Swing States – Part 1

I’ve held off writing this blog, in order to leave as much time for new polling to come in. After a flurry of new polls yesterday, balanced with the understanding that the key states are not the ones where there is massive movement in these polls, I’ll select two cohorts. Today, I’ll explore four states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota) that were tightly fought in the previous election (as mentioned in my previously blog). In general, these states can be seen as fairly vital for Biden to win the presidency. As in 2016, if Trump is the victor in the majority of these states, it is likely that he will win the electoral college. In total, these states offer 56 EV – near 21% of the EV required to reach the magical 270. These are also interesting states as they, in many ways, represent the key group of voters from 2016 who moved dramatically towards Trump.

Pennsylvania (20 EV)

Pennsylvania is the birthplace of Biden (he was born in Scranton, PA – location of The US Office) before he moved to Delaware. It is an increasingly racially diverse state – this could be important as Biden has (so far) underperformed relative to Clinton in 2016 amongst African-American voters. This is especially significant in the major cities of PA, as Biden will need to run up large margins of victory in these areas of offset Trump’s advantage in rural areas. Based on the current polling averages, Trump is approximately 5% behind – within a polling error of victory. You should expect to see Biden (and to an extent, Trump) doing a great deal of last minute campaigning here. We will discuss the ‘calling’ of elections at the start of next week, but do expect the initial results to be heavily skewed towards Trump (most Republican voters vote in person) and then a shift towards Biden as postal votes are opened and counted. Most pollsters’ models suggest this will be the ‘tipping point’ state – if you were to put the states in order based on those which had largest Trump vote to largest Biden vote, this would be the one where either candidate picks up their 270th EV.

Michigan (16 EV)

Michigan was once considered to be very competitive (especially after 2016). It is now very likely to go for Biden (he currently leads by 9% in the polls) unless there is an absolutely extraordinary polling error. Lots of reasons have been suggested for this: some writers believe it is due to African-American voters increasing in turnout, others suggest it was the role Biden had in saving the car industry in Detroit. The relative popularity of Biden amongst working class voters (especially in comparison to Clinton) is also touted. It is likely a combination of all of these and the steadily increasing COVID infection numbers that is driving the shift. Overall, MI is far more reliably Democratic, historically and this can be seen as a reversion to the norm.

Wisconsin (10 EV)

Wisconsin is, like Michigan, a state that as moved much more towards Biden in recent weeks. A recent poll (from very reliable ABC/Washington Post) suggested Biden ahead by 17%. This is likely to be an outlier but this state has now moved from a swing state that sat within the margin of error in July to a safe Biden state. There are, again, multiple reasons for this. Biden is far more personally popular here than Clinton, COVID cases are rising very rapidly and it appears that turn out may increase amongst African-American voters. This appears to offset the enormous advantage Trump has in the rural areas of the state (famously known for producing cheese) – Milwaukee is currently polling incredibly strongly for Biden and there has been a 50% increase in early voting returns compared to 2016 in the city. Although it is important not to read too much into early/mail in voting numbers, the vast majority of early voting is by Democratic voters.

Minnesota (10 EV)

Minnesota, like Wisconsin, has trended towards Biden. Rather than repeating what I’ve said above, I will make one observation that is likely to be discussed at length after the election (regardless of the result). Before the COVID crisis, both Wisconsin and Minnesota were both considered to ‘in play’ for Trump. This was due to a strong economy and success amongst rural voters (even those harmed by tariffs). The COVID 19 crisis appears, its impact and the public confidence in Trump’s response has had a massive impact in these states. There is no way of knowing what the polls would look like now had COVID never appeared but it does demonstrate how, compared to all of the other news events of his presidency, COVID has been the one which Trump has had the biggest and longest lasting impact.

Tomorrow we’ll look at states that could be indicators of a potential Biden landslide based on recent polling: Florida, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina.