But this is not an article that will be ripping apart the electoral college (if you explore this site for very long, those are pretty easy to find). Instead, our focus today will be on a simple question: which state will be the most important next year? We have had a relatively uniform list of swing states since the 2000 elections, but as the years go by certain states (places like Virginia, Missouri, Colorado, and New Mexico) have become less swing-y, to the point where you'd argue the presidential candidates will largely ignore them, while other states have started to make their voices heard as some of the more important spots on the map. Today we'll do an inaugural list for the blog (we never did this in 2016, to my recollection), of the most important states, with #1 being the state I think is most likely to decide the presidential election (should it come down to only one state). For each state, I'm going to be examining why each party has hope to win, and why each side should come with a bit of doubt.
Honorable Mentions: Obviously we're a while out, so it's still debatable how many of these states will be important. Home state candidates (if, say, Sherrod Brown or Amy Klobuchar is on the ticket, that might matter for a point or two), could be a factor, and it's possible that specific policies could be very important (check out #9 for a state I'm banking this will be the case). With that said, there are three other states that could conceivably become part of this list in the future as I see it right now. The big question in Texas is-was Beto O'Rourke a fluke, a once-in-a-generation candidate like Jason Kander in 2016 who can excite people, and then they'll revert back to their regular voting patterns, or did he just show that Texas should be considered a swing state in the right circumstances? If it's the latter, the GOP may have to spend money in a state with a giant list of media markets. Conversely, Hillary Clinton only won Maine by 3-points, while President Obama won it by 17 points and 16 points in his two respective elections). If Trump is able to hang onto that kind of margin in 2020, the Democrats should be worried here, but Janet Mills proved in 2020 that Democrats can still win 50%+1 in the state with little worry, so I didn't quite include that state on the list (though you'll see the Pine Tree State still finds room on this list). Finally, there's Georgia, where the Democrats did quite well in 2018, enough for us to start taking seriously statewide candidates in the Peach State, but they still lost every race, and haven't won statewide in Georgia since 2006. If the trends continue their way, that could be a problem in future elections, but I'd have to imagine that Trump will be fine here in 2020 unless he's doing really badly elsewhere (in which case this list becomes moot as he's already lost).
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| Attorney General Keith Ellison (D-MN) |
Why It Might Be Trump: Trump has brought it up often in recent days (in regard to his attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar), but he did come quite close to winning the Gopher State in 2016, losing it by less than 2-points. Minnesota, therefore, is a state the Democrats can't afford to lose, but it's also a state that they need to pay attention to, as it very nearly became ensconced with Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the "blue wall" hall of shame. Expect Trump to make a big play here in 2020, getting Minnesota it's first "swing state" status since roughly 2004.
Why It Might Be the Democrats: Think of Minnesota in a lot of ways as a blue Georgia. It's a state that has close elections, and one that will probably be more competitive in the future for the GOP (thanks to its overwhelmingly white population & the waning strength of the Democratic brand in the Iron Range), but right now it still regularly delivers victories for the Democrats. 2018 showed with wins by not only Tim Walz & Tina Smith, but also someone like Keith Ellison (who had a number of controversies heading into Election Day) that the Democratic Party is the party to beat here. If Minnesota is actually going to Trump, it's probable that he's got a comfortable lead elsewhere.
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| Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) |
Why It Might Be Trump: No Obama-2012 state gave Trump a bigger victory margin in 2016 than Iowa (not even Ohio, which I'm not including on this list because I don't see it as a plausible swing state unless the Biden poll numbers can sustain through a year's worth of campaigning...and if that's true the Democrats need to give that man the nomination today). A combination of almost exclusively white voters with a lack of a major metropolitan area like Philadelphia or Milwaukee made Iowa the easiest state to pick up against the Democrats, and in 2018 we saw again that the Republicans can win statewide, as they took the governor's mansion despite an enormous effort by both sides to win. Iowa is the state on this list that I could most easily see disappearing in future iterations because I over-estimated two points in the Democrats favor (and perhaps is just about to become Missouri-a former swing state that is now red-leaning).
Why It Might Be the Democrats: Two things come to mind. First, while Kim Reynolds' victory in 2018 was a huge disappointment for the Democrats, she won by less than 3-points, and the Democrats had other statewide victories (Rob Sand beating an incumbent for the Auditor race being the most notable), as well as picked up two House seats against sitting incumbents. Perhaps more pressing, though, is Trump's tariff wars. This is going to hit Iowa farmers particularly hard, and with the right candidate (one who could draw on the Obama voters who switched to Trump), this might be a solid message. An economic downturn next year would impact farmers disproportionately, and especially with Teresa Greenfield serving as a surrogate in the state, might give the Democrats a chance.
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| Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) |
Why It Might Be Trump: A lot of ink has been spilled over Trump's wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, & Wisconsin, but not enough chatter has happened about how close Hillary Clinton was to losing New Hampshire, which she took by less than half a percentage point. A predominantly white state (for years the most conservative outlier on the map in New England), New Hampshire has a lot of voters that would fit the profile of a Trump supporter, and his close election there in 2016 shouldn't be taken for granted. The Republicans easily won reelection for Chris Sununu to the governorship in 2018, and if Trump is doing well nationwide, few states are more susceptible to the national environment than the Granite State.
Why It Might Be the Democrats: 2016 might be more of a wakeup call for New Hampshire Democrats than anything else. Let's not forget that they the GOP hasn't won a Senate race here since 2010, and that's with two very competitive races (2014 & 2016). While Sununu won statewide, New England has a weird history of electing moderate Republican governors that couldn't get arrested in a federal race, and it's telling that no top tier Republican (like Sununu) wants to run against Jeanne Shaheen next year. It's possible that New England, after a bit of a flirtation with the GOP in 2016, will revert back to form at least until Trump is out of office.
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| Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) |
Why It Might Be Trump: I'm combining these two for now because I see them as roughly even. The first reason that Trump should be hopeful here is that he obviously won both of these seats in 2016, for the most part without much effort (it's rare that a presidential candidate would go after one measly electoral vote). Maine's 2nd district is a perfect microcosm of white New England voters who would be attracted to Trump's policies, and it was the first time in 16 years that an electoral college vote went to the Republicans from New England. Nebraska's 2nd, despite showing more "swing" is still red territory, having denied President Obama its votes in 2012 (even though it went for him in 2008), and it stayed red in 2018 for the House.
Why It Might Be the Democrats: While the GOP did win NE-2 last year, they didn't take ME-2 in 2018. After initially being behind, ranked choice voting was enough to carry Jared Golden across the finish line in Maine, and RCV is something both parties will need to deal with in 2020 as this now is part of Maine's presidential voting process. While Trump did win a majority of the ME-2 vote in 2020, Golden's victory indicates that this district (which went for Obama twice) isn't a slam dunk for the GOP, and it's possible that Trump would, like Bruce Poliquin in 2018, win a plurality but not be able to attain a majority. Nebraska's 2nd was a near miss for the Democrats (they lost by less than 2-points) with a candidate that was too liberal for the district (had they gone with the establishment choice of former Rep. Brad Ashford, it's probable that the D's would have another congressman this year). It's also worth remembering that Clinton only lost here by 2.2-points, a tighter election than Maine, North Carolina, or Arizona; if this were a state, it'd be toward the top of the list of swing states. In 2020, someone like Joe Biden (who could win over those voters who would have gone for Ashford but were turned off by someone as liberal as Kara Eastman) might be able to win over this Omaha-dominated district. It's worth remembering that if the Democrats were to win Pennsylvania & Michigan but lose Wisconsin, they'd still take the election if they grabbed both of these two seats, so don't think the election might not come down to one of these two spots.
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| AG Commissioner Nikki Fried (D-FL) |
Why It Might Be Trump: Minnesota is a light blue state that almost always stays blue. In some ways, Florida is its true doppelgänger, though unlike Minnesota it has gone for a Democratic candidate in at least a few recent elections (2012, 2008, probably 2000 if they'd counted all of the ballots). That said, Florida is surely a state that Democrats get close but never actually win more than anything else. Including of course 2016 (where Trump won by only 1.2-points), there's also the 2004, 2010, 2014, and 2018 elections, all where presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial Democrats came so close but ultimately ended up losing. It's worth noting that while the states ranked 1-5 have elected Democrats to major office in either 2016 or 2018, Florida hasn't-Bill Nelson & Andrew Gillum both got tossed to the wolves last year, even in a wave.
Why It Might Be the Democrats: Florida is always close, and you can't ignore states that are always close even if you typically lose them because progressives don't have the luxury of ignoring a state like Florida. Nikki Fried isn't well-known, but last year she won the Agriculture Commissioner post in Florida, making her the first person not named Nelson or Obama to win statewide in Florida since 2006. Trump's attacks on immigrants helped Democrats pick up two major seats in the Miami area last year, and could show that he's particularly vulnerable to an exodus of Cuban-American voters in the state, a crucial voting bloc that helped both Bushes win Florida in their statewide bids here. It's sixth place because the state is frequently "Lucy with the football" for Democrats, but Florida is the state where we're entering genuine unknown territory on this rundown.
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| Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC) |
Why It Might Be Trump: North Carolina is similar to Florida in that it's a state that typically goes red, but occasionally blue. Trump was able to win here by just under 4-points, a bigger margin than Mitt Romney in 2012. The state also delivered a victory for the Republicans in 2016 for the Senate, having Richard Burr beat Democrat Deborah Ross in a closely-watched contest. North Carolina is the only state in the Top 6 that didn't deliver a House pickup for the Democrats in 2018 (though that may have been do to the electoral inconsistencies in NC-9). Suffice it to say, the Democrats have more to prove here than the Republicans when it comes to "I know I can win."
Why It Might Be the Democrats: While Trump was able to win this state by a bigger margin than Romney, the now-Utah senator actually got a bigger percentage of the vote in 2012 than Trump did. This isn't uncommon (despite Trump winning a squeaker and Romney losing in a landslide, Trump outperformed Romney in only about half of the states three years ago), but it's noteworthy because it indicates that 2016 in the Tar Heel State may have been less about Trump and more about disliking Hillary Clinton, who won't be on the ballot next year. It's worth noting that Roy Cooper won the governor's mansion that same year as a Democrat, and that Thom Tillis (who is up for the Senate next year) looks very vulnerable in polling. If the Democrats are able to find a candidate with less preconceptions in the minds of swing voters than Clinton, North Carolina could be on-the-table once more.
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| Gov. Tom Wolf (D-PA) |
Why It Might Be Trump: Trump did something in 2016 that no Republican had done since 1988-won the Keystone State. There had been some close calls (John Kerry in 2004 won by less than 2-points), but Pennsylvania had never actually made the plunge into the Republican side since Bush (barely) beat Dukakis here. Trump's ability to turn out voters, particularly those in outstate Pennsylvania, is impressive, and not something that Democrats should assume can't be duplicated. After all, he did the same strategy in states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa to similar effect.
Why It Might Be the Democrats: The Democrats proved in 2018 that they aren't going to lose lying down in Pennsylvania, delivering double-digit victories for Gov. Tom Wolf & Sen. Bob Casey, and perhaps more critically, showed that they have a map for a future presidential candidate. Taking a look at Mecklenburg and Bucks County, for example (arguably the two places where Clinton lost the state by under-performing Obama's margins there), Wolf & Casey both improved dramatically over 2016. The Democrats also managed to win a quartet of House districts, and seem to be making a major fight in the state for three more in 2020 (which should help local campaigns from getting complacent). Wolf will need to do something he's not great at (retail politicking for someone else-former Gov. Ed Rendell was considerably better at this and helped with John Kerry & Barack Obama's campaigns), but of the three "blue wall" states that fell, Pennsylvania appears the most likely to go back to the Democrats from my vantage point.
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| Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) |
Why It Might Be Trump: In 2016, Trump won perhaps his biggest surprise victory in Michigan, taking the election by just over 10,000 votes (for Democrats who need to be angry right now, Jill Stein got over 50,000 votes in the Wolverine State, easily enough to make the difference for Clinton). Trump's victory there was based on a similar strategy as Pennsylvania-ignore the large metro area (in this case, Detroit & the surrounding areas), and win major victories out-state to make up for Clinton's built-in advantage. Michigan did have at least a little bit of good news for Trump in 2018 as well. While Sen. Debbie Stabenow won, she only won by about 7-points, a thinner victory than polls had stated and one that was much smaller than her race in 2012. If Stabenow could only pull off such a margin in a very good year for the Democrats, could that be a sign that this state is becoming much swingier?
Why It Might Be the Democrats: It's entirely possible that Stabenow's race was just telling us what we already know-that Michigan is a much more achievable dream for the Republicans now than it used to be, but it's no slam dunk. She did, after all, still win (Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren ain't going to be crying if they only win Michigan by 7-points), and the Democrats took the governor's mansion by a bigger margin, as well as took the Secretary of State and Attorney General posts for the first time since 1990 and 1998, respectively. I've said this quite a few times, and I'm going to reiterate it until it isn't true-in 2016, the Democrats wouldn't have lost Michigan if they thought it was possible to lose Michigan. In 2020, they definitely are aware it's possible to lose Michigan.
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| Commissioner Sandra Kennedy (D-AZ) |
Why It Might Be Trump: You'll notice something about every race we've profiled in the ranked (non-Honorable Mention) portion of this list-every single one of them were won at some point by Barack Obama, either in 2008 or 2012 or both. Arizona is literally the only state on this list that went for John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump, and in fact only once in the past 70 years (1996) has the Democratic Party won the state of Arizona in the presidential race. In 2018, despite a very strong environment for the Democrats, Gov. Doug Ducey won an easy reelection, and one could make an argument that in 2016 Trump did pretty much everything he could to alienate the Grand Canyon State's high Latino population, and he still won.
Why It Might Be the Democrats: For all the talk about Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke's close victories meaning something important for the Democrats in 2018 (and the future of the party in electoral rich Georgia and Texas), they still lost. The only McCain-Romney-Trump state that the Democrats made proper inroads in last year was Arizona. Not only did they pick up the majority in the House delegation thanks to Ann Kirkpatrick, but four women (Kyrsten Sinema, Katie Hobbs, Kathy Hoffman, and Sandra Kennedy) all won statewide office here, ending a drought that had been going on since 2008 (when oddly enough Kennedy had been the last Democrat elected statewide). Those victories show a clear path of how the Democrats (who got within 4-points of winning here in 2016) could take a state that has long eluded them, despite demographics stating that they should have a shot here. Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, all neighbors to Arizona, have become pretty darn blue in recent years-it's probable that if the "blue wall" doesn't hold together again, Arizona will be the ace-in-the-hole for the left.
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| Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) |
Why It Might Be Trump: In 2018, Democrats won all three of the failed "blue wall" state's Senate and governorship elections. On election night, though, one of those races was clearly in question: the Wisconsin governor's race. Scott Walker, the incumbent, was indeed formidable and one could make an argument that State Superintendent Tony Evers lacked the finesse of neighboring Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, but it's still worth noting-even in the best of environments, the Democrats struggled to win against a larger-than-life Republican. Anyone with access to an electoral college calculator can show you that if Trump only loses Pennsylvania & Michigan, he still wins the election with Wisconsin. Considering that this is the most likely of the three to stay in his hands (both with the 2018 evidence and the fact that Wisconsin is historically redder than PA or MI), Trump basically is going to be living in this state for the duration of the campaign. It's worth noting that despite Trump still being in office and the shenanigans that Walker and the State GOP pulled during the lame duck session, Democrats in the state still couldn't sustain their momentum into April of this year, when they lost a State Supreme Court race by just over 6000 votes; that lack of focus should make any Democrat watching this state nervous.
Why It Might Be the Democrats: Couple of things here. For starters, Evers did win, as did the Democrats running for all of the state's constitutional offices. Secondly, Wisconsin Democrats may have dropped the ball in April, but considering almost everyone ranks their state as the most important in the country, there's no way they won't know that they have the most important election in the country next year. Turnout was more than sufficient to get Tammy Baldwin (who wouldn't be a bad running-mate option, all things considered) a double digit win last year, so it's also worth remembering that Trump is still the outlier more than the Democrats. That said, the Supreme Court race made the hair on the back-of-my-neck stand on end, as I'm willing to bet money-if the Democrats can't take either Arizona or Wisconsin, they will almost certainly get four more years of Trump.
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