Is 2024’s presidential battleground bigger than we think? So focused on the past, we have been overlooking the present’s obvious. Former President Donald Trump’s polling numbers indicate his support is not just deeper but regionally broader than expected. If this is true, it has major November implications.
The 2016 and 2020 elections pivoted on five states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In 2016, Trump won them all, and the presidency’s determining electoral vote was 306 to 232. In 2020, Biden won them all, and the electoral vote was 306 to 232. Throw in 2020’s additional close states of Nevada (which Biden won) and North Carolina (which Trump won), and you get the seven states that are being focused on as 2024’s battleground.
Trump only needs to flip 35 electoral votes (due to census reapportionment, three electoral votes already moved into states Trump won in 2020) to reach the all-important 270 needed to win in 2024. It is, therefore, clear why these states are so important. However, there are several things that should make us question whether it is just these seven states that are in play this November.
For one thing, Trump leads in most of them. According to the latest Bloomberg/Morning Consult polling of these seven states in a two-way race, Trump leads Biden in all of them with margins ranging from 3 to 8 points and an average lead of 6 points. In a five-way race that includes his GOP primary opponent, Nikki Haley, and several third-party candidates, Trump also leads in all seven states, with the margin range expanding from 3 to 13 points and the average growing to 8.1 points.
And it’s not just one poll that shows these results. The RealClearPolitics average of state polling shows similar results: In Arizona, Trump is up by 4.5 points; in Georgia, by 7.2 points; in Michigan, by 5.1 points; in Pennsylvania, Trump is up by just 0.3 points; and in Wisconsin, he is leading by 0.2 points. (RCP does not include North Carolina in its calculations, likely because Trump’s lead there is so large. The latest Bloomberg/Morning Consult polling, for example, shows Trump with a 10-point lead in a two-way race and a 13-point lead in a five-way race). And all these Trump leads are in a two-way race; in a five-way race, Trump’s margins are likely even larger (as proof, RCP’s averaging shows Trump leading by 2.1 points in a two-way national race and by 4.8 points in a five-way).
Trump’s consistent leads raise the question of whether there are now other states that also should be considered 2024 battlegrounds.
The first reason to think this might be true lies in the 2020 results. Biden won the popular vote by 4.4 percentage points (51.3% to 46.9%) and 7,060,347 individual votes. Biden also won California and New York by a combined 7,096,710 individual votes — more than his national popular vote margin. So, Biden managed to strategically place his deficit in the rest of the nation to win Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
But if Trump is now leading in national polls, and we assume that Biden is still maintaining commanding leads in California and New York, then there is a lot of Trump support sloshing around in the rest of the country. Even if Trump is leading in the six battleground states he lost in 2020, neither those states nor his leads are big enough to soak up today’s extra Trump support.
A likely scenario is that Trump is running ahead of his past results in states other than just the six battleground states he lost in 2020. One indication that this is true is a recent KSTP/SurveyUSA poll from Minnesota that shows Biden leading Trump 42%-39%. What makes this noteworthy, besides its closeness, is that in 2020, Biden beat Trump 52.4% to 45.3% in Minnesota. If the recent poll is true, Trump has sliced Biden’s 2020 margin by more than half.
If such levels of decline are more widespread — but unknown because all the focus is on the six battleground states Trump lost in 2020 — then there could be more states potentially up for grabs in November. In addition to Minnesota, Biden won Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Maine by less than 11 percentage points in 2020.
If these five states became second-tier battleground states in 2024, this could have huge repercussions for the presidential race. To feel secure in these states means Biden will have to draw nearly as much, if not the same, amount of support as he did in 2020 — a task that is becoming increasingly difficult for the 81-year-old as Democratic enthusiasm wanes. In contrast, Trump would be playing with “house money” in these states: he doesn’t need to win them to win the presidency — he has more than enough to do that in the six battleground states he lost in 2020.
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A second tier of battleground states would mean Biden has to stretch his campaign even thinner. Money, resources, and attention — all he sorely needs to concentrate in first-tier battleground states — would have to be diverted. It could also further expand the congressional battleground: every electoral vote (except Washington, D.C.) represents a seat in the House or Senate.
All the polls suggest November’s race is even more complicated for Biden than most think. And his road to victory could wind through more states — and be even steeper — than most realize.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and the Senate from 1987 to 2000, served in the Department of Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, and was the director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023.