Jun.08

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

What Are the Easiest Paths for the Republicans to Win the Presidency in 2024?

There isn't a lot of general-election horse race polling yet, although with Donald Trump the overwhelming favorite so far, Biden-Trump polling can't far behind. Once this starts, we will constantly remind you that it's the electoral vote, not the popular vote, that matters. To win the election, Democrats need 270 electoral votes. In contrast, to win the Republicans need only 269 because in the event of a 269-269 tie in the electoral college, the House gets to pick the president, with each state getting one vote. In almost every conceivable scenario other than a category 9 blue hurricane, the Republicans will control at least 26 state delegations, so getting 269 EVs will do the job for them.

As you can see on the map above, with the 2020 electoral votes for each state, the Republicans would need to get an additional 269 - 235 = 34 electoral votes somewhere to win. There are various ways they could do this. An analysis from Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball shows some of the ways. But which are the easiest? Let's take a look.

One way for the Republican to get 34 more EVs would be to hold all the red states from last time and win California. Easy. Only one state needed. The problem here is winning California isn't happening given that Trump lost the state by 5,104,121 votes in 2020. So clearly we need to account for not only how many EVs a state has, but how easy it would be to flip it. The metric the article uses is the "cost" of an EV—that is, how many votes you have to flip to get one additional EV. The fewer votes you have to flip per EV, the more attractive a state is.

If we look at the closest states in 2020 and keep going down the list until we get 34 EVs, we come up with this table:

So Georgia is the low-hanging fruit for the Republicans. An EV costs only 736 votes there. If they can get an additional 11,780 votes, they get a big, juicy 16 EVs. Note that this requires flipping more votes than in Arizona (more work) but the payoff is bigger. However, Arizona is a better target than Wisconsin, which is about the same size, because the cost per EV is more than double in Wisconsin.

To us, this seems like a good starting point for evaluating different paths to victory for the Republicans. However, it is worth mentioning that the three states are very far apart and very different demographically. Talking about rebuilding heavy manufacturing will go over well in Wisconsin but not at all in the other two states. Finding a single message that works for all nationally and for all three of them may not be so easy.

While the above is one path, it is not the only one. There might be reasons why winning a state is hard. For example, the governors of Arizona and Wisconsin are Democrats and they will use all the state machinery they can to help their team win. Georgia may be easier than the table above shows, because Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) will help the red team out.

Another path is through Pennsylvania and Georgia. Pennsylvania is the biggest swing state that went blue last time and could conceivably flip in 2024. While harder than those above, it is also the biggest prize. Here's how that path looks:

Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have tended to vote the same way in recent cycles, so a pitch that works in one might work in the other. Given that Pennsylvania has a bigger haul, this route could be worth considering, even though Pennsylvania is more "expensive" than Wisconsin. Remember than campaigns really have to decide which states to prioritize in terms of buying television time, paying workers on the ground, and deciding where the candidate should spend time. In effect, a campaign has to pick a path and then follow through.

Here is another path:

This path is slightly more expensive than the Pennsylvania + Georgia path, but, as noted, issues that resonate in Pennsylvania also resonate in Wisconsin, so campaigning may be easier. Also, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are close together, reducing travel time and travel costs. Further, this route does not involve Georgia, where the Democrats not only won the presidential race in 2020, but three Senate races there in the past three years. It seems to be becoming a purple-blue state very quickly.

If Georgia looks too hard to get, here is another route around it:

The attraction here is that while Georgia is trending blue, Nevada is trending red. It just replaced a Democratic governor with a Republican one, for example. It's perhaps more of a wild card than some of the other states.

Now what about this?

The advantage here is that it doesn't require winning Georgia or Arizona, two states that having been turning blue recently. In Arizona, for example, the governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both senators were elected as Democrats.

Now here is one last, oddball, way to get to 34: Pick off NE-02, Omaha. Now Omaha isn't a state, of course, but it does have its very own electoral vote (NE-02). Here is the table for this route:

Why might this route to preferable to the others? Well, suppose the Republican campaign concludes that 2016 was a fluke with Trump barely winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and that the upper Midwest is going to revert to its historical blue color in 2024. Democrats have since won most statewide elections in all of them, including the gubernatorial races in all three in 2022. Then the question comes up: Can the Republicans win the White House while losing them all? The above scenario shows that it is possible, but it runs through Nebraska, of all places, and the stars really have to align. Alternatively, substitute ME-02 for NE-02, but that's probably a tougher climb. There is not a lot of margin for error if the Upper Midwest is lost.

There are other scenarios, like flipping Michigan or New Hampshire, for example, but if that happens we are probably in the middle of a huge red wave and those states don't even matter.

One thing we didn't look at, but which can't be ignored, is the Democrats flipping a red state. The easiest one by far is North Carolina. Barack Obama even did it in 2008. Here is the little table for it:

Again, campaigns don't just run ads and hope for the best. They have limited resources and have to decide how to allocate them. For the Republican candidate, he (sorry Nikki, but no "or she" here) has to make decisions where to put resources. Is Nevada worth it? Is Pennsylvania worth it? This is what campaign managers have sleepless nights thinking about. (V)