Above you will see a photo from 270toWin detailing out what the 2016 map looked like. For those who forgot (and are thus clearly suffering from amnesia), Donald Trump won the election in a surprise upset over Hillary Clinton, namely by winning three states that Clinton assumed were in-the-bag (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan). While Trump's margin was not impressive (he won these states by roughly 80,000 votes total, 306 electoral votes does give him some wiggle room in 2020 against Vice President Biden. If Trump wins just one of these states, and still holds all of the rest of his states from 2016, he'd win, a bare majority in some cases (specifically if he lost PA & MI but only won WI), but he'd hit 270 electoral votes. The problem for Trump is that polling has indicated he is not the favorite in any of these races.
I personally think we're now hitting the "crazies" section of the race, as the conventions are over and the contest, from a media perspective, doesn't look really close. While one could argue that Joe Biden has lost a little bit of momentum from late-June, it's not really that much. He continues to maintain a nationwide 7-9 point margin in the popular vote (another conversation for a different day, but it's insane to me how we're all just ignoring the fact that Trump has virtually no chance of winning the popular vote, and therefore the Republicans if they were to win would take a fourth term in a century where they've only won the popular vote once), which should be enough historically to carry most of the swing states, particularly Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Biden also has a lead in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Nebraska's 2nd district, and is within shouting distance of Trump in Ohio, Georgia, and Iowa.
But it's the "crazies" because the media doesn't know how to sell a race that isn't close, even when the race isn't close, and keeps insisting on it being close. You see this in polls that would have relatively little coverage (say, Biden going from +9 to +7), and how they are billed as "Trump gaining" even if he's in terrible shape. You saw it this week when some polls showed Trump behind by 6-points and pundits suddenly calling it a horse race, despite the fact that we're in the midst of a convention bounce which historically won't last...and Trump still can't rebound to lead nationally. This can have the effect of mobilizing Trump's supporters to make it an actual race (no one likes to vote for a loser), or it can galvanize Biden's chances, especially if the undecideds go his way...and he still maintains his current lead. As it is right now, though, Biden is in a better position than Hillary Clinton was, but not so strong that Trump couldn't theoretically beat him for a surprise electoral college victory (likely by winning some combination of MI/WI/PA and maybe MN).
We're going to change this up below by not predicting the tipping point state (which I think makes for a boring article as I think the tipping point state pretty much has to be Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, or Florida unless something bizarre happens, and any other state is gravy in either direction), and instead predict like we do Senate/House-which states are most likely to flip from 2016. Therefore, you're going to find below 8 Trump states and 2 Clinton states, which I think are the most likely states to see a change in color from what we saw above four years ago.
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| President Trump with Maine Sen. Susan Collins |
Honorable Mention #2: This is the list of the Top 10 states, but there are two districts that could pad either contenders margin. In Nebraska and Maine, they apportion their votes by congressional district. This doesn't normally matter, but it has twice (in 2008 NE-2 went for Obama, in 2016 ME-2 went for Trump). ME-2 is going to be a reach for the Democrats. They won it in 2018 for the House due to ranked-choice voting, and it's possible that Biden wins that way as well (there is a nightmare scenario where ME-2 goes blue in a RCV situation, and gets Biden to 270 because he won PA/MI/NE-2, which god help us if that's the way he wins...but considering the demographics of the district I think it's unlike it's the tipping point state as Biden would surely have taken Wisconsin & Florida if he's winning ME-2), but I'd put ME-2 in the same camp as Texas & Iowa-it could go Biden in a landslide, but it's clearly trending to Trump, and he's the favorite. NE-2, though, I think is anyone's game, and quite frankly I expect the Omaha-based district will give it up to Biden this cycle (it'd be maybe 6th on this list if it was ranked), and he might be able to carry Kara Eastman across-the-finish-line with him (a conversation for our House article). What that said, here are our rankings for the actual Top 10.
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| VP Biden with Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen |
There are only two states on this list that went for Hilary Clinton, and that I think are plausibly going to go to Donald Trump. The first of these two states is Nevada. Nevada, as a rule, has seen a blue tide since the initial election of President Barack Obama. With the exception of Dean Heller in 2012, every single presidential and Senate race since 2008 has gone to the Democrats. The reason I'm keeping Nevada on this list is because Nevada elections always come down to turnout, and not in the way you'd expect (because every election comes out to turnout)-the turnout question is always the same. The Democrats have the votes to win Nevada pretty much every time right now thanks to their ability to drive margins in Clark (Las Vegas) and Washoe (Reno) counties...but with Nevada largely turning to a vote-by-mail, I'm curious to see how that impacts the GOTV efforts in the state, which are frequently driven by Nevada's powerful unions sector. If Democrats are able to get ballots via mail out in the same way they did in 2016 and 2018 in early/in-person voting, this is a lost cause for Trump, but I would keep this on your radar. One word of caution with polls-historically, Democrats have been undercounted when it comes to polling in Nevada, so if Trump is showing a surprisingly tied race in October here, take that with a grain-of-salt.
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| Trump with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine |
I would have guessed after 2016 that Ohio would have been a goner on this list, and it might still be. Ohio is a very white state with large swaths of blue-collar workers that Democrats have needed to rely upon for years in order to win, and non-college educated white voters have swung hard toward Trump. However, polling has been somewhat close here, and Biden is doing uniquely well with white college-educated voters, and could be able to pull off a similar path to victory that Sherrod Brown did in 2018. I do think that we are very close to a point where Ohio won't be achievable in a presidential election for a Democrat-the days of it being a swing state are about to be over, but I do think it's a swing state still in 2020 because of Biden, and he might be able to deliver a death blow to the Trump campaign by taking this GOP must-have state off the table.
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| Biden with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms |
Georgia is the other state that isn't one of the "Big 6" that feels like Biden could win it without having to win in a super blowout (I think for Iowa or Texas to be on the table, Biden needs to be winning by the 8-10 point margins that he's carried for a lot of the summer, but may not be sustainable in the fall). It's worth noting that Georgia's presidential race, unlike its Senate races, does not require a majority to win the state's votes. If President Trump gets 47% but Vice President Biden gets 48%, Biden will take all 16 electoral college votes. In order for that to happen, though, you're going to need incredible amounts of African-Americans, particularly in Atlanta, as well as white, college-educated suburban voters around Atlanta to cast their ballot for Biden; essentially Biden needs to carry GA-6 and GA-7 in a similar fashion to Stacey Abrams, but clearly by a little more than Abrams since she ultimately lost the plurality. Georgia demographically is a state that is headed toward the Democrats, and would probably be considered an obvious swing state come 2024, but if Biden has a little extra strength in November, it's the sort of the state he'll carry with him.
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| Trump with Minnesota Rep. Jason Lewis |
I don't know entirely how much I'm buying into the collective panic attack that election analysts and media pundits are doing this week, and how much is just the media desperate to have a horserace and cling to Trump (for all of the "liberal media bias" accusations, the reality is that people like Van Jones & Dana Bash have been practically begging the country to normalize Trump these past four years because he's good for ratings-my controversial two cents). That said, Minnesota is a state that looks and acts like Wisconsin, Michigan, & Pennsylvania, and the principle reason we aren't considering it competitive is because Hillary won it in 2016...but not by much. If Trump has a pretty good night in November (not just a squeaker win), it's because the Democrats assumed a state like Minnesota couldn't fall. Particularly with the riots that happened in the wake of the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis (which got a lot of press coverage around the state), these could spur the already hemorrhaging white support in rural sections of the state from Biden to Trump...though it's worth remembering that the suburbs have a lot of growth potential for Biden. The state's reaction to what's been happening in Minneapolis is important, as is the question of what happens to third party voters in a state traditionally quite friendly to them. 9% of voters in Minnesota didn't vote for Clinton or Trump in 2016-with weaker third party candidates, if Biden can scoop up the vast majority of those voters, he goes pretty quickly from competitive to blowout, particularly since Minnesota historically has some of the highest turnout races in the country, so getting non-voters to the polls is going to be a tough strategy since it's a small pool.
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| Biden with North Carolina Rep. Alma Adams |
We now arrive at the Big 6-if you live in one of these states, congratulations, you're about to pick the president. The Big 6 states are the ones that arguably will be the tipping point states, though I will say that while North Carolina is probably the state that will spell out the tipping point for the Senate, if Biden's winning here, I suspect he's swept most of the swing states. That said, North Carolina is a state that is clearly competitive, but where both Gov. Roy Cooper and State Sen. Cal Cunningham are doing better in their races for Governor and Senate (respectively) than Biden is. Frequently both men are winning their races by 7-9 points in polling, whereas Biden is either tied or up 2-3 points. It's hard for me to see a situation where ticket-splitting helps Cooper and Cunningham but not Biden at the end of the day, so either Cunningham's leads are inflated or Biden's leads are too low, and I think at the end of the day (right now, at least) that Cunningham's going to fall back to earth, but probably be able to stay in the Biden range (thus winning). If Joe Biden can just stay in the same camp as Cunningham then, this state suddenly becomes a pickup, and probably ends the election night early.
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| Trump with Arizona Sen. Martha McSally |
There are two states in the Big 6 that I can't get a read on, the first of which is Arizona. Arizona was a pretty close election in 2016, where Trump won by 3.5 points, but didn't get above 50%. It also, of course, elected the first Democrat in thirty years in 2018 when now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema pulled off a victory over now-Sen. Martha McSally. The question here is whether or not Sinema was the high water mark for the Democrats, in which case Biden needs an inside straight to get to 50% (but it's possible), or whether she was just catching a train while this state turned blue. Keep in mind that neighboring states like New Mexico and Colorado were swing states as little as 8-12 years ago; demographically, Arizona is a state that should go to the Democrats eventually based on the increase in the state of voters of color and the suburban swing that's currently going on under Trump. Biden has led in most polling throughout the summer and the last time that Trump led (rather than just tied) in a reputable poll was in May, but we don't know how Arizona will react as a swing state in the modern era because it's never really been one. It's possible that these polls are underestimating Trump or overestimating him or they're right on the money-I don't know. The margins are close, and Biden is underperforming Senate candidate Mark Kelly (similar to the North Carolina situation), but Arizona is a very good option for the Democrats if part of the blue wall, specifically Wisconsin, falls.
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| Trump with Florida Sen. Rick Scott |
Oh lord, Florida. Florida tends to be "Lucy and the football" for the Democrats-they rarely win it, and more often-than-not when they do win it, they don't really need it (Florida was not the tipping point in either of President Obama's victories, though it obviously was in George W. Bush's in 2000). But that is more a frustrating coincidence for the left than reality, and Florida is totally an option for the Democrats in 2020, and would be an incredible insurance policy against a surprise loss in the blue wall of PA/MI/WI. Florida is always tough to consider, particularly since the Republicans tend to close well here, though it's worth asking the question of "if Trump's poorer numbers with seniors hold, what does that do to his ability to close Florida?" In 2018, Bill Nelson & Andrew Gillum both lost (unlike the top three where the Democrats won the Gov/Sen pairings, in some cases by a sizable amount), which doesn't instill a lot of faith in the Democrats' ability to close the deal, but Covid disproportionately affected Florida both because of its aging population and the increasingly unpopular actions of its governor, who is strongly tied to Trump. It's Florida, so don't bet the farm on it, but polling & the basics of the race does indicate this would be achievable for Biden in 2020, which would probably put the election away (it is next-to-impossible to see a path for Trump if he loses the state), and likely on election night as Florida is really good at counting their ballots quickly.
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| Biden with Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey |
Florida is not, though, the most important state on the map-it's Pennsylvania, Joe Biden's home state. This is my bet for the tipping point state, though as I'll point out in a moment I'm not willing to bet a lot on that. The reason Pennsylvania is an important state, and one that Biden has to win in order to stay in the game is that it's a lot of electoral votes, and not a state you can easily exchange. If you assume that Biden could makeup for a Wisconsin loss by winning Arizona or North Carolina, the only state that really compares to Pennsylvania is Florida, and like I said-you don't want to bet on Florida. Biden's victory needs to look to the races of Tom Wolf & Bob Casey to get an idea of how to win. Both men, despite continuing the trend of losing votes in the middle of the state, made up for it with gargantuan performances in the Philadelphia suburbs and in Pittsburgh. Biden needs to duplicate that; the middle-of-the-state still has a lot of potential for Trump voters, so Biden needs to keep margins as close as possible there while driving up the Pittsburgh/Philly suburbs margins. It's achievable (both Wolf & Casey did it), but he still needs to flip the state. If Biden flips Pennsylvania, Democrats can't breathe easily like they can if he wins Florida...but he's probably won the election.
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| Trump with Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson |
The other of the Big 6 I can't get a read on is Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the only one of the Top 3 where they ended up having a genuinely competitive marquee race at the top of the ticket in 2018 (for governor), but it's also the only state that had a sitting incumbent Republican running, so it should have been competitive by that fact. Presidential polling here has been solid for Biden. Trump has not led a poll in the state from a nonpartisan polling outfit since March (essentially since Biden secured the nomination), and the Democrats clobbered in the special judicial election earlier this year, with Jill Karofsky winning by 11-points. Wisconsin is tough because it's a state that definitely could go red, and the Democrats don't have the suburban insurance policy that they do in Pennsylvania & Michigan (the Milwaukee suburbs have been much more resistant to the national trend to go blue than virtually any other major city suburb, though it's worth noting that Karofsky got a 5-point gain on Waukesha County compared to Tony Evers, which if Biden can duplicate he'll win the election). I think Wisconsin is going to be close, but I think it's just slightly surer than Pennsylvania due to Milwaukee & Madison bringing it home for Biden. If his support in the rural communities doesn't crater (and the riots in Kenosha don't have a large impact on the race), this is more achievable than the Keystone State, though by a hair.
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| Biden with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer |
Michigan is the one state I feel relatively confident is going to go red-to-blue. I personally think we're looking at the Top 6 all going blue at this point, but there's enough uncertainty in Slots 2-6 that Trump could still win. I don't see how he wins by more than he did in 2016, though, because Michigan looks blue. Michigan was by-far his slimmest state in 2016, and I've said many times since then that had Democrats known Michigan could fall, it probably wouldn't have. The state likes its governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who is a huge Biden ally, and unlike Wisconsin & Pennsylvania, Michigan has a lot of medium-large cities throughout its state that Biden should be able to cash in on. Whitmer in 2018 gained not just in the Detroit suburbs, but also won places like Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, & Lansing by considerably more than Clinton did in 2016 (typically a 5-7 point jump compared to Clinton). If Biden can simply duplicate those kinds of numbers, it'll be impossible for Trump to find enough voters in the rural corners of the state that would be able to balance out Biden's advantage, giving Biden the first of the (likely) three flips he'll be required to win the White House.
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