For the bulk of the 2024 presidential campaign, we have been told that there are a select number of states that are the battleground states that will ultimately decide this year's election. Those states are Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Trust me when I tell you that there are more. Oh, and the fact that there are more is a bad, bad sign for Joe Biden.
First, let's look at the above battlegrounds.
Save for North Carolina, Biden won all of them in 2020, but the outcome of that election rested on less than 50,000 votes between them. Biden was always going to be playing defense in 2024 — and he most certainly is. Currently, Arizona and Georgia look firmly in Trump's column based on the polls.
Nevada, however, surprisingly emerged as a battleground this year after having not voted for a Republican for president since 2004. Donald Trump has had a consistent lead in the polls there. Then, there's Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—all states that Trump won in 2016.
Trump leads in all of the states that conventional wisdom identifies as the 2024 battlegrounds, according to RealClearPolitics. Here's where the averages stand right now:
- Nevada: Trump +5.3
- North Carolina: Trump +5.3
- Georgia: Trump +4.8
- Arizona: Trump +4.4
- Pennsylvania: Trump +2.3
- Michigan: Trump +0.3
- Wisconsin: Trump +0.1
Which are the other battlegrounds that few, if any, seem to be acknowledging yet?
The first is Virginia. If we're calling North Carolina, a state that has voted Republican consistently since 1980 and that currently shows Trump up more than five points in the RCP average, a battleground state, why don't we consider Virginia, which last voted Republican in 2004, and has Biden up by just 2.2 points in the RCP average, a battleground?
Related: There’s Something Fishy About FiveThirtyEight’s Election Projection Model
Let's look at it another way: Based on the polls today, Biden has less of a chance of winning Virginia than Trump has of winning Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, or Pennsylvania.
The same thing goes for another traditionally blue state: Minnesota. Currently, Joe Biden has an RCP average lead of just 2.3 points in Minnesota. That's weak, considering that he won the state in 2020 by about seven points. Even though Biden's lead in the polls in Minnesota has been somewhat consistent, it's a bit close for comfort.
And finally, there's Maine. I've been calling Maine a potential battleground for a few months now because all signs show that Trump can win the state. Every poll in Maine for the past seven months has shown a tight race. In November, a Digital Research poll showed Biden up by a point. In February, a Pan Atlantic Research poll had Trump up six points. In the most recent poll out of Maine from Digital Research, Trump is up by a point, but with Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), Biden narrowly edges him out by a point after several rounds.
As I've pointed out before, Maine seems too small to be important, but if Trump takes Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, he needs to win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan to win the election. If he were to win Maine, he wouldn't need to win any of those states.
So there are more battleground states this election than conventional wisdom wants us to believe.
