So, it suffices to say that the state of the electoral college in 2024 for democrats is...bad. Very bad. I havent seen an election cycle like this since I started following polling, which was in 2008. In 2008, I remember being on the opposite side and feeling like we were screwed as Obama had such a massive lead in the electoral college that my most rudimentary estimate at his probability of winning was around 95% (based on a 3 point margin of error). 2012, not quite as bad for the GOP, but a 2008 repeat. 2016 and 2020, both had dems leading, and Trump's win in 2016 was largely unexpected. I did sound alarm bells about the possibility, but even I suspected Clinton would pull it off. It would be narrow, but it would happen.
2024 though, I have never seen such a red map. I did follow politics in 2004, I was a Bush guy back then, and I always felt like he would win. I think the polls led that way, but I would like to go back and see for myself what the map looked like, and what the probabilities were. I won't make a fancy chart, those things take too much time to get the formatting correct, but RCP has all of the data compiled in a chart-like form, and I did reconstruct a map based off of the data. And this is what I came up with...
As for the tipping point, that would be Florida with 0.6% Bush.
As such, Bush actually had about the same probability that Clinton had in 2016, about 56% for Bush, 44% for Kerry. Very close race, came down to the wire, could go either way.
There also seemed to be a lot more swing states up for grabs. On the blue side, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire were the closest ones, with Minnesota and Michigan being also fairly up for grabs.
On the republican side, Iowa, Wisconsin, Florida, and Hawaii were all within a point. Bush's 62 electoral vote lead could be very quickly nullified. Kerry would only need 31, which means he'd need Florida and one other of those states. Hawaii and Florida would result in a 269 tie, but any of the others would put him over 270. Ohio, Arkansas, and New Mexico also seemed worth trying to win over and were well within range. As such, while the map did favor Bush, it did so by less than a point, and the election was winnable.
I would say if I were Kerry, I'd focus on shoring up Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, while trying to expand into the rust belt in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio (Ohio was Bush +2.1%, so about a 30% chance for Kerry). I'd also heavily prize Florida, which I would consider the end all be all state, similar to 2000, where Bush won there by less than 500 votes. And yeah, Kerry had a decent shot here. He had multiple avenues to victory, and even though he didn't win, it was close.
What happened with the actual election? Well, Kerry did overperform. He did get Wisconsin and Hawaii, but that wasn't enough for him. And I remember people saying Ohio was like 2004's 2000. It was very close, but Bush barely won. So in a sense, the dems did get locked out of the electoral college again narrowly. It was a very competitive race. Bush had the edge, but he wasn't unbeatable, and it could've gone either way.
Now, how do I compare this to the 2024 map, since this is what I do want to compare it to?
Well, this is where we are right now.
And yes, we're still at that 2.3% Pennsylvania tipping point. Again, not much has changed. And the changes we've been seeing fluctuate every which way. As I said in my last election update, about 28% for Biden, 72% for Trump. And the first thing I notice is the path here is much narrower for Biden. Only 3 states are really in play in play enough on the Trump side Biden can pick up. And those are Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. If he holds everything and gets those three, he gets 270. The odds of flipping PA mirror flipping Ohio in 2004, and keep in mind there's no "florida" equivalent alternative path here. After those states, the next ones for Biden to flip would be Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia. All of them are above the +4 Trump mark, with three of them being over +5. Florida is at an 8, FYI.
As for Trump, well, all he has to do is hold what he has. He can afford to lose two of the three rust belt states. He just can't lose all three. And even if he does, he could force a 269-269 tie if he wins Omaha (NE2). And he can also make plays for Maine at large, Virginia, an Minnesota. If any of those go for Trump, and Biden can't get one of those +4s he's screwed.
So...just playing this out, yeah, I think Trump is currently in a stronger position than Bush was in 2004. That said, since 2000 was so close and probably mirrored 2000 in polling (maybe even favoring dems, Im not sure if RCP has 2000 polling on their site looking at it). The current map we're facing might be the most favorable for the GOP since 1988. That's REALLY REALLY BAD. That's why I've been panicking over this. I havent seen GOP numbers this good since the literal 1980s. And while the numbers arent as dismal as the 80s where I'm sure the dems had like a statistically 0% chance or something close to it, yeah, this isn't good. We're a bad spot.
While 2024 is winnable for the democrats, polling alone seems to indicate we're weaker than we were in the Bush years. We have fewer paths to victory, and the one that exists is very narrow and somewhat of an uphill battle. It kind of reminds me of the 2016 situation for the GOP but in reverse. people were lamenting on the right losing the electoral college for a generation and how as long as the blue wall held they'd be screwed. As it turns out Trump broke the blue wall and shifted Florida and Ohio so inexorably right they're pretty much borderline safe states at this point, joining Texas in that regard. And the sun belt states the dems have been trying for just aren't going blue. So now we have a broken blue wall, and the rest of the map is turning red. We're kind of in trouble.
This could be one of those elections that repudiates the democrats as a party. We might lose this battle for a realignment and completely reinvent ourselves in order to win elections. ANd the end result of that has about a 10% chance of being positive IMO, but a 90% chance of being negative. The 10% chance is some Bernie style populism coming out of the woodwork and realigning the party, the other 90% being the dems moderating even more to win over the moderates and normies and never doing anything progressive again. We're screwed.
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