Thinking About 2024

Sabato has his first deep dive analysis of 2024 and the upshot is that this election will be decided in fewer states than ever before. He has only four states as tossups–Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. And while Wisconsin most certainly should be considered a tossup, given what Dobbs and crazy Republican overreach has done to recent Wisconsin elections, there’s reason to feel some optimism here, so if I was a betting person, I’d say Democrats are pretty likely to win Wisconsin.

So that leaves three true tossups. That’s….not a lot. The only possible state Democrats could pick up is North Carolina and that feels pretty unlikely, though I’m sure it will be close. Ohio? Florida? Forget about it. Might have a better shot at Alaska than those. Meanwhile, the only states Sabato has as even leaning Democratic are Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire, and I’d say there is almost no chance that Republicans win those states, especially with Donald Trump as the nominee.

In the end, we can pay a ton of attention to polling numbers and the economy and everything else. But this election is going to come down to one question: Do you want Donald Trump as president again or not? There are some additional factors that could affect this, at least three. The first is turnout, which is going to be critical. Since no one is excited by Biden, will the voter turnout happen? I think months of Trump on the airwaves will remind everyone that yes, you have to do that. The second is a semi-serious third party candidate, which could be disastrous. So of course that’s what Joe Lieberman is trying to do. The third is the long-term impact of Dobbs, which at least theoretically could continue to allow Democrats to advance throughout the nation, but it’s hard to see that move any single new state into Democrats’ column or even become very close.

But the fundamental point is that….this coming election is going to be a lot like the last one. We will be inundated with news for a year about something that will be decided by three or four states.