Jul.10

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Crystal Ball: Only Four Toss-up States in 2024

Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball has made its first electoral college map for 2024. Here is the map:

As you can see, there are four toss-up states, marked in yellow. They are Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. There is one leans-red state (North Carolina) and three leans-blue states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire). The rest are nailed down. The NE-02 district is predicted to buck the rest of Nebraska and go blue and the ME-02 district is predicted to buck the rest of Maine and go red, so they cancel out.

In this configuration, the Democrat, whom the Ball is expecting to be Joe Biden, has 260 electoral votes and the Republican, whom the Ball expects to be Donald Trump, has 235 electoral votes. While neither of these is 270, Biden is in better shape. He needs 10 more electoral votes. That means he has to win only one of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Trump must win all three. That gets him to 272. Even if he loses ME-02, he still would have 271. Note that Trump really only needs 269 because in the event of a tie, the House would pick the president, with each state getting one vote. The Republicans will almost certainly control 26 state delegations, so the magic number for them is 269 whereas it is 270 for the Democrats.

The map is pretty much independent of who the nominees are and is certainly independent of national polling. If Trump's legal problems lead to Ron DeSantis getting the GOP nomination and Biden dies and the Democrats nominate Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), nothing changes. The Crystal Ball hasn't taken third parties like No Labels, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party into account, but even that doesn't change the map, per se, although it could affect who wins the swing states.

The Crystal Ball team argued internally about one state: Pennsylvania. Some members argued for making it a toss-up. But in the end, they gave the Democrats the edge because the governor, lieutentant governor, and attorney general are all Democrats, as are both senators.

What about the four swing states? Here are the presidential winners back to 2000.

From the table, Arizona and Georgia have only recently started to swing. They used to be pretty red. Arizona is swingier than Georgia, though, as the governor, attorney general, and secretary of state are all Democrats and both senators were elected as Democrats. In Georgia, the only statewide elected Democrats are the two senators, and they benefited from Trump's mucking around in their races. Nevada is a light blue state, but although the Democrat has won four times in a row, the margin keeps getting smaller. Also, the state elected a Republican governor in 2022.

We mostly agree with the Ball. Our only quibble is that we would put Nevada and North Carolina in the same bag. Either they are both true toss-ups or they are each slightly partisan, albeit in different directions. We think the Democrats' chance of winning North Carolina is about as big as the Republicans' chance of winning Nevada. (V)