This is the electoral map with which Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020 by a margin of 306 votes to 232 in the electoral college.*
Despite winning the popular vote by 81,284,666 (51.3%) to 74,224,319 (46.9%), a margin of over 7 million votes (4.4%), Biden only won the electoral college thanks to narrow wins in Georgia (0.24%). Arizona (0.31%) and Wisconsin (0.63%) with a combined margin of a little over 40,000 votes.
The electoral college is strongly tilted in favour of smaller, rural states, which overwhelmingly favour Republicans. Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college 304 to 227 despite winning the popular vote by a margin of three million votes or 2.1%.
2020 Presidential Election Results in Battleground states
The 2024 Campaign
If Kamala Harris wins with exactly the same electoral map as Biden, she will win the Electoral College by 303 votes to 235. She can afford to lose in Arizona and Georgia and still win the electoral college by 276 to 262. If she loses Wisconsin as well, she loses by 266 votes to 272. If she loses in Pennsylvania as well, she loses by 247 to 291, and even wins in Arizona and Wisconsin can’t save her. She would lose by 268 to 270 votes if she won Arizona and Wisconsin, but lost Pennsylvania.
The bottom line is Pennsylvania is an absolute must win for her, and even then, she must win one out of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. It is therefore a mild surprise that she did not nominate Josh Shapiro, the popular democratic Governor of Pennsylvania as her running mate. His ardently pro-Israeli views probably counted against him as they would have divided the Democratic base and perhaps reduced Democrat voter turnout.
Arizona Senator, Mark Kelly, was the other person reportedly on her final three man shortlist and might have helped her in Arizona. In the end she went for Tim Walz, the popular governor of Minnesota, which is not, relatively speaking, a battleground state. He has, however, been remarkably successful in appealing to working class and rural voters in the mid-western state while implementing solidly Democratic policies.
His selection is therefore an attempt by Kamala Harris to counter the appeal of the Trump/Vance ticket to the more rural and working class voters who have been abandoning the Democratic party in large numbers, particularly since the advent of Trump. Walz will also help to consolidate her appeal with trade unionists and beyond the more liberal urban centres which are the bedrock of the Democratic party vote.
The fact that Walz has had children through IVF, something Trump has pledged to make more difficult to obtain may also have been a factor in his selection. With JD Vance having derided the “miserable childless cat women” who are running the US more and more and Republican’s claiming to be the party of the family, why stop people like Walz trying to have a family? His main negative is that he was the Governor when Minneapolis was convulsed by riots following the murder of George Floyd by city police.
US Elections are increasingly about who can turn out their base, and Walz’s selection should reassure Democratic leaning voters everywhere that Kamala Harris can be relied on to implement their policy priorities and not give Israel a blank cheque to do whatever it wants in Palestine.
There is also a lot of evidence to suggest that the choice of running mate has little impact on voter behaviour in November, even in the running mate’s home state – a point made by no less than Trump himself when reacting to the mixed reaction given to his selection of JD Vance as his running mate. Saying that the vice Presidential pick doesn’t matter much is surely the most lukewarm endorsement of a running mate ever!
Current Polling Trends
So, who is currently ahead in the polls? Since my last post, Kamala Harris has continued to expand her lead from 1.5% to 2.3% in the national polls, just above the 2.1% which failed to give Hillary Clinton a majority in the Electoral College, but well short of Biden’s 4.4% margin of victory.
(All poll numbers taken from 538.com, one of the leading poll aggregators in the US).
This trend is also reflected in the key battleground states where Harris has taken the lead in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, is now tied with Trump in Arizona, and has narrowed the gap in Georgia. If these polls are an accurate reflection of what happens in November, Harris will win the electoral College by 276 to 262, even if she loses Arizona and Georgia.
Conclusion
Clearly the election is too close to call right now, and a lot can happen between now and November. Walz’s selection has been generally well received, but Harris still has the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and at least one debate with Trump to navigate unscathed.
Democrats will try to make the election a referendum on the “weird” personalities of Trump and Vance, their radical policy agenda derived from Project 2025, and the threat to democracy Trump is alleged to represent. Republicans will try to target the “far left” policies of Harris/Walz, Walz’s inability to prevent rioting after the murder of George Floyd, and Harris’ failure to build an anti-immigrant wall.
No doubt there will also be misogynist messaging and dog whistles about the unsuitability of women for high office. Harris’ lack of a track record of high achievement will undoubtedly count against her even in the eyes of voters who are not necessarily misogynistic in their outlook. That said, neither Trump nor Vance have achieved much in their careers, and Trump’s first term was characterised by gross incompetence as much as anything else. Packing the Supreme Court with (unpopular) conservatives and giving tax breaks to the rich were the only notable achievements of his first term.
There is, however, no guarantee that the election will follow the same pattern as in 2020, and it wouldn’t take much of a swing for other states such as Nevada and Michigan to come into play. In the event of Harris doing better than the polls currently predict, Republican held states like North Carolina, Florida, and even Texas could come into play, but there have been too few polls since Harris replaced Biden to discern any clear trends in those states as yet.
There have also been a lot of demographic changes in recent years. 22m boomers have died since 2016 when Trump was elected and there are now 30m more persons of mixed race on the electoral roll. First time, younger, women, non-white, non-evangelical, more educated, self-described LGBT, and unmarried voters have tended to vote Democrat in greater numbers, and all these demographics are on the increase. Harris is well placed to appeal to these demographics many of whom might not ordinarily vote Democratic or vote at all. That said, Harris may lose some Jewish voters and has yet to consolidate her appeal to black and Hispanic voters.
Harris will need to win the popular vote by several million to win the electoral college. Are such a large majority of Americans ready to vote for a female President? Possibly only if the alternative is Trump. He is now, at 78, the old man of the campaign, and his ramblings can be as incoherent as Biden’s were. With Biden gone, it is Trump’s faulty recollections, mis-speaks, and factual errors which will now come under closer scrutiny. What worked in 2016 will not necessarily work in 2024. Has America moved on?
Trump was clearly in the lead while Biden was in the race. Kamala Harris has turned that around, and the race is now too close to call. A tipping point has been reached, and if the polls continue on their current trajectory, Kamala Harris will be the next President of the United States. But in a race of many twists and turns, that is still a big IF.
*NB The US Electoral College is not the same in 2024 as it was in 2020
The number of electoral votes each state has is determined by adding the number of the U.S. House of Representatives members and their two U.S. Senators. A state’s number of congressional districts is based on the latest U.S. Census, which was conducted in 2020. Wyoming, with a population of less than 600,000 thus gets two extra electoral college seats for its two senators, the same as California, with a population of almost 40 million.
For the 2024 election, red states, Ohio and West Virginia and blue states California, Illinois, New York, Colorado and Oregon, have all lost one vote.
Red states Florida, Montana and North Carolina have all gained one electoral vote and Texas has gained two.
Michigan and Pennsylvania, both of which voted for former president Donald Trump in 2016 but flipped to President Joe Biden in 2020, also lost one vote each.
If anything, the 2024 Electoral College is now even more heavily weighted against Democrats. Joe Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 would have been 6 electoral college votes less had it been determined by the 2024 Electoral college map.
Frank Schnittger is the author of Sovereignty 2040, a future history of how Irish re-unification might work out. He has worked in business in Dublin and London and, on a voluntary basis, for charities in community development, education, restorative justice and addiction services.
Discover more from Slugger O’Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
