Eight Months Out: The State of Play
A brief look at the seven swing states that will decide the 2024 election.
Welcome, friends, to my first official Electoral College ratings! Every so often, I plan to survey the Electoral College map and give my sense of where the presidential race currently stands. These posts will (hopefully) be on the shorter side, with a few paragraphs for each swing state. Today’s post comes at a vital moment, with Super Tuesday having made it all but official that Biden and Trump will be the nominees, despite all the hopes to the contrary.
In the map below, I have my current ratings for every state, though there are only seven swing states that are of real interest. Prudence would dictate that I leave the closest states shaded gray as toss-ups, but where would be the fun in that? Instead, I prefer using light blue or red to indicate that a state is highly competitive, but leaning ever so slightly towards Biden or Trump. At this early stage, I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that my map shows Biden (barely) winning the Electoral College, as flipping any state red would change the outcome. I’m actually pretty agnostic right now about the overall race, even though I have fairly strong thoughts on a few particular states.
One of my main goals with this post is to show how the swing states are likely to diverge in 2024, which was not the case in 2016 or 2020, when Trump and Biden, respectively, won nearly all of them. The seven states that I’ll discuss were all decided by a margin of under 3 points in 2020, but that fact conceals a lot of variation in how they’re trending. I’ll argue that each state’s demographics and educational attainment will lead them down different paths this fall, even if they’re all once again decided by a very narrow margin.
The possibility of the swing states diverging also makes it very plausible that in 2024, neither candidate will receive over 300 electoral votes, which hasn’t occurred since 2004. If nothing else, it’s a reminder of how the winner-take-all method of EV allocation (which every state uses, besides Maine and Nebraska) can give close presidential elections, such as those in 2016 and 2020, the illusion of being decisive victories in the Electoral College.
Below, I’ll go through my thinking for each state where this fall’s outcome is truly uncertain. States like Florida, Texas, Minnesota, and New Hampshire don’t make the cut, as they’re just not up for grabs in 2024. I’ll go roughly in order of how I perceive each state’s competitiveness, starting with the one I see as most favorable to Trump, and ending with the swing state that seems best for Biden.
North Carolina: It shouldn’t be too controversial to say that North Carolina barely deserves the designation of being called a swing state. It has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980, except for 2008, when Obama won it by a few tenths of a percentage point. It’s probably better thought of as being on the cusp of swing-state status, as it has remained a state in which Democrats constantly come up just a little short. In 2020, Trump won North Carolina by about 1.3 points, a smaller margin than he got in 2016 (3.6 points) or even Romney’s 2-point victory in 2012.
What makes North Carolina unusual is that it’s not clearly trending blue or red, unlike so many other states. Basically, the parts of North Carolina that are trending Democratic (metro Charlotte, the Research Triangle, and Asheville) are nearly offset by Republican trends in rural North Carolina, particularly in the eastern half of the state. The end result ends up being remarkable stability, though the state still tends to move in line with changes in the national popular vote. In fact, North Carolina has consistently voted about 6 points to the right of the national popular vote in every election since 2008.
In other words, if Biden were poised to win the popular vote by around 6 points this fall (he won by about 4.5 points in 2020), North Carolina would likely be close to a tie. Yet, based on national polling, we’re potentially heading for Biden and Trump tying the popular vote, or even Trump winning it outright. There’s just no reason to believe that North Carolina will be any bluer this fall than in 2020, given that Biden is almost certain to come up short of his 2020 national margin.
North Carolina rating: likely Republican
Nevada: Outside of North Carolina, I see the best swing state for Trump being Nevada, a stance that will undoubtedly be met with skepticism. It was the first state I wrote about, in large part because I happen to really disagree with the conventional wisdom, which would probably put the state at either a toss-up or as leaning slightly towards Democrats. I won’t dwell too much on what I’ve already said in my previous article, but I’ll emphasize again that Nevada has by far the lowest educational attainment of the swing states, and that from 2012 to 2016, as well as from 2016 to 2020, a state’s level of educational attainment was a strong predictor of how its margin shifted.
Nevada is fundamentally a working-class state, having a lower share of college graduates than almost any other state, swing or otherwise. In fact, it’s noteworthy just how much it stands out on a ranking of the states by educational attainment: Alabama, Kentucky, and Oklahoma occupy spots next to Nevada, all hovering around 27% or 28% of their adult populations having at least a college degree. For various reasons, Nevada is much more competitive than we’d expect based on its educational attainment (arguably due to its diverse, predominantly urban population). But it’s worth questioning how long it can continue to defy the trends that most other states have followed, and there’s no reason to believe that in 2024, educational attainment won’t continue to shape electoral trends.
Additionally, as per FiveThirtyEight, which tracks both national and state-level polling, the polls of Nevada have been quite poor for Biden, which we can’t dismiss, since he’s been doing better in polls of other swing states. The Nevada polls aren’t particularly surprising in light of Trump’s gains with non-white voters in 2016 and especially in 2020. Nevada is a diverse state, one that was perhaps a strong fit for the Democratic coalition in the Obama years, but which has since become closely contested. Both Clinton and Biden won it by only 2.4 points, and the fact that it didn’t budge in 2020, even as almost every other state voted more Democratic in 2020 than in 2016, is telling.
The real possibility of Nevada flipping this fall from blue to red doesn’t have major Electoral College implications (it has only 6 electoral votes), but it could still be very significant in a close election. More broadly, it would also serve as confirmation that American politics is continuing to realign along educational/class lines (though inverted, by historical standards), with voters of color increasingly becoming swing voters.
Nevada rating: tilts Republican
Georgia: A confusing state, to be sure, and one that I had initially thought was going to be one of Biden’s better states this fall. In 2016, Clinton lost it by 5 points, while Biden won it by 0.2% in 2020, a more than 5-point shift that would have seemed to suggest a Democratic trajectory beyond 2020. Yet, the polls of Georgia have shown a clear and consistent Trump lead. One plausible explanation is that Biden has lost support since 2020 among African-American voters, who make up nearly a third of Georgia’s electorate.
In fact, a recent poll released by the New York Times showed that nationally, Biden was only winning the support of 66% of registered Black voters, compared to Trump’s 23%. That figure might not seem significant on its face, but if Biden did end up winning the national African-American vote by only 40 or so points this fall, it would represent a historically weak performance for a Democratic presidential candidate, going back decades. It would manifest very differently in each state (e.g. Arizona and Wisconsin both have a very small Black population), but in Georgia, even a modest loss of Black support would potentially be fatal for Biden, unless he did even better in the Atlanta suburbs than he had in 2020.
To be clear, there’s a possibility that Biden can offset some of his losses among Black voters in Georgia, given the large blue shifts seen in places like Cobb and Gwinnett County starting in 2016. Both are populous suburban counties in the Atlanta metro that Romney easily won in 2012, before Clinton flipped them both in 2016. Biden then increased the Democratic margin in both counties even further. It’s hard to assess with precision which shift could prove larger, but the point is that Biden does have potential upside in suburban Atlanta, even if he does worse with African-American voters throughout the state.
Georgia is one of the states I’d be most inclined to rate as an outright toss-up, but the poor polling for Biden right now is undeniable. It’s possible that the fundamentals in Georgia (which I do think are positive for Democrats) will reassert themselves down the road, but for now, it should be considered slightly favorable for Republicans.
Georgia rating: tilts Republican
Wisconsin: As with Georgia, Wisconsin should really be thought of as a pure toss-up state, which its recent electoral history would firmly support (Trump won it by 0.8% in 2016, while Biden won it by 0.6% in 2020). Yet, if forced to choose, I would give it a similar rating as I did Georgia, though for very different reasons.
Biden’s polling has actually been pretty decent in Wisconsin. Trump generally leads in polls there, but the margin tends to be in the low single digits, unlike what we’ve seen in polls of Georgia. This probably reflects the fact that in polling of both competitive and uncompetitive states, Biden has generally held up well with white, rural voters, perhaps in part because there isn’t much more room for him to fall among this group. As the whitest and most rural swing state, Wisconsin would be a logical place for Biden to be doing only a bit worse than he did in 2020.
The polls of Wisconsin speak to a larger issue, which I alluded to with Nevada and Georgia: 2024 is likely to continue the racial depolarization seen in 2020. In other words, white and non-white voters will likely move closer towards one another in terms of their voting behavior, with Biden’s support among whites perhaps holding steady, even as his standing with non-white voters will likely erode, possibly to the tune of 10 or more points (the aforementioned New York Times poll, as well as other polling, suggests that it’s not a trivial shift).
The polls, in tandem with the racial depolarization seen in 2020, offer a potential bit of good news for Biden in Wisconsin. Even if Trump does improve significantly this fall among non-white voters, this would primarily manifest in Milwaukee and a few smaller cities that collectively cast just 10% of the statewide vote. On the other hand, Biden will likely outperform his 2020 margins in places like Waukesha County, a mid-sized suburban county that has been slow to realign (compared to other highly educated suburban counties elsewhere in the country), but that moved towards Democrats in 2020.
All this being said, the reality is still that Biden barely won Wisconsin in 2020, and the state typically casts a large third-party vote (a little over 6% in 2016, for example). Notably, the Green Party is on the ballot this year in Wisconsin, which wasn’t the case in 2020 (it has secured ballot access in a few other swing states for this fall, namely Arizona and Michigan). Third-party voting is likely to hurt Biden more than Trump, and it wouldn’t take much for Trump to undo Biden’s thin 2020 margin in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin rating: tilts Republican
Pennsylvania: Of all the swing states listed here, Pennsylvania is the one I’ve studied the most. On a few occasions, I’ve made 2024 estimates county by county (about as much fun as it sounds) in order to see how things might play out under different assumptions. Pretty much every time, I’ve ended up with the state being a virtual tie. Pennsylvania is the swing state that I see most likely to be decided by less than 1 point in either direction, which is to say, most of the other battleground states would seem to have a wider range of potential outcomes.
This lack of variability stems from the fact that Pennsylvania is a very polarized state, with large groups of voters who behave as consistent Democrats or Republicans in presidential elections, especially since 2016. This polarization is an important feature of Pennsylvania, which otherwise has much in common politically with Wisconsin. But partly as a result of the state’s polarization, I think Biden is slightly more favored in Pennsylvania than in Wisconsin this fall.
A cursory look at PA’s main regions helps give a sense of the state’s polarization. For example, the most Democratic part of the state by far is southeastern Pennsylvania, home to Philadelphia and its four collar counties, which Biden won collectively by 33 points in 2020. Further west, south-central PA, home to Lancaster and Harrisburg, is a historically Republican region that is trending Democratic, but which is still likely to give Trump around a 15-point winning margin this fall.
The remainder of the state is made up of a motley collection of areas: Pittsburgh and its suburbs, several dozen rural counties (which Biden generally lost by 40 points, and in some cases, even more), the Lehigh Valley, and northeast PA, based around Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Only the last two of these areas are swing regions (both also happen to be places where Biden did unusually well in 2020, and where he might struggle to match his prior margins), though they each only cast a fraction of the statewide vote.
This fall, Biden’s main worry in Pennsylvania is Philly, where Trump is almost certain to extend the gains he made in the city in 2020. Most readers might be surprised to learn that Philly only casts a little over 10% of the statewide vote, so if Biden improved his margins even modestly in the suburban counties surrounding Philly (the four collar counties typically cast about 22% of the statewide vote), it could end up being close to a wash in the aggregate.
Ultimately, the fact that Biden won Pennsylvania by 1.2% in 2020, a margin that almost feels substantial compared to what was seen in Wisconsin and Georgia, bodes well for him, combined with the state’s relative lack of swing voters. They exist, even in a polarized state like PA, and they might largely break for Trump this fall, but they just don’t make up quite enough of the state’s electorate to easily erase Biden’s 2020 margin. It also helps Biden that unlike Wisconsin, Pennsylvania has somewhat lower levels of third-party voting (and the Green Party hasn’t made the ballot in PA), which is arguably the main wildcard this fall.
Pennsylvania rating: tilts Democratic
Arizona: In my most recent article, I wrote fairly extensively about Arizona, and why I think the trends there augur well for Biden. The polls haven’t been great for Biden in Arizona (though they’ve been better for him than those in Georgia), and if that persists into the spring, I’ll adjust this rating accordingly. But for now, based in part on the 9-point shift towards Democrats that Arizona has witnessed since 2012, I’d expect the state to remain blue this fall, even if by a narrow margin.
Arizona rating: tilts Democratic
Michigan: Finally, we reach what should be Biden’s best swing state this fall. There’s nothing profound about that claim: in 2020, Biden won Michigan by a little under 3 points, more than double his margin in Pennsylvania and Trump’s margin in North Carolina. Notably, unlike Wisconsin and even Pennsylvania, Michigan became bluer in relative terms from 2016 to 2020, as it shifted about 3 points to the left, while the country as a whole only shifted 2.4 points more Democratic from 2016 to 2020.
Michigan is not the type of state that we’d expect to easily flip red this fall, unless Biden were struggling to win the national popular vote. A tied popular vote is certainly possible, but given what I said earlier about racial depolarization, Michigan is a state where Biden might hold up better (its eligible voting population is about 79% white), compared to a more diverse state such as Georgia. The most recent polls of Michigan as of this writing are showing roughly a tie.
Among all of the swing states, Michigan stands apart as one that Biden basically has to win in order to prevail in the Electoral College. Losing Michigan would very likely mean that Biden is also losing Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, given how similar the three states are demographically and politically (Michigan has long been the bluest of the three in presidential elections).
In fact, my implicit assumption in even writing this post is that Biden will very likely win Michigan again this fall. If that weren’t the case, I could’ve started by saying that Trump is almost certain to win the election this year, and that the other swing states are moot. More than almost any other state, Michigan is the one to watch to gauge Biden’s overall chances (Pennsylvania, too), and it’s worth remembering that in 2020, it came closest to reflecting the national popular vote.
Michigan rating: tilts Democratic
So, there you have it, my swing-state ratings as of March, which I’ll look to update again in a month or so. Feel free to leave a comment if you have thoughts on any of these ratings, as I enjoy interacting with readers, even if we disagree. Questions are most welcome, too. Thanks as always for reading!
Great article. Philly vs Wilkes-Barre, Scranton area really surprised me!
It's worth mentioning that electoral politics in Wisconsin and North Carolina are heavily influenced by the actions of particular billionaires; namely Diane Hendricks in WI, and Arthur Pope in NC. They've packed significant money into improving the GOP "lean" of those states, and of course both are in the tank for Trump.