CNN’s First ‘Road to 270’ Map Is Out, and Team Biden Won’t Like It

You can imagine the tears that are flowing at CNN right now because its projection for the 2024 presidential election, which assumes a Biden and Trump rematch, shows "Trump in a position to win the White House,” and that’s putting it mildly.

The network has created an electoral college projection map that it says is based on "public and private polling, conversations with campaign advisers, Republican and Democratic political operatives, members of Congress, and political professionals involved with outside groups poised to be active in the race."

Before explaining the results of its inaugural projection, CNN, not even trying to pretend to be objective, decided it was appropriate to spend a large paragraph trashing Trump. And I'm not exaggerating. 

CNN literally dubbed him "a seriously flawed candidate who has promised to govern in undemocratic ways and who has already been rejected once by the American people after serving one term as president." Not content to leave any potential anti-Trump talking point behind, CNN recounted the various criminal charges that the Biden administration brought against him with the help of partisan anti-Trump prosecutors and rehashed old allegations for good measure.

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The map is so bad for Joe Biden that CNN also went to great lengths to downplay the results of its projection.

"This is an exercise designed to capture where the race stands today,” the authors explain. "If we have learned anything in recent American political history, it is to expect the unexpected. We don’t even know for certain if Biden and Trump will be the two major party nominees in the fall. However, since that appears to be the likeliest choice at this point, we have explored this initial outlook through the lens of a Biden vs. Trump race. Future versions of this outlook will similarly reflect the realities of the race, as best we can assess them at the time."

You can read the panic between the lines. Why is CNN panicking? The current projection doesn’t merely show Trump leading the electoral college vote but it also has him securing enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency without any toss-up states assigned to either candidate.

CNN’s ‘Road to 270’ shows "Trump in a position to win the White House.”

Trump: 272 (winner)
Biden: 225

That’s without toss-up states assigned to either candidate. pic.twitter.com/NZGv8sekxD

— Matt Margolis (@mattmargolis) January 8, 2024

"In this initial electoral map outlook, Trump has 28 states (and one congressional district in Maine) either solidly in his corner or leaning in his direction that total up to 272 electoral votes – two more than what is required to win the presidency," CNN explains through a river of tears. "For his part, Biden has 19 states plus the District of Columbia either solidly in his favor or leaning in his direction, which brings his total electoral vote count to 225 – 45 votes short of the 270 required to win."

Naturally, CNN tries to offer some hope for itself and its loyal audience. "If Biden were to win all the current toss-ups, he’d still need to claw back at least one of the three states he won in 2020 (Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada) that are currently slightly leaning Trump’s way," the network explains. "It is not difficult to imagine all three of those battleground states moving into the toss-up category once the campaign becomes more engaged."

Good luck with that.