Where Is The U.S. Political Divide Closest?

The chart

The chart above shows the results of the 2020 Presidential election, with the Biden electoral vote, popular vote and percentage of the vote, followed by the Trump electoral vote, popular vote, and percentage of the vote, followed by the popular vote and percentage of the vote for three third-party candidates, followed by Biden's margin of victory in popular votes and percentage of the vote. Electoral vote units in red voted for Trump and electoral vote units in blue voted for Biden.

The chart is sorted by Biden's margin of victory as a percentage of the vote and includes every state where the margin is less than ± 20%.

The chart omits the following eleven red states and one red Congressional district which Trump won with a margin of 20% or more, in order from least to mosts safe: Utah, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota, Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Nebraska's 3rd Congressional District.

The chart omits the following eight blue states, one Congressional District, and the District of Columbia which Biden won with a margin of 20% or more, in order from least to mosts safe: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine's 1st Congressional District, New York, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.

Analysis

The chart is useful both as a gauge of which states are likely to be close in a 2024 rematch with the same top of the ticket candidates, and as a gauge of just how Republican or Democratic leaning various states are.

On the red side of the chart, the closest states were (from closest to least close): North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa.

On the blue side of the chart, the closest states were (from closest to least close): Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

In terms of the closeness of the vote without regard to the direction of the outcome, the closest states were (from closest to least close): Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa.

Some other observations:

* Biden's campaign in 2024 needs to focus on holding states that he won in 2020. Biden won all four of the closest states, and six of the seven closest states. The battle ground states in 2024 will be Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, and Michigan, where the winner in 2020 had less than a 3 percentage point margin of victory. It is quite unlikely that any other states will flip in 2024 from the 2020 result in this rematch election. Biden could win in 2024 with Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan.

* Biden won 306 electoral votes in 2020 and needed 270 electoral votes to win. He could have still won without the 27 electoral votes of Georgia and Arizona. The marginal state was Wisconsin which Biden won by 0.63 percentage points. 

* The electoral college votes of the respective states will be a little different in 2024 due to the 2020 census results. Among states that Trump won in 2020, Texas gained two electoral votes, Florida, North Carolina, and Montana gained one, and Ohio and West Virginia each lost one, for a net gain of three electoral votes. Among states that Biden won in 2020, Colorado and Oregon each gained one electoral vote, while California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York each lost one, for a net loss of three electoral votes. These shifts wouldn't have changed the outcome in 2020, even if Biden had not won Georgia or Arizona.

* If Biden picks up any states that Trump won in 2024, his best shots are North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. North Carolina is a viable target. Florida would be hard but isn't outside the realm of possibility. But Texas would be a huge reach.

* Ohio and Iowa are lost causes for Biden. Trump has more than an 8 percentage point margin of victory in these states that not so long ago were "purple" swing states.

* Florida and Texas are much more evenly divided than you would expect from the stridently conservative policies of their state governments compared to states that are much more safely red states like Ohio and Iowa. Florida is, however, a lot less close in 2020, however, than it was, for example, in the race between Bush and Gore twenty years earlier, while Texas seems to be trending blue even though it has a way to go.

* Over the past four years, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida, and Texas, have gained a significant number of new residents from blue states. But Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan may have seen net outflows of liberals to other states.

* In every state, four more years of young and disproportionately minority and non-Christian voters have been added to the electorate (albeit with low voter turnout), and four years of older, disproportionately white, and disproportionately Christian voters have died.

* The abortion issue is likely to improve Democratic turnout more than it will impact Republican turnout in almost every state.

* Almost every red state has made it harder to vote in 2024 than it was in 2020. This could be a particular issue in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. 

* Going into the 2020 election Biden was polling with abut 51% of the vote in head to head polling, with a 7-8 percentage point lead over Trump, and in the actual election he won about 51% of the vote with a 4.5% lead over Trump, with a very large share of undecided voters breaking for Trump in the end. Current polling, after Trump's criminal convictions, has Biden and Trump at about ± 1 percentage point from each other (or worse), with Biden gaining about 3-4 percentage points in head to head polling from Trump's criminal convictions. Currently, Biden is polling significantly less well than he was on the eve of the 2020 election.

* The electoral college is still biased against Biden. Biden needs to win by about 4 percentage points in the national popular vote to win in the electoral college. So Biden needs to improve his polling by about three percentage points (and by six or seven percentage points if undecided voters break as they did in 2020). In a 269-269 electoral vote tie, Biden would probably lose to Trump in a contingent election on a state by state basis in Congress (which would also deny the District of Columbia any say in the outcome).

* A complicating factor is that independent candidate Kennedy in the Presidential race is polling at about 9% in national polls. It is likely that many respondents favoring candidates in polls would actually vote for either Trump or Biden in an actual general election, but it isn't clear how those voters would break. The current national polling average per FiveThirtyEight is Trump 41%, Biden 40% and Kennedy 9% (with the balance supporting other candidates or undecided). Biden currently trails Trump in the state by state polling averages in all seven of the battleground states.

Other considerations:

* The economy is exceptionally strong and this may penetrate into voter consciousness by the time that the general election is held, even though it has had a surprising weak impact so far.

* Trump's New York State criminal convictions may have more of an electoral impact once he is sentences for his felony convictions in July. 

* Trump's other three pending criminal cases are unlikely to proceed to trial before the election. The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively delayed Trump's D.C. January 6 related trial until after the election even though the charges in that case are very likely to be reinstated. A Georgia appellate court has effectively put the Georgia election fraud cases on hold until after the election. The Trump appointed federal judge in the Miami confidential documents criminal case against Trump is stalling, although there is still some chance that it could go to trial before the election. 

* It is unclear what impact, if any, Hunter Biden's recent criminal convictions will have on the election.

* It is unclear what impact, if any, the Presidential debates will have on the election.