The States That Flipped From Trump in 2020 — And How They Could Shape Up in 2024 #6: Finale
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Six states that Donald Trump won the electoral votes for in the 2016 presidential election flipped (or in the case of Nebraska, partially shifted) to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. One of Nebraska’s five Electoral College votes went to Biden. The five states that went from red to blue for president are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
In this series of posts, I will look at recent political history of these states and current partisan trends. With a rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024 is virtually assured (pending lawsuits over Trump’s candidacy), this series of posts will largely assume that that will be the case and make some sense of whether these states will stick with Biden or flip back to Trump.
Today’s post is the sixth and final post of the series and recaps the five states we looked at previously (plus one of Nebraska’s Electoral Votes) and how they can shape the results of 2024.
How This Article is Laid Out
Now that we’ve gone over the Five States that flipped from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020 in individual their respective — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — we’re going to bring it all together and wrap things up. Here are a couple of terms to succinctly describe groups that will be referred to multiple times throughout this article.
- The term “Five States” in this post will refer to Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin collectively. Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district will also be a part of the discussion (but not always necessarily referred to when using “Five States”), as it also flipped to Biden in 2020 after Trump won it in 2016; it just didn’t merit its own post in this series. (If you’re wondering how a single Electoral Vote in Nebraska could go to a different presidential candidate, I will explain later.)
- So, whenever I use the term “44+ States,” it’s referring to the states outside of that group. The “+” comes from the fact that most of Nebraska voted the same way in 2016 and 2020. The exception is the aforementioned 2nd congressional district. Since it was only a piece of the state that shifted to Biden, it didn’t make sense to call this group the “45 States.”
The structure of this post is as follows:
- First, we briefly review the partisan leanings of the five states in how they have voted previously for president, governor, U.S. Senate, and the state legislature. The partisan divide of the electorates will also be recapped, but for some states it had to be estimated because they do not track the party affiliation of voters.
- Second, we’ll go over how the Electoral College has changed following the U.S. Census and how it affects the Five States.
- Third, we’ll see the potential ways that these Five States could shape the 2024 results, including the combinations that Trump and Biden need to win. (There is also one way that the two could tie in Electoral Votes…) This will be done thanks to the site 270towin, a handy website which I will detail more about later.
- Fourth, I’ll give some final thoughts.
Other states could be up for grabs as a toss-up or only slightly favoring one party or the other. Nevada, for example, could be a tight race. But for this exercise, we are assuming that the way that the 44+ States that were not part of this series voted in the 2020 election is how they will vote in the 2024 election. This is critical context to know for this article.
Reviewing the Partisan Leanings of the 2020 Flipped States
For each of the Five States, I reviewed the most recent results of each states’ votes on president and their respective governors, U.S. Senate seats, and state legislatures. For various reasons, comparing the presidential election to the elections for these other offices should be taken with a grain of salt (explained further in the individual states’ posts). Yet they might be able to give us some insight on how the 2024 presidential election will play out.
Presidential Elections
It’s a tale of two types of states here.
Arizona and Georgia have been stalwart Republican states for president in the 21st century, but 2020 flipped the script. Were these simply aberrations that will return to their old Republican leanings? It’s quite possible but we won’t know until at least 2024, and even then it might not be entirely clear.
On the flipside, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have been reliably Democratic for president. It was Trump’s 2016 wins in those states that were the exception, not Biden’s 2020 win. Can Trump retake them again? They’re certainly in play, at least.
Governor Elections
All of the Five States except for Georgia picked a Democratic governor in 2022. For Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, that was a reelection for their respective governors. Republicans have won in those states sort of recently (though some political professionals would not consider 2010 or 2014 to be recent), but they were defeated handily in the last two gubernatorial elections in Michigan and the last three in Pennsylvania.
In Arizona, on the other hand, Republicans lost an incredibly contentious election for governor in 2022 after winning the prior three times. They had a close call in Georgia in 2018, but a rematch between Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams led to a much wider margin of victory in 2022.
U.S. Senate Elections
This is arguably where we see the most difference between the states.
A couple of these states are either currently on or recently had long streaks of victories by one party or the other for these states’ U.S. Senate seats. Arizona Republicans at one point were on a nine-election win stretch, mostly because of the late John McCain, though now Democrats have won three straight including a special election to fill McCain’s seat. Michigan has been somewhat the opposite: Democrats there are currently on a nine-win stretch, but 2018 and 2020 were significantly closer than prior races.
Wisconsin is streaky in a different sense: There is one Republican and one Democratic U.S. Senator for the state, but each have won reelection at least once. Republican Ron Johnson won a third term in 2022, and now Tammy Baldwin is trying to do the same in 2024.
Georgia has been the most competitive in this regard. Democrats won in the 2020 regular and special elections as well as in 2022, breaking the Republican trend for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats, but all three elections were very close. The respective margins of victory were 2.08, 1.23, and 0.96 percentage points.
Pennsylvania is the most distinct of the bunch in this context. Democrats have won four of the last six times, decisively so in 2006 and 2018. Even when Republicans did win, they only won by 2.02 percentage points in 2010 and 1.43 points in 2016. There is a U.S. Senate election this year in the state, and election forecasters expect a close contest.
State Legislative Elections
In most of these states, we see winnowing majorities for the Republican Party. In Arizona, Democrats have nearly closed the gap completely. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, Democrats have managed to flip at least one state legislative chamber (the exception being the Pennsylvania State Senate). And in Georgia, Republicans still hold a definitive advantage, but we may see their majority further whittled away in the coming years.
It’s Wisconsin that is the odd-one out here. The Republican Party there thoroughly dominates both the house and senate. In fact, they are just a seat or two short in the house from having veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers. That means there are nearly enough Republicans alone to override a veto on a bill from the governor. Currently, that is Democrat Tony Evers.
Electorates’ Partisan Leanings
The partisanship of three of these states — Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin — had to be estimated because they do not track voters’ party affiliations.
The two states that do track their voters’ party affiliations — Arizona and Pennsylvania — have sizable, but by no means insurmountable, advantages for one party or the other. In Arizona, the upper hand is for the Republican Party. In Pennsylvania, the upper hand is for the Democratic Party. The voter party numbers advantage has been a critical boon to those respective state parties in their statewide elections.
The Changes to the Electoral College Vote from 2020 to 2024
With the most recent U.S. Census came a shift in the number of Electoral College Votes that each state gets. That’s because the number of Electoral Votes (EVs) that are awarded to states is based on the total number of members of Congress they have: Two U.S. Senators and varying numbers of U.S. House Representatives. The number of Representatives each state gets is based on the proportion of the country’s total population a given state has, which is changed following a Census. Each state gets at least one Representative.
Not every state was affected: Only 13 states either gained or lost at least one U.S. House seat and thus an EV (Texas actually gained two seats). Of the states that were the focus of this series, Michigan and Pennsylvania lost one EV each, but they still account for a substantial chunk of the Electoral College. (How the change in EVs affected the 44+ States overall is described in the next section of this article, though you can also see this in the Ballotpedia link in this paragraph.)
The total votes in the Electoral College, however, will stay the same at 538. This is because of three reasons:
- Each state gets two U.S. Senate seats (100 total).
- The total number of U.S. House representatives was set at 435 with the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929.
- The District of Columbia (D.C.) was given three EVs through the 23rd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, even though it is not a state.
How Would These States Swing the 2024 Election?
To see how each state would impact the 2024 election, we now turn to the aforementioned website 270towin. It’s a nifty and fantastic resource for all sorts of information related to the presidential election, including forecasts from pundits, historical presidential elections, states’ historical trends, and relevant news. It even has this kind of content for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House.
But perhaps its most standout feature is an interactive map that you can use to, in a sense, create your own presidential election. You can color the states in various ways to say that one party could claim the presidency by winning [insert states here]. If you leave several states as toss-ups, you’ll be able to view what combinations of those states would lead to victory for one party or the other. (And if you really want to go crazy with the map, you can include a third party into the mix to simulate what could happen if they somehow won a state.)
You can view the map I made here. Since we are assuming the 44+ States are going to vote the same way they did in 2016 and 2020 for this exercise, I have already colored them red or blue based on how they voted those two elections. The Five States (which includes Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district) are left in gold. The first map shows how the Electoral College looked for the 44+ States in 2020. The second map shows how it would look if the 44+ States stayed the same in 2024.
The maps above show that the change in Electoral Votes for the 44+ States benefited Trump. The contest went from a 232–232 tie between Biden and Trump to a 235–231 advantage for Trump. That resulted from the following EV changes for the 44+ States. States with a “*” were won by Trump, while states with a “^” were won by Biden in 2020:
- +2 EVs: Texas*
- +1 EV: Colorado^, Florida*, Montana*, North Carolina*, Oregon^
- -1 EV: California^, Illinois^, New York^, Ohio*, West Virginia*
Since we’re assuming the 44+ States will vote the same way in 2024, what combinations of the Five States do Trump and Biden need to win? These combos from my map can be viewed here, but I’m detailing them further down below. Keep in mind that none of these combos are accounting for either Trump or Biden winning four or all of the Five States — it’s a given that they’d win the presidency if they did so.
The Paths to Victory for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party
Eight combinations of the Five States would lead to a Biden reelection. Pennsylvania is the most important of the states for Biden to win. That’s not just because winning it would give him 19 EVs, the most of the Five States. Six of the eight possibilities for a Biden win include the Keystone State.
Since Biden would theoretically be starting off at 231 EVs, he has to win no fewer than three of the Five States. If Pennsylvania isn’t one of the states he reclaims, then he must win Georgia and Michigan. If he only gets one of them, Arizona and Wisconsin will not be enough to take him to 270 EVs.
The Paths to Victory for Donald Trump and the Republican Party
Trump benefits with the change in the distribution of Electoral Votes if the 44+ States all vote the same way they did for both 2016 and 2020. There are nine combinations of the Five States that could lead to victory for Trump. One of these allows for a two-state combo, Georgia and Pennsylvania, that would take Trump exactly to the 270 EVs he needs.
Losing Pennsylvania would not be as critical for Trump as it would be for Biden. If Pennsylvania goes blue again, Trump still has four different paths to victory (compared to Biden’s two if Biden loses the state). Biden has more ground to make up, which makes losing the 19 EVs from the Keystone State sting a little less for Trump.
Based on the above paths, if Trump does not win Pennsylvania, the most important state for him to take is actually Michigan. That’s not just because it’s worth 15 EVs, the second-most of the Five States. The Great Lakes State appears in six of the eight three-state combos Trump would need to become president again.
The Possibility of a Tied Electoral Vote
There is a way — unlikely as it might be — for Biden and Trump to tie at 269 EVs. If you think that a singular EV won’t decide the election, you may be in for a surprise. See below.
Remember when I said I’d explain the quirk about Nebraska’s Electoral Votes? Here it is.
Maine and Nebraska are the two states that do not use a winner-take-all system for their EVs. There are two each for winning the popular vote of an overall state, but singular EVs are also awarded for winning the popular vote in each congressional district. In 2020, even though Trump won Nebraska’s overall popular vote, he did not win the popular vote of the state’s 2nd congressional district specifically, giving that single EV to Biden instead.
It’s that very same congressional district that could swing the 2024 election. If the election played out in the scenario above, there would be an EV tie at 269–269. So, what happens if both Biden and Trump fall short of the 270 EVs needed to win? The election then gets thrown to the U.S. House of Representatives in what’s called a contingent election. In short, this Congressional Research Service report describes a contingent election as the following:
In a contingent election, the House would choose among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes. Each state, regardless of population, casts a single vote for President in a contingent election. Representatives of states with two or more Representatives would therefore need to conduct an internal poll within their state delegation to decide which candidate would receive the state’s single vote. A majority of state votes, 26 or more, is required to elect, and the House must vote “immediately” and “by ballot.”
The last time this happened was in the “Corrupt Bargain of 1824.” Back then, longtime statesman and recurring early American history figure Henry Clay used his influence to push his U.S. House allies to vote for John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, in exchange for an appointment as secretary of state. Adams won the 1824 election, but Jackson would exact revenge in their rematch in 1828.
Assuming a contingent election would play out like normal, who would likely win? You can almost guarantee that none of the current U.S. House representatives would vote against their respective party’s nominee because of the stakes of the election, even if they have intraparty grievances with them. Their disgust with the opposing party’s candidate is too great. So, we’re going to assume that all of them are going to vote for their party’s candidate.
Also, keep in mind that the passage from the CRS report shows that each state gets a single vote, not the individual representatives. So, that plethora of Democrats in California only counts as one vote, and that plethora of Republicans in Texas only counts as one vote. But there’s one more critical component to the contingent election that comes from the CRS report (emphasis is mine):
A contingent election would be conducted by a newly elected Congress, immediately following the joint congressional session that counts and certifies electoral votes.
If the way the current Congress is structured were to stay the same following the 2024 election, this is how we would expect the states’ U.S. House delegations to vote:
Donald Trump would just barely have the majority of states’ delegations, meaning he would win the contingent election. But that’s assuming the states keep their same respective majorities in their U.S. House delegations after the 2024 election. There’s a good chance that that does happen, but you never know.
Final Thoughts
For as much detail as I tried to put into this series, there are obviously many other factors I did not get to consider. What if there are “faithless electors” that sway the election? What if an independent, most notably Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., makes a major impact on whether Biden or Trump wins a given state? What are the exact strategies and tactics the campaigns will use? How much money will be spent in each state by each candidate? And so on.
Or what about Nevada and North Carolina? These were not part of the Five States but Inside Elections, Sabato, and Cook predict them as toss-ups or slightly favoring one party or the other (as of April 4, 2024). Nevada may be “only” six Electoral Votes, but this article just demonstrated how even one EV (Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district) can make the difference. North Carolina is worth 16 EVs, but while Trump has won it twice, he did so by a smaller margin in 2020 than he did in 2016.
But the scope of this series was limited to the Five States because they were the ones that flipped away from Trump in 2020 after he won them in 2016. Hopefully, it’s become clearer after reading these posts how that happened — and how they could stay with the same candidate or flip back.
These Five States were what ultimately swayed the 2020 election. And while they are among the most uncertain states to predict who they choose for president in 2024, you can safely bet that they are going to play a prominent role in whether Trump or Biden get their second term.
