Welcome to the inaugural Wargaming the Electoral College column for the 2024 campaign. I've been doing this as VodkaPundit since 2004 and in my private life — inspired by "The McLaughlin Group" at the tender age of 19 — since 1988 when George Bush squared off against Mike Dukakis.
Coincidentally, that race took place years ago and was Joe Biden's first outing in the Democrat primaries. It's amazing to think about how long ago that was since today he doesn't look a day over a hundred and seven.
Democrats have been playing two very dangerous games with their lawfare against Donald Trump. The first is the damage they're doing to the political health of our republic. The second is the danger to themselves. It's clear that the Biden camp wanted a rematch against Trump, having beaten him (by whatever means...) once already. The lawfare campaign — waged locally but orchestrated from the White House — was meant to rally GOP primary voters to Trump. And that it surely did. But they may have taken it too far, perhaps causing independent voters to rally to Trump, too.
As always, thanks to the fine folks at 270toWin for their excellent online EC tool.
Let's go to the maps.
Here's our base, showing a very close-run thing less than eight months out. If Minnesota isn't in play — opinions differ — then Biden has a slight edge right now, 221 to 219.
In an RCP podcast with Tom Bevan last week, Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon outlined a field of 11 potential swing states. I removed two, Florida (Trump) and Virginia (Biden) because I don't (yet) see either one in play. Certainly not Florida. New Mexico is on there because, as Cannon said, we don't have enough polling data yet. I'd keep it blank for now because Americans cite Biden's border crisis as a top issue, and New Mexico is a border state suffering some of the brunt of it.
I suspect I'll have to revisit Virginia and New Mexico more than once between now and the election.
Let's narrow the field a bit by putting Minnesota and New Mexico back in the blue where they seem likely (for now) to end up.
Using RCP's current polling averages, the remaining swing states all lean Trump's way.
Like so.
I can't find the link, but one of the big-name pundits argued this week that Biden's electric vehicle push could kill him in Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest swing states — maybe even including Minnesota. There are also indications that Democrats see Georgia as an early write-off, but North Carolina's changing demographics have them making a big push there that's already begun. Also, I'm not nearly as confident about how the state-level GOP will perform in Arizona and Nevada, so let's try this again with those things in mind.
This is a much closer race now, with Trump winning at 289 and Biden at 249.
But...
If Biden were to win Pennsylvania or Michigan plus any one of the Upper Midwest swing states, then we'd get four more years of his crap.
And because I'm cruel, here's the Nightmare That Never Ends scenario.
269-269 and, if that happens, the whole mess goes to the House where the GOP is in control by the most slender of majorities.
Sweet dreams, and we'll do this again as the polls flesh out a bit more.
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