At first glance, becoming president looks like simple arithmetic: Carry at least 90 per cent of your party’s adherents and win more independents than the other candidate and voila, you’re in the White House.
That’s how Donald Trump won in 2016. He took 90 per cent of Republicans and 48 per cent of independents; Hillary Clinton won 42 per cent of independents. It’s also how Joe Biden defeated Trump four years later. He received 94 per cent of Democrats and 54 per cent of independents. The equation works as long as there is near-parity between the parties, as in 2020 when the electorate was 36 per cent Republican, 37 per cent Democrat and 26 per cent independent.
Still, given how close the past two races were, small changes in partisanship in key states can have huge consequences. A mere 77,744 total votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin gave Trump his victory in 2016, and 42,918 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin produced Biden’s 2020 victory.
The political makeup of several swing states has changed in the past four years. Having voted Democrat for president since 2008, Nevada is more of a battleground this cycle because of a declining Democratic Party registration advantage. Nevada has 32,856 more registered Democrats than Republicans, a decline of 53,867 since November 2020. Biden won the state by 33,596 votes. The Democrat registration advantage over Republicans in Pennsylvania is 399,494, a decline of 286,324. Biden carried the Keystone State by 81,166.
While those states swung right, Arizona and North Carolina have possibly done the opposite. In the Grand Canyon State, independents grew from 31.8 per cent of registrations in November 2020 to 34.1 per cent today. Republican voter registrations were nearly flat while the Democrat share dropped about three percentage points, to 29.3 per cent. In the Tar Heel State, “unaffiliated” voters grew from 33.3 per cent in November 2020 to 36.8 per cent as of March 30. Republicans dipped a little, from 30.3 per cent of all voters to 30 per cent, while Democrats dropped from 35.6 per cent to 32.3 per cent. But new independent voters in both states appeared to be mostly the college-educated suburbanites who disfavoured Trump in 2020.
Three battleground states – Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin – don’t register voters by party, so trends there are harder to discern. But there is enough movement in the other four swing states to give both the Biden and Trump camps indigestion. And that’s before taking account of turnout. The Biden high command is worried about turnout among black, Hispanic and young voters. It should be. These groups could sink the President if they aren’t revved up for him and his party.
In Arizona, Hispanic voters accounted for 19 per cent of the 2020 electorate and broke for Biden 61 per cent to 37 per cent. Voters under 30 made up 16 per cent and went for him 63 per cent to 32 per cent. A decline of half a percentage point in either group’s share of the electorate could be enough to flip the state red. Similarly, black voters accounted for 29 per cent of Georgia’s electorate in 2020. They broke 88 per cent to 11 per cent for Biden. A decline of 0.3 of a point in the black share of the electorate wipes out Biden’s victory, all else being equal.
A lack of enthusiasm among Democrats is probably why Biden trails Trump in six of seven battlegrounds in a new poll from The Wall Street Journal, but Trump falls short of 50 per cent in all of them.
Trump has challenges in his own party, too. Nikki Haley won 250,838 votes in the March 5 North Carolina primary, more than three times Trump’s November 2020 margin in the state. Even after suspending her campaign, Haley received 77,864 votes a week later in the Georgia primary and at least 76,000 votes in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary. Both results reflect Trump’s difficulty in attracting college-educated suburbanites.
It didn’t help his cause that Trump’s attitude to his rivals’ supporters has gone from dismissiveness to indifference, saying he doesn’t need “too many” Haley supporters to win in November. He’s wrong. More than any race in memory, every candidate’s conduct on each day of the campaign could influence the outcome profoundly. Predicting the outcome will require some complicated maths.
The Wall Street Journal
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