put it less euphemistically, Biden might not have much more room to fall in counties where he struggled to reach even 30% of the vote. In any case, that knowledge is key for both campaigns in determining who the state’s swing voters are, and how to win them over.
The red-state polls can also shed light on which swing states might be most likely to match their 2020 margins this fall. Among the core swing states, Wisconsin and North Carolina are the two that stand out for being demographically similar to the list of red states above, as well as for having the largest rural populations (roughly 30% of each state’s total population). There’s a case to be made that these two states might experience only minor shifts in their overall margin from 2020, when Biden won the former by 0.6%, while Trump won the latter by 1.3%.
More broadly, the polls of red America suggest that racial depolarization is here to stay in 2024. In 2020, we had seen this play out in somewhat dramatic fashion, with Biden improving among white voters relative to Clinton in 2016 while performing somewhat worse with non-white voters (particularly Hispanics). Regardless of who wins in 2024, the potential movement of non-white voters into the Republican Party is an important story, and if the trends from 2016-2020 continue this fall, it would start to meaningfully reverse decades of the two parties polarizing along racial lines.
Next time, I plan to look at Arizona as part of my series examining each swing state, and I’ll make the case for why it could be a fairly good state for Biden this fall. Also, I just want to sincerely thank all of you who’ve joined me so far, and here’s hoping that my posts have been of at least some interest!
Brad, This is a SERIOUSLY astute analysis that never occurred to me. I hate you. Keep up the good work. I'm sharing with some of my followers. Owen