If you look at most political forecasters, former Vice President Joe Biden is poised to defeat President Trump by a comfortable margin. Typical of the emerging consensus among forecasters is JHKforecasts which gives Biden a 66% chance of winning and currently has Biden winning a variety of Trump states including Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. This narrative is certainly possible and we would not be surprised to see Biden win some of these states, particularly Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The latter state seems to be moving toward the Democrats much as Colorado and New Mexico have in recent years.
We have seen much less commentary on potential states that Trump could potentially flip to either expand on his 2016 electoral majority or offset a loss in one of the states he won in 2016. We offer our top three states for Trump to flip in 2020:
- Virginia – we know that this may sound surprising, but we highlight a number of stars that seem to be aligning in Virginia. First, Governor Ralph Northam (D-VA) is increasingly a liability for Democrats. A year ago he made headlines for having a photo of him either in or next to a man wearing a KKK costume in his medical school yearbook. Then he spoke publicly about allowing babies born alive to die and denied medical assistance in failed abortions. Second, Democrats have gained control of the state House and immediately enacted a series of gun control measures antagonizing the sizeable rural and gun rights voters. Third, the state’s coronavirus response has been overreaching, decimating the tourist industry in Virginia Beach. Adding insult to injury, Northam has been preaching all types of draconian forms of social distancing, but has not been following his own advice and was recently criticized by both the left and right for hypocrisy. These measures offer a possible rationale for why Republicans could do better than expected, but the May local elections provide even more interesting data. Perhaps the poster child for thinking that Virginia could be a swing state in 2020 was the election in Staunton in Virginia, where four conservatives ousted the Democratic city council in a result that no one saw coming. To quote the local press, “What happened in Staunton? Massive turnout flips Queen City from blue to red.” This is just one result, but the basic premise is that Republicans in Virginia are highly motivated than their Democratic peers. Trump lost Virginia by a margin of 49% to 45% (with the remaining going to Libertarian and Green Parties) and that was with home Senator Tim Kaine on the ticket. We think the Trump campaign should target Virginia.
- New Hampshire – Hillary Clinton defeated Trump by the thinnest of margins in 2016: 47.6% to 47.3% with Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, at 4.1% and Jill Stein under 1%. There are three reasons we think this could favor Trump in 2020. First, we think that the libertarian candidate, Jo Jorgensen, will not run as strong as Johnson did in 2020, and that 80% of this vote is likely to go to Trump. Jorgensen does not have the name recognition or political experience of Johnson, a former New Mexico governor. Second, Biden ran very poorly in the 2016 Democratic primary. Recall that Biden placed 5th in the Democratic primary, winning only 8.4% of the vote. In fact, Biden has never done well in New Hampshire in his prior runs for the White House. It seems that New Hampshire voters just don’t like the man. Finally, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu is quite popular and is running for re-election against a relatively obscure Democratic challenger. While New Hampshire voters often split their votes, we think that Sununu will help Trump pull Republican and Independent voters. Thus, we think New Hampshire should certainly be viewed as a swing state in 2020.
- Minnesota – In 2016, Trump nearly pulled off a massive upset in Minnesota. In 2020, everyone seems to believe that Trump does not have a chance of winning the state. However, recent polls show a fairly close race. The most recent StarTribune/MasonDixon poll has Biden leading 49% to 44%. That is considerably closer than the race appeared in 2016. Indeed, the final StarTribune poll in 2016 had Clinton leading by 8% while the final poll by Survey USA had Clinton up by 11% … she ended up winning by less than 1%. If Biden selects Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) as his running mate, he will likely win Minnesota, but if he ends up picking Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren, we believe that Minnesota bears watching as a swing state.
The 2020 election is shaping up to be a very unpredictable election for a number of reasons, including most notably the coronavirus, its impact on the economy, and the controversial choice of Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee. We agree that Biden has a good chance of winning several states that Trump won in 2016, most notably Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona. Had Clinton allocated her resources better in 2016, she would almost certainly have won both Michigan and Pennsylvania. However, we think Trump has an opportunity to expand his map by winning New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Virginia. Biden’s chances may be better than Trump’s chances of expanding the map, but if we were advising Biden, we would not be taking these three states for granted.
NewEnglandPolitics.com 