It has now been months since gerrymandering has been in the news. Given that every state’s Congressional map is set for November, the lack of coverage comes as little surprise. It would be a mistake, however, for Democrats to allow this issue to fade away, and in 2027, redistricting reform needs to be at the top of their agenda.

This fall, it is almost certain that Democrats will flip the House, and they have decent odds to flip the Senate. Even if they come up short in the Senate, Democratic control of the House starting in 2027 will be essential to finally passing a bill that curtails gerrymandering.

I would argue that there is only a two-year window for Democrats to act on redistricting reform. In November of 2028, even if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, the House is likely to flip back to Republicans. This is because the Republican gerrymanders in Florida and Texas are not going to cost Democrats more than a few House seats this fall, but in 2028, those new maps will truly hurt Democrats.

So, the question becomes, what type of redistricting reform bill can Democrats pass in 2027? Obviously, there will be real limits, given the hurdle of getting 60 Senators on board, not to mention Trump’s signature. But I do think there is an anti-gerrymandering bill that Democrats can write that both parties could support.

I believe that a national law that limits county splits when new maps are drawn for the 2030s is exactly the kind of legislation that would be narrow enough to get Republican support, while still preventing the most egregious gerrymandering. Specifically, Democrats would specify in the bill that when it comes to Congressional redistricting, no county could be split more than X+1 times, where X is the number of splits mathematically required.

As someone who has drawn hypothetical Congressional maps for almost every state (yes, I’m a nerd), I can say that keeping counties intact makes gerrymandering much more difficult. Respecting county lines by avoiding unnecessary splits often produces more proportional and reasonable House maps. The bill could even stipulate that the county boundaries to be used must be those that existed in 2020, so as to prevent states from trying to redraw their counties just to get around the law.

This simple proposal would not only stop both parties from splitting large, urban counties into fragments (something that Texas’s House map does in a particularly egregious way), but it would also protect minority communities. In a perfect world, Congress would pass a new Voting Rights Act, but a national rule that limits county splits would help to keep communities of color together in House maps. For instance, in Tennessee, Davidson County (home to the state capital of Nashville) is currently divided into three districts. This ensures that Democrats and minority voters are diluted to such a degree that all three House seats will elect Republicans.

However, under a law such as the one I’ve outlined, Davidson County could only be split into two House districts, which would give Republicans more incentive to draw one House district that keeps Nashville intact. They could, of course, try splitting the county across two districts, but that would mean Democrats could potentially win both House seats. Republicans would face a similar calculus in other states across the country, pushing them to keep urban areas intact when drawing House maps.

Even though Republicans have more often been the culprit when it comes to gerrymandering, this bill would constrain Democrats, too. In fact, I think this is why a national bill limiting county splits could potentially make it through the Senate and even get Trump’s signature. For example, it would mean that Democrats could no longer split Baltimore across multiple House districts (which dilutes voters of color, and is unnecessary, given that all of Baltimore could fit into one district). It would also prevent Democrats from potentially splitting Chicago or New York City even further in the 2030s in order to gain a few more House seats.

In short, a simple bill that limits county splits could accomplish a lot, and members of both parties would have reason to at least consider supporting such a proposal. But only Democrats would have a reason to introduce such a bill, which is why I see 2027 as being crucial. When the House is under Democratic control starting early next year, the party must make redistricting reform a priority in the short time it has. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not optimistic that Democrats will hold the House after the 2028 elections due to Republican gerrymanders.

If Democrats can bring some order to redistricting while they hold the House, they will have improved American politics for voters all across the country. A fairer national House map in the 2030s would be a game changer, and something truly worth fighting for.

Today, I wanted to briefly look at three Senate races that I feel have been underdiscussed, relative to their potential to flip. None of them will be easy for Democrats to win, but I could envision all three of these Senate races being decided by single digits. For that reason alone, I think they’re worth highlighting.

Nebraska:

Let’s start with Nebraska, which is much more competitive this year than we would expect. As was the case in 2024, Dan Osborn, a mechanic and Navy veteran, is running as an independent, and he will once again have the ballot to himself (Nebraska’s Democratic Party decided in both 2024 and 2026 to support Osborn, rather than a Democrat).

It’s hard not to be bullish on Osborn’s chances this fall. In 2024, he came within 7 points of unseating Deb Fischer (R), which was a major overperformance, given that Nebraska was a Trump +20 state that year.

Interestingly, Nebraska’s other Senate seat was up for election in 2024 (it was a special election), and Democrat Preston Love Jr. lost by 25 points to Pete Ricketts (R). It’s rare that we get to make such a direct comparison, since states typically only have one Senate race in any given election cycle, but in 2024, Osborn proved to be an unusually strong candidate, and he almost certainly benefited from running as an independent.

This fall, Osborn will face Ricketts, the incumbent Republican Senator who has to run again, since his victory in 2024 was in a special election. Polling of Nebraska has, unfortunately, been sparse, but thinking through the fundamentals can help give us a sense of just how close the race could end up being.

Democrats currently have a 6-point lead on generic ballot polling, which asks respondents if they would vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate for Congress, without naming anyone specific. If that lead holds up (and if anything, the party out of power tends to expand its lead as November approaches), then 2026 could be about 8 points more Democratic than 2024, which was a roughly R+2 year.

An 8-point shift away from Republicans, applied to Osborn’s 7-point loss in 2024, would suggest that he could narrowly win this fall. Of course, it’s possible that Ricketts is a stronger opponent than Deb Fischer was, but if we assume that they are roughly equal as candidates, then Osborn would seem to be in a decent position to win.

For now, I’m inclined to rate Nebraska’s Senate race as a tossup, but it would help if we had some recent polling of the race. Still, it’s significant that a Republican Senator (and former governor) is in the fight for his political life in Nebraska.

Florida:

Compared to Nebraska, the Senate race in Florida is quite a bit less competitive, and I would be genuinely surprised if Democrats win this race in the fall. But even so, I feel that Florida’s Senate race deserves much more attention.

First, just as a reminder, this year’s Senate race in Florida is actually a special election to finish out the final two years of what would have been Marco Rubio’s Senate term. This means that the winner this fall will have to run again in 2028. The Republican incumbent, Ashley Moody, was appointed to fill Rubio’s Senate seat in early 2025, and almost without a doubt, she will be the Republican nominee this fall.

On the Democratic side, only two candidates are vying for the nomination, which will be decided in Florida’s primary on August 18th. One of those candidates is Angie Nixon, a state representative from Jacksonville, and the other is Alex Vindman, who is the clear frontrunner. Vindman served in the U.S. Army for about 20 years and was on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. He rose to national prominence when he testified during the impeachment inquiry that House Democrats opened in late 2019.

Assuming that the final matchup is Ashley Moody versus Alex Vindman, I think the race could be closer than expected. Even though Florida has swung towards Republicans over the last decade, its statewide races were very close in 2018, a midterm year that could end up being comparable to 2026. One key difference from 2018 is that Democrats arguably have a stronger gubernatorial ticket in Florida this fall (David Jolly and Gwen Graham), which could potentially help make the Senate race closer.

Also, keep in mind that appointed Senators tend to make for weaker candidates, at least compared to incumbents. And although Ashley Moody won election as Florida’s attorney general in 2018, her margin against a relatively unknown Democrat was not especially impressive. I wouldn’t classify her as a clear electoral overperformer, whereas Vindman should be able to outperform the recent Democrats who have run for statewide office in Florida (though I’ll admit, that’s a bit of a low bar).

If pressed, I would say that Moody will win by around 7 to 9 points this fall (I do see the gubernatorial race as being closer, for what it’s worth). Florida’s Senate race is not completely safe for Republicans, and the lack of coverage that the race has received is a little disappointing, though it might be partly a function of how late the primary is.

*Note: I published this piece about two weeks before Lindsey Graham passed away. I wouldn’t say that my assessment of the race has really changed, and I still see this as a potentially close race in November.

South Carolina:

Finally, we come to South Carolina, a state that is not nearly as Republican as folks assume. I enjoy reminding people that in 2008, Obama only lost South Carolina by 9 points, and as recently as 2020, it was only a Trump +12 state.

This fall, Lindsey Graham (R) will be running for a fifth Senate term, and by chance, he has never previously had to run in a blue midterm year. His opponent will be Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician from the Charleston area who ran for the House in 2022 and put up a respectable performance against Nancy Mace.

Of these three Senate races, South Carolina is the heaviest lift for Democrats, and our expectation should be that Graham will win re-election. But Democrats in South Carolina have a high floor in statewide elections, and Graham might, to his detriment, underestimate Andrews, as he has never faced a particularly strong opponent before.

If I had to guess, I could see the Senate race in South Carolina being decided by 8 or 9 points, a similar margin as we might see in Florida. Over his 20+ years in the Senate, Graham has always won by at least 10 points, but I envision that streak coming to an end this fall.

Just as a quick endnote, I would have liked to include Montana in this piece, but recent developments there do not portend a close Senate race. Essentially, Democrats had hoped to replicate the Dan Osborn strategy in Montana by running an independent, Seth Bodnar, against Kurt Alme (R). However, in Montana’s primary earlier this month, Alani Bankhead won the Democratic primary, and she has said that she will not drop out of the race.

To be honest, I’m not sure that Bodnar, even if he had the race against Alme to himself, was going to make it a close contest. The independent strategy has real potential, but the candidate matters, too. Dan Osborn is arguably a better fit for Nebraska than Bodnar is for Montana. It’ll be interesting to see if Bodnar drops out, or if he and Bankhead end up splitting the vote in November.

This year’s competitive Senate races are a reminder that the 2026 playing field is surprisingly large. The fact that Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas are top targets for Democrats is significant, given that Trump won all of those states by double digits in 2024. Even though Nebraska, Florida, and South Carolina are closer to the periphery, they are still worth watching, and Nebraska in particular could end up being the race that decides control of the Senate.

House:

This fall, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for election. At most, only about 40 of those seats could be considered competitive to some degree. It’s a stark reminder of just how much partisan sorting and gerrymandering have reduced competition.

For about a year now, I’ve been keeping a running list of competitive House seats. I update it regularly, and if there’s a specific race you’re interested in, I highly recommend checking out that list.

Broadly speaking, I think Democrats are poised to net about 15 House seats, which would mean that in early 2027, when the new session of Congress begins, they would hold around 230 seats. This would give them a fairly comfortable majority, as 218 seats is the number needed for control of the House.

Mid-decade redistricting has, of course, injected some real uncertainty into the House over the last year, but overall, the net effect of the new maps is close to zero. The recent developments in Florida and Louisiana will help Republicans marginally, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Democrats are going to regain control of the House, and with room to spare.

Just to illustrate how easy it will be for the House to flip this fall, keep in mind that Democrats only need to win three seats on net. There are roughly 20 to 25 seats that I would consider straightforward flips for Democrats. From that number, we would then subtract the nine or so seats that we expect Republicans to flip from Democrats (all of them are due to redistricting over the last year; this includes three seats in Texas, two in Louisiana, one in Missouri, possibly two in Florida, and potentially one in North Carolina).

Basically, the question isn’t whether or not Democrats will win a majority, but rather, how big of a majority they’ll have starting in 2027.

To be honest, a much more important question is what happens with the House in the 2028 election, when the ramifications of the recent Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act will be more clear. I very much plan to write about that down the road.

Senate:

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece on the Senate, which included ratings for each key race this fall. Not too much has changed over the last few months; Democrats are very likely to defend their Senate seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, while winning at least one Republican-held seat.

Unfortunately, we still have a ways to go until we learn some of the final matchups, as a few key primary elections are not being held until June (Iowa and Montana), with a few even being held in August (Florida, Michigan, and Minnesota) or September (New Hampshire).

At the moment, I would say that Democrats are almost certain to win North Carolina’s Senate race, where Roy Cooper (D) has been leading in polls. But polling aside, this race has arguably been a pretty clear Democratic pickup from the very start. North Carolina is close to a 50-50 state (Trump only won there by about a point in 2020, and 3 points in 2024), and in a favorable midterm environment for Democrats, it would be hard to imagine a former popular governor such as Cooper not winning.

The next easiest flip for Democrats is Maine, where we just got some big news at the very end of April. Janet Mills (D), the current two-term governor of Maine, has suspended her campaign, all but assuring that Graham Platner (D) will face Susan Collins (R) this fall.

I happen to think that this was a positive development for Democrats, even though Platner is somewhat untested. He is arguably a decent fit for Maine, which has a bit of a populist streak to it, and is not as Democratic as most other New England states (Trump came shockingly close to winning Maine in 2016, a reminder that it’s not a typical blue state). But also, thinking longer term, if Platner wins this fall, he could potentially hold this Senate seat for many years, whereas Mills had pledged to only serve one term.

I would now rate Maine’s Senate race as leaning towards Democrats. Back in February, I had rated it as a tossup, but a Platner vs. Collins matchup is one that Democrats should feel at least somewhat confident about.

I also think Collins is in a tough position due to polarization, and the ever-growing correlation between presidential and Senate voting. Two years ago, Harris won Maine by about 7 points, and 2026 seems poised to be roughly 8 to 10 points more Democratic than 2024. I’m just not sure that Collins can outrun Maine’s partisanship any longer, as she has in the past.

After Maine and North Carolina (winning both would bring Democrats to 49 Senate seats), I think the next most competitive state is Alaska, where Mary Peltola (D) should give Senator Dan Sullivan (R) a close contest. I see this race as being roughly a tossup, and even though Alaska was a +13 Trump state in 2024, Peltola is a strong candidate who served for two years as Alaska’s sole House member.

In my mind, Ohio’s race is the next most competitive, followed by Iowa. At this point, I don’t quite see either of these Senate seats flipping to Democrats, though I also would not be surprised if Sherrod Brown comes very close to winning in Ohio. In terms of partisanship, Iowa is about as Republican as Ohio, and though I do think Democrats will come close there, too, it seems like a tall order to win outright (Iowa, like Ohio, shifted about 5 points towards Republicans from 2020 to 2024, which weighs heavily on my mind here).

Beyond that, Senate races in very Republican states such as Florida, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Texas will be interesting to watch, and could be closer than expected, but our default position should be that Republicans will win these states, even if only narrowly.

So, I would envision Democrats being able to fairly easily win 49 Senate seats, with a decent chance of getting to 50 seats. The magic number of 51, which would be an outright majority, seems elusive, at least for now.

Governor:

Somehow, I’ve never written about gubernatorial races in the two years that I’ve had this newsletter. That could be partly because they are harder to predict. Unlike House and Senate races, which closely follow presidential voting patterns, governor’s races are more fluid, being less tied to partisanship. Right now, we have Democratic governors in Kansas and Kentucky, and Republican governors in New Hampshire and Vermont, a reminder of how the right candidate can win in even the most challenging states.

This fall, 36 states will be holding gubernatorial elections. A handful of those should be competitive, but it’s also possible that after this fall, there will be no net change in the number of governorships that each party controls.

One gubernatorial race that stands out is Georgia’s, where Brian Kemp (R) will be finishing his second term, and cannot run again. The primary election will be held on May 19th, and both the Democratic and Republican fields are a bit unsettled, with multiple strong candidates (there will potentially need to be runoffs, which will take place in mid-June). I’m inclined to rate the governor’s race in Georgia as a tossup, and it is arguably the most important target for Democrats this fall.

Another key race will be in Nevada, where Joe Lombardo (R) is seeking re-election after narrowly winning in 2022. The primary is not until June, but it seems that Aaron Ford (D), Nevada’s attorney general, will most likely emerge as the Democratic nominee. Given Nevada’s status as a roughly 50-50 state in recent statewide elections, I think we should see the race as something close to a tossup, though with Democrats perhaps slightly favored, given the challenging political environment facing Republicans this fall.

Elsewhere, three other purple states, Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin, could see close races, though we won’t know the final matchups until later in the summer. Democrats currently control the governorship in all three states, and I would rate these races as leaning towards Democrats, at least for now.

One state that could prove challenging for Democrats to hold is Kansas, where Laura Kelly (D) won an impressive victory in 2018, and then once more in 2022. The primary will not be held until early August, so it’s tough to give a rating without knowing the final matchup. But even in a strong midterm environment for Democrats, I think the Democratic nominee will be at a slight disadvantage, having to run after Laura Kelly’s two terms.

In Iowa and Ohio, Democrats have a chance to win the governor’s mansion after years of being out of power. I mentioned how the Senate races in these two states will be tough for Democrats, but it is much easier to imagine Rob Sand (D) winning in Iowa, or Amy Acton (D) prevailing against Vivek Ramaswamy (R) in Ohio.

The only other states that I think will be of interest are New Hampshire and Vermont, both of which currently have Republican governors. Somehow, Phil Scott (R) has defied political gravity for years, and his winning margins in deep blue Vermont have been highly unusual; even in 2018, he managed to win by double digits. I would expect Scott to see a closer race this time around, but he will probably still win.

Next door, in New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte (R) is similarly in a good position to win, though as with Scott, she has not yet made her re-election campaign official. If either of these two seats were to become open races, they would certainly be more competitive.

On a final note, I think it’s worth pointing out that compared to 2018, when Democrats lost ground in the Senate (the Senate map that year was unusually tough) and came up short in a few gubernatorial races, 2026 looks to be a stronger year for Democrats.

The House is all but certain to flip to Democrats, and the Senate has at least some chance of flipping, though I think a 50-50 tie is the most likely outcome. As for gubernatorial races, there is a chance that Democrats see a small net gain, which could bring the country to a 25-25 split in terms of partisan control of the 50 states. But it’s also possible that the current 26R-24D split remains after the midterms.

As I mentioned at the top, please don’t hesitate to leave comments! Whether you think there’s a race we should be watching, or even if you disagree with any of my ratings, let’s hear it! :)

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This feels like a good time to write about the Senate, as we’ve had some important developments in the last month. Increasingly, Democrats have a clear (albeit narrow) path to winning a Senate majority this fall. Even the chances of a 50-50 Senate now seem substantially higher than at any point last year.

This fall, 35 Senate seats will be up for election. Only 14 of those seats are competitive to some degree, and today, I’ll go through those races, providing a rating for each.

Alaska:

I’m glad that Alaska happens to be the first state alphabetically, because I truly think it has the most interesting Senate race on this list.

In January, Mary Peltola, who served from 2022 to 2025 in the House as Alaska’s At-Large Representative (the state only has one House seat), announced that she was running for Senate. The news came as a bit of a surprise, as Peltola had previously seemed to be leaning towards running for governor. Her entry into the Senate race is arguably the most important recruitment victory for Democrats so far.

My rating of tossup is perhaps a bit too bullish for Democrats, but I do feel that Alaska is now the party’s most likely flip after North Carolina (I would put Maine third, and Ohio fourth).

Keep in mind that Democrats have a history of overperforming in Senate races in sparsely populated states. Thinking back to 2018, it was Montana and West Virginia that Senate Democrats were able to successfully defend (Florida, Indiana, and Missouri, on the other hand, flipped to Republicans that year). In smaller states, Democratic candidates are better able to differentiate themselves from the national party, and if Peltola’s past elections are any indication, she will almost certainly run well ahead of the baseline for a Democrat in Alaska.

Rating: Tossup

Florida:

Florida is a very tough state for Democrats to compete in, for multiple reasons. Few states have swung away from Democrats in recent years as dramatically as Florida, and it’s also a very expensive state to campaign in. On top of that, its Senate race is actually a special election to fill what would have been the final two years of Marco Rubio’s term, meaning that this seat will be up for election again in 2028. It all adds up to a daunting prospect for Democrats.

No prominent Democrat had entered the race until the very end of January, when Alexander Vindman announced that he was running for this seat. Vindman has already raised a substantial amount of money, and if he emerges as the Democratic nominee, he could make this race somewhat competitive. The Republican incumbent, Ashley Moody, previously served as Florida’s attorney general, and though she won her past elections with relative ease, she might find herself in a more challenging race this fall than she expected.

Rating: Likely Republican

Georgia:

Last spring, when I first wrote about 2026’s Senate races, I mentioned that Jon Ossoff (D) could expect a close race, especially if he were to face Brian Kemp (R), Georgia’s two-term governor. As it turns out, Kemp chose not to challenge Ossoff, and the first-term Senator hasn’t really drawn any notable opponents.

Georgia (along with Michigan) is the closest thing to a 50-50 state on this list, and I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Ossoff has nothing to worry about. But having dodged a challenge from Kemp, Ossoff is in a fairly good position to win a second term this fall.

Rating: Leans Democratic

Iowa:

I find Iowa a tough state to rate. On one hand, Democrats have a real shot at its open Senate seat, which Joni Ernst (R) is leaving behind after two terms. In 2018, Iowa did not have a Senate seat up for election, which means that 2026 will be the best opportunity for Democrats to win a Senate seat there in quite some time.

What makes me slightly pessimistic on Democrats’ chances is that ever since Iowa swung hard to the right in 2016, it hasn’t shown any sign of reverting back to a swing state. In 2024, Trump won the state by 13 points, a true reversal of Iowa’s historic status as a light blue state in presidential elections. Iowa is perhaps the most dramatic example of how thoroughly Trump has realigned the politics of a state.

All that said, Democrats have a few compelling candidates vying for the nomination, and any one of them could make this a close race. Iowa’s primary is not until June, and the contest for the Democratic nomination seems pretty open, but at this moment, Josh Turek, a state legislator, seems to be in the strongest position.

I would peg Iowa as Democrats’ 5th best opportunity to flip a Senate seat, right after Ohio. If we somehow knew at this moment that Democrats ended up flipping Iowa, it would be safe to say that they had won a Senate majority.

Rating: Leans Republican

Maine:

As the bluest state (by far) on this list, Maine occupies an unusual place in the 2026 midterms. If anyone other than Susan Collins was defending this Senate seat, Maine would be the easiest state for Democrats to flip. Instead, it is entirely possible that Collins will once again outperform Maine’s partisanship, as she did in 2020, when both she and Biden won the state by about 9 percentage points (though her winning margin was only about 6 points after the ranked-choice voting tabulation).

If Democrats had been able to recruit Jared Golden (D), who represents the rural, redder half of Maine in the House, this Senate race would lean towards Democrats. However, Golden is retiring altogether, and he was perhaps uninterested in running against Collins, anyway.

There has already been a fierce Democratic primary between Janet Mills, who is finishing her second term as Maine’s governor, and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and veteran. My own expectation is that Mills, the establishment favorite, will ultimately win the nomination, but there’s some real uncertainty, and Maine’s primary is not until June.

Maine will be a test of how far the twin forces of nationalization and polarization have transformed American politics. It might be that in 2026, even with her long history of overperforming, Collins simply cannot overcome Maine’s Democratic lean.

Rating: Tossup

Michigan:

At the beginning of 2025, Gary Peters (D) announced that he would not be running for a third Senate term. What followed has been an unusually open race, with multiple Democrats and Republicans running for the nomination.

Michigan has become one of the most evenly divided states at the presidential level, and until we know the final matchup, it is genuinely hard to rate this Senate race. But in the context of a midterm year such as 2026, I think we should see Michigan’s Senate race as leaning towards Democrats, simply because of the environment.

If, down the road, polling shows a close race, then I might push Michigan to a tossup. But for now, with what we know about the usual midterm pattern, Democrats should be able to defend this seat, though not as easily as if Gary Peters had decided to run for another term.

Rating: Leans Democratic

Minnesota:

Tina Smith (D), who first won her Senate seat in a special election in 2018, will be retiring after this year, leaving Minnesota with an open Senate seat.

The main Democrats vying for the nomination are Angie Craig and Peggy Flanagan. At the beginning of February, Tina Smith endorsed Flanagan, which came as a surprise, though we still have a ways to go until the August primary. On the Republican side, there is already a surprisingly large field, which strikes me as a little unusual, given how difficult flipping this Senate seat would be (Republicans have not won statewide in Minnesota since 2006).

Minnesota might be best thought of as a consistently light blue state, one that tends to vote slightly to the left of the country as a whole in national elections. If this Senate seat were up for election in a presidential year, I would probably rate it as a tossup. But in a midterm year such as 2026, which will very likely be favorable to Democrats, there’s little reason to expect this seat to flip to Republicans.

Rating: Likely Democratic

Montana:

Call me bold for having Montana on this list, but I don’t think its Senate seat is 100% safe for Republicans this fall. Honestly, it’s not even the toughest Senate race for Democrats on this list (Florida or Texas have that honor).

Yes, it’s true, Montana was a Trump +20 state in 2024. However, what’s unique about Montana is that it has a history of electing Democratic Senators, and as recently as 2014, both of its Senators were Democrats. In 2024, Jon Tester (D) lost, but he overperformed by 13 points relative to Kamala Harris, which was very impressive, as overperformances of that magnitude have become quite rare.

I could envision Montana’s Senate race being decided by 5 to 10 points this fall, which means that Steve Daines (R) cannot take his race entirely for granted. One wildcard that might make the race closer than expected: Montana’s Democratic Party could decide to support an independent nominee (specifically, Seth Bodnar, who recently stepped down as president of the University of Montana).

Rating: Likely Republican

Nebraska:

In 2024, the most impressive Senate overperformance (besides Larry Hogan in Maryland) came from Nebraska’s Dan Osborn, who ran as an independent. He lost to Deb Fischer (R) by under 7 points.

By pure chance, Nebraska had two Senate races in 2024, which gave us a rare opportunity to compare Osborn’s performance to a Democrat who ran on the same ballot. That Democrat lost to Pete Ricketts, the Republican who will be up for election again this fall, by 25 points.

In other words, Osborn far exceeded expectations, and last spring, he announced that he would run again in 2026. For now, it seems that Nebraska’s Democratic Party will stand aside and support Osborn, as it had done in 2024.

Even if Osborn ends up losing, it would be hard to imagine the race being a landslide for Republicans, as is usually the case in Nebraska.

Rating: Leans Republican

New Hampshire:

Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen, who first won this Senate seat in 2008, will be retiring after this year. New Hampshire has an unusually late primary, and we won’t know until September who the nominees are.

Chris Pappas, the Democrat who currently represents the eastern half of the state in the House, seems very likely to get his party’s nomination. On the Republican side, John Sununu appears to be in a stronger position than Scott Brown, who lost to Shaheen in 2014.

In terms of partisanship, New Hampshire is fairly similar to Minnesota. At the presidential level, both states were nearly tied in 2016, went for Biden by about 7 points in 2020, and then voted for Harris by a few points apiece in 2024. There are political environments in which a Senate race in New Hampshire would be a tossup, but 2026 is just not shaping up to be one of those years.

Rating: Likely Democratic

North Carolina:

Ever since Roy Cooper (D) announced last summer that he was running for Senate in 2026, North Carolina has been the clearest pickup opportunity for Democrats. Cooper is a former governor who won in 2016 and 2020, and he is essentially the ideal candidate for Democrats in this Trump +3 state.

Thom Tillis (R), who first won this Senate seat in 2014, might have put up a good fight had he decided to run again in 2026, but he will be retiring after this year. As an open seat without a Republican incumbent, this should be a relatively easy flip for Democrats, though as with most southern states, North Carolina has a fairly polarized electorate. What that means is that Cooper, though in a good position to win, could still see a somewhat close race.

Rating: Leans Democratic

Ohio:

For several months now, Democrats have known that their Senate nominee in Ohio will almost certainly be Sherrod Brown. As a former three-term Senator who only narrowly lost re-election in 2024, he is basically the perfect candidate to make this a competitive race.

Brown will be running against Jon Husted this fall, who is arguably a stronger opponent than Bernie Moreno from 2024. If we had a Brown-Moreno rematch, I would consider this a tossup, as Brown only lost by 4 points in what was roughly an R+2 year, and this fall should be at least 6 points more Democratic than 2024. Even though Husted will be a tougher opponent, Brown still has a decent chance of winning.

Remember, regardless of who wins, this Senate seat will be up for election again in 2028.

Rating: Leans Republican

South Carolina:

Including South Carolina on here was a very borderline decision, given the state’s partisanship, and the fact that it has been decades since a Democrat won statewide office in the Palmetto State.

Even with that in mind, I’ll confess that I’ve been keeping an eye on South Carolina since early last year, and Democrats have a chance of giving Lindsey Graham (R) a much closer Senate race than he’s had in almost 20 years.

I wouldn’t say that Graham is an overly strong incumbent, and Democrats have an interesting candidate in Annie Andrews, a doctor who ran for a House seat in the Charleston area in 2022. The primary is not until June, however.

As with quite a few other states on this list, I could easily envision Democrats making this a single-digit race, which would be impressive, but ultimately, it’s just very hard to imagine this Senate race ending in a Democratic victory.

Rating: Likely Republican

Texas:

More so than any other state on this list, we need to know who wins each party’s nomination in Texas before we can truly assess its Senate race. For example, if Ken Paxton (R) found himself facing James Talarico (D) this fall, I might push this race closer to Democrats. Thankfully, Texas has a very early primary (March 3rd), so it won’t be long until we find out who Republicans and Democrats nominate.

But more generally, Texas occupies a similar place as Florida: it’s a truly difficult state for Democrats to win. Unlike a few of the other very Republican states on this list, such as Montana and Nebraska, Texas has not had a Democratic Senator in a long, long time (not since the early 1990s, if you must know).

Rating: Likely Republican

Overall, I think Democrats can reasonably expect to flip anywhere from two to four Senate seats this fall. That is, of course, a wide range, with two flips bringing Democrats to 49 Senate seats, three flips producing a 50-50 Senate, and four giving Democrats an outright majority (I’m assuming that Democrats successfully defend all of their own seats).

The easiest path to a Senate majority for Democrats runs through North Carolina, Alaska, Maine, and Ohio, in roughly that order. If you forced me to predict what this fall will bring, I would say that Democrats winning those first three states seems very plausible right now (Ohio is perhaps a bridge too far). That would mean a 50-50 Senate starting in 2027.

If needed, I’ll adjust these ratings down the road, but generally, we have a good sense of where things stand, even now. We already know from 2024 the partisanship of these states, and in some ways, that’s the single most important piece of information we need for assessing these races, given how correlated presidential and Senate voting have become.

By all means, feel free to share your thoughts on any of these Senate races. I really do welcome comments, and especially if you disagree with any of these ratings, let’s hear it!

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As many of you know, New Jersey’s gubernatorial race turned out to be a surprisingly strong showing for Democrats. The breadth of Mikie Sherrill’s victory was not captured by most polling, which had suggested a close race, and my own expectation for most of this year was that Sherrill would win by roughly 5 to 7 points. I wouldn’t have even thought that her winning margin of 14 points was in the realm of possibility.

My beat, of course, is the 2026 midterms, so even though I’ll be looking at the results in New Jersey, I hope to ultimately make a point about what the Garden State might tell us about 2026.

What stands out to me the most about the governor’s race in New Jersey is just how much the Democratic Party’s coalition has changed since 2017. As it turns out, Sherrill won by nearly the exact margin that her Democratic predecessor, Phil Murphy, did eight years ago. This offers us a great point of comparison, as 2017 and 2025 both featured similar political environments, but looking beneath the surface, it’s pretty stunning how Sherrill won with a different group of voters than did Murphy.

Overall, Sherrill did exceptionally well in the state’s affluent suburbs, which is easiest to see in Central and North Jersey. For example, Morris County, a historically Republican county that Murphy lost by 8 points in 2017, narrowly voted for Sherrill. Granted, Sherrill represented most of Morris County during her time in the House, but this is still a county that has traditionally voted for Republican gubernatorial candidates by double digits (Chris Christie, a Morris County resident, won the county by 30 points in 2009, in what was a fairly close race).

Even more than Morris County, the result in Hunterdon County was highly impressive for Sherrill, given that she has no connection to that part of the state. Demographically, Hunterdon is unlike any other county in New Jersey, and it’s one of the wealthiest and most highly-educated in the entire country. Hunterdon is even more Republican than Morris County, especially in non-presidential races. In both 2017 and 2021, Murphy lost Hunterdon County by roughly 20 points. But shockingly, Sherrill only lost the county by about 5 points.

Hunterdon County being even remotely close is truly a sign of the times, and just one more reminder of how much educational polarization has reshaped American politics. Before Trump, whether or not a voter had a college degree wasn’t a key predictor of voting behavior, but since 2016, educational attainment has become one of the most important factors in vote choice. It’s hard to miss this reality when looking at the county-level results.

At the same time that Sherrill overperformed in the most highly-educated parts of the state, she struggled (in relative terms) in the working-class counties of South Jersey. For instance, in 2017, Murphy won Gloucester County by 13 points, whereas Sherrill won it by just 4 points. That’s not a bad showing per se, but Gloucester is what we might call a traditionally Democratic county. Politically, it has gone from being fairly blue to pure purple, both in gubernatorial and presidential elections. It also happens to be the one county in New Jersey that might be considered a national bellwether.

Perhaps even more dramatic than Gloucester, Sherrill only won Atlantic and Cumberland County by a few points apiece. These are diverse, lower-income counties that Murphy carried by double digits in 2017. The fact that Sherrill narrowly won them is significant, not because they carry much weight in statewide elections (she could have lost both counties in a landslide and still have easily won the election), but because demographically, these two counties look a lot more like America than does most of New Jersey.

Think of it this way: trading away working-class voters in South Jersey for suburbanites in North Jersey is a decent exchange. New Jersey is one of the most highly-educated states in the country, and Sherrill proved that doing well in South Jersey (which is home to only roughly a quarter of the state’s population) isn’t necessary to win big statewide.

But in most states, that sort of trade might not be a net positive, and as we start to think about 2026, it’s possible that South Jersey offers a bit of a cautionary tale for Democrats, even as North Jersey paints a very different picture. If nothing else, the political divergence between these two regions can give us a sense of where Democrats might do better (and worse) next fall than they did in 2018.

Here in New Jersey, two House seats, the 2nd and the 7th, illustrate the educational/political divide between South and North Jersey. Back in 2018, Democrats flipped both of these House seats; Jeff Van Drew won in the 2nd, while Tom Malinowski won in the 7th district.

Both seats are currently held by Republicans, though for very different reasons. About a year after winning as a Democrat, Van Drew switched parties, and ever since, he has won re-election as a Republican. Two years after that, at the end of 2021, New Jersey’s redistricting commission enacted a new House map, one that made both the 2nd and 7th districts somewhat more Republican. Malinowski ended up narrowly losing in 2022, due in part to the way his district was redrawn.

These two House seats highlight how educational polarization has upended the playing field. The 7th, which encompasses some of the wealthiest parts of Central/North Jersey (among other counties, the 7th includes Hunterdon, part of Morris, and half of Somerset, another suburban county where Sherrill did very well), looks to be a real opportunity for Democrats next year. In fact, aggregating the results in the towns that make up the district shows that Sherrill narrowly won the 7th, which is truly impressive, given just how Republican this part of the state has historically been, particularly in governor’s races.

In contrast, Sherrill lost the 2nd district, based in South Jersey, by a little over 7 points. As I mentioned, the 2nd was deliberately redrawn to be a redder district back in 2021, but that result still comes as a bit of a surprise (I would have thought that Sherrill came close to keeping the 2nd district even). It means that Van Drew is probably in no real danger next year, and that his House seat might not be competitive for quite some time.

So, while the blue wave of 2018 tended to hit both working-class districts like the 2nd and suburban districts such as the 7th, we should take further educational polarization as a starting point in 2026. This would mean that Democrats may win even more suburban seats in 2026 than they did in 2018, but could struggle to flip seats with lower levels of college attainment.

Looking beyond New Jersey, I think two House seats in Pennsylvania, the 8th and the 10th, give us another example of how educational polarization could play out in 2026. In northeastern PA, Matt Cartwright (D) managed to hold onto the 8th district for over a decade, but he lost last fall. As a predominantly working-class seat based in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area, the 8th is probably not one of Democrats’ easier targets in 2026, and I do think it’s notable that Cartwright decided not to run to reclaim his old seat next year.

On the other hand, in the Harrisburg area, Pennsylvania’s 10th district is currently looking to be one of the easiest flips for Democrats anywhere in the country. As with New Jersey’s 7th, Pennsylvania’s 10th includes a part of the state that has historically been Republican, and though it doesn’t have quite the educational attainment of NJ-7, PA-10 is a fairly affluent part of the state. The 10th very much has the profile of the type of district where we might expect Democrats to overperform.

As far as the House is concerned, the big question in 2026 becomes, just how deep could a blue wave push into highly-educated, traditionally Republican House districts? Back in 2018, Democrats came up short in a handful of suburban districts, but they might end up winning most of these seats in 2026.

Besides New Jersey’s 7th and Pennsylvania’s 10th, another prime target for Democrats is Arizona’s 1st, based in Phoenix. This will be an open seat next fall, and according to the Census Bureau, 55% of the adult population in the district has at least a college degree (very few districts even approach 50% on that metric). On my list of competitive House seats, I have it rated as Leans Democratic, and for good reason: if the results in New Jersey are any indication, a House seat with this level of educational attainment should be easy to flip.

Another suburban seat that didn’t flip in 2018 is Nebraska’s 2nd, which is based in Omaha and its immediate surroundings. Last year, Kamala Harris won the district (and the electoral vote that comes with it), and as with Arizona’s 1st, this will be an open seat in 2026. It would honestly be shocking if a seat like this did not flip next year, as Nebraska’s 2nd is a rare district that Democrats won at the presidential level in 2024 but failed to flip at the House level.

Moving to a tougher target for Democrats, Virginia’s 1st district, a suburban/exurban seat based in the eastern part of the state, did not come particularly close to flipping blue in 2018. But it’s among the most highly-educated House districts in the country, and earlier this month, Abigail Spanberger won the 1st by 2 points in Virginia’s gubernatorial race. I have it rated as Likely Republican on my list, but it’s the sort of race that will probably be decided by single digits next year, even if it doesn’t flip.

Finally, if 2026 turns out to be a true suburban blue wave, then we need to start talking about House seats like Missouri’s 2nd district, based in the suburbs of St. Louis. I would be shocked if this seat flipped, but if it did, it would show just how much educational polarization has turned American politics upside down. This district, where roughly half of the adult population has at least a college degree, has been represented by a Republican member of Congress for over 30 years. I should mention, Republicans in Missouri’s legislature recently redrew the 2nd district to make it a few points redder, and frankly, it’s not hard to see why.

I realize that I’ve left out the Senate in all of this, but I’ll just say that in general, educational polarization makes life harder for Democrats when it comes to winning Senate seats. Nationally, about 37% of American adults have a college degree, but over half of the Senate’s seats are in states that fall below that figure. That alone doesn’t doom Senate Democrats, and keep in mind, the party holds Senate seats in multiple states with below-average levels of college attainment, such as Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wisconsin.

Most folks would agree that Maine and North Carolina are the best Senate seats for Democrats to try to flip in 2026 (both states happen to have educational attainment right above the national average). In fact, even though North Carolina is quite a bit more Republican than Maine, its Senate seat is probably the most likely to flip from Republicans to Democrats in 2026. Democrats landed a strong recruit in Roy Cooper, a former governor, and the race is for an open seat, which tend to be harder to defend.

But beyond Maine and North Carolina, Democrats’ Senate targets start to get pretty challenging, as most of 2026’s Senate races are in states that Trump won by double digits in 2024. Iowa and Ohio will be worth watching, but both are fundamentally working-class states where even formidable Democratic candidates (like Sherrod Brown in Ohio) are running against strong headwinds. Texas and Florida should be interesting, though Democrats came up slightly short in both states in 2018. If anything, an underrated target for Democrats might be Alaska. Politically, it’s a bit of an idiosyncratic state, where the right candidate can sometimes defy partisanship.

Ultimately, the results in New Jersey suggest that the trends we’ve seen for the last decade show few signs of abating. For better or worse, educational attainment has become one of the key factors underpinning American electoral politics, and we shouldn’t expect Democratic gains in 2026 to be distributed in quite the same way as they were in 2018. Sherrill’s win signals that there might very well be a blue wave in 2026, but more importantly, the coalition she won with shows how that wave could land in districts and states across the country.

For today’s post, I wanted to take a slightly broader view of the House. I thought it might be fun to imagine what would happen if the midterm elections took place right now, based on what we know about the political environment.

I’ll focus exclusively on the House, because every seat was up for election last fall, and will be again next year (the same cannot be said of Senate and governor’s races). That fact alone makes it much easier to think through how each House race will play out compared to 2024, and the major assumption of this post will be that there is a uniform shift in favor of Democrats, one that affects every House seat across the nation.

The main question is, how large of a uniform shift should we assume? The answer really depends on the margin by which we think Democrats would win the House popular vote. The most helpful data we have for this purpose is generic ballot polling, which asks respondents which party they plan to support. This type of polling has generally been pretty accurate, and in 2018 especially, the size of the blue wave in the House was well-predicted.

Thankfully, there has already been a decent amount of generic ballot polling this year, though there’s been a bit of variance among some of these polls. Most of the polling shows Democrats with leads in the low single digits, but a few polls suggest larger leads. More generally, public opinion might be in flux at the moment, with Congress having just passed major legislation that could soon show up in polling.

Just to pick a number that’s roughly in line with recent polling (if not a little higher), and fairly average by historical standards, I’ll assume that Democrats would win the House popular vote by 5 points if the midterms were held this week. That would be an 8-point improvement from last fall, when Republicans won the House popular vote by about 3 points. Keep in mind, in 2018, Democrats ended up winning the House popular vote by nearly 9 points, so my estimate might be described as a smaller version of that blue wave.

So, we’re going to assume that if the midterms were held right now, Democrats would perform 8 points better in every single House seat across the country compared to 2024.

Let’s now look at our list of close House results from last year. At the top, I’ll start with the closest House seats that Democrats lost last fall, and work my way down from there. The number in parentheses is the margin that the House race was decided by, with credit to The Cook Political Report, which has a great map with all this data.

The further down the list, the greater the margin that the Republican candidate won by last fall. I’ll stop as soon as I get to a House seat that Republicans won by at least 8 points, since that’s where we’d expect the uniform 8-point blue shift to no longer be flipping seats.

Closest House Seats that Republicans Won in 2024:

• Iowa’s 1st (0.2)

• Colorado’s 8th (0.7)

• Pennsylvania’s 7th (1.0)

• Pennsylvania’s 10th (1.3)

• Pennsylvania’s 8th (1.6)

• Nebraska’s 2nd (1.9)

• Alaska’s At-Large (2.4)

• Wisconsin’s 3rd (2.7)

• California’s 41st (3.4)

• Arizona’s 6th (3.5)

• Michigan’s 7th (3.7)

• Arizona’s 1st (3.8)

• Iowa’s 3rd (3.8)

• Virginia’s 2nd (3.8)

• Colorado’s 3rd (5.0)

• New Jersey’s 7th (5.4)

• Michigan’s 10th (6.1)

• New York’s 17th (6.3)

• California’s 22nd (6.8)

• Montana’s 1st (7.7)

So, if the midterms were held this week and the political environment was indeed 8 points more Democratic than it was last fall, Democrats could expect to win 20 House seats.

Okay, so now, the fine print.

A uniform shift is not completely realistic. Even in election years when one party does very well, certain districts, states, or even entire regions buck the trend. For example, in 2018, Florida was a clear outlier to the solid midterm that Democrats had that year. In 2024, despite what might be called a national red wave, Democrats held up well in the Pacific Northwest, Maine, and a few other places. The point is, there will undoubtedly be House seats in 2026 where Democrats do better or worse than expected, but this 8-point uniform shift gives us a baseline, one that you can adjust, if you wish.

One thing I do like about a uniform shift is that right now, there are at least several House races that look as if they’ll be rematches. In these cases, where the same candidates who faced off in 2024 will do so again in 2026, the main difference will be the political environment, which a uniform shift does a nice job of representing.

For example, in Iowa’s 1st District, Democrat Christina Bohannan lost by just 799 votes last year. She recently announced that she’s running again, and her 2024 opponent, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, will very likely be the Republican nominee once more. With the same two candidates who had all but tied, the rematch will largely come down to the national political environment.

There’s a reason I didn’t hesitate to rate Iowa’s 1st District as Leans Democratic in my other House article; it would take only the slightest shift in favor of Democrats to flip this seat. Other potential rematches from the list include Arizona’s 1st, California’s 22nd, Colorado’s 8th, Pennsylvania’s 10th, and Wisconsin’s 3rd.

One other thing worth mentioning: if I had added a few more House races from 2024 to the very bottom of the list, you would have noticed a decent gap after Montana’s 1st District. After that seat, the next closest House race was Arizona’s 2nd, decided by 9 points. Following that, we start getting to the 10-point races, of which there are only a few. In other words, a larger wave than what I assumed wouldn’t make a huge difference in the number of seats that change hands.

Basically, the low-hanging fruit for Democrats is those first 20 seats, which would bring them to 235 seats. Coincidentally, that’s exactly how many House seats the party won in 2018. It’s definitely noteworthy that the small blue wave I assumed for this post potentially gets Democrats to the same number of seats they won in 2018.

For those interested, I have a map below showing what the House landscape looks like if Democrats flip the 20 seats listed above.

Anyway, I hope this hypothetical was of interest, and I’d be curious to hear any thoughts. And as I mentioned, if you’re looking for ratings for individual House races, be sure to take a look at my other post, linked at the very top.

With just two months until the 2026 midterms, the state of play in the House of Representatives has become increasingly clear, and it is almost certain that Democrats will flip the House.

Right now, the House has 219 Republicans and 212 Democrats, with four vacancies. For Democrats to flip control of the House, they need to win three seats on net.

If recent history is any guide, the party out of power in a midterm year almost always manages to flip at least a handful of House seats. So far this century, only the 2002 midterms have been the exception, when Republicans gained eight seats in George W. Bush’s first midterm, modestly expanding what had been a narrow majority.

The 2018 House midterm results are a decent starting point for thinking through what could transpire this fall, but one key difference between 2018 and 2026 is the composition of the House. At the beginning of 2018, the House had 238 Republicans and 194 Democrats. In contrast, Democrats currently hold 212 House seats, meaning that they already control a good number of competitive seats.

Below, I have a list of House seats that I think are worth watching in 2026. All of these seats are currently held by Republicans.

• Arizona’s 1st District: In 2024, Arizona was home to two close House races, one of which was in the Phoenix area. David Schweikert, the district’s Republican incumbent, has seen close races for the last two elections in a row, and with his decision not to seek re-election, this seat only became more competitive. The district is among the most highly educated in the nation, and as an open seat, it would seem poised to flip. The matchup this fall will be Amish Shah (D), who lost to Schweikert by 4 points in 2024, versus Jay Feely (R).

  Rating: Leans Democratic

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• Arizona’s 2nd District: This House district is not as competitive as the other two in Arizona that I have on this list, but it could be worth watching. Its incumbent, Eli Crane (R), only won by 9 points in 2024. Jonathan Nez, the former president of the Navajo Nation and the Democratic candidate for this seat in 2024, announced last year that he will seek a rematch with Crane, and in July, he won the Democratic primary without opposition. If this seat ends up being competitive this fall, it would signal an impending blue wave.

  Rating: Leans Republican

• Arizona’s 6th District: Last decade, the previous version of this district, which contains part of Tucson and its surroundings to the east, was comfortably Democratic. But after the 2020 Census, the district’s boundaries were redrawn to make it much more competitive, and in 2022, the current incumbent, Juan Ciscomani (R), won by a point. In 2024, he won by a larger margin against Kirsten Engel, the same opponent he had faced in 2022. The Democratic nominee will be JoAnna Mendoza, who won the primary unopposed in July. The 6th won’t be hard for Democrats to flip, and compared to the 1st, it’s the easier seat for them to hold beyond 2026.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

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• Colorado’s 3rd District: In 2024, this open seat saw a matchup between Jeff Hurd (R), who won his first House term, and Adam Frisch (D), who had nearly unseated Lauren Boebert (R) in the 3rd district two years earlier. After that close call in 2022, Boebert ended up moving east to Colorado’s 4th district, leaving the 3rd behind. Following Colorado’s House primaries at the very end of June, we learned that Dwayne Romero will be the Democrat taking on Hurd. I could see this House race being an upset this fall, and a Democratic victory here is not completely out of the question.

  Rating: Leans Republican

• Colorado’s 8th District: This House seat was newly drawn in 2021 by Colorado’s independent redistricting commission, and was designed to be highly competitive. The commission succeeded in its goal, as the 8th has already seen two very close races. In 2022, Yadira Caraveo (D) narrowly won to become the 8th’s first representative, but then, in 2024, Republican Gabe Evans won by under a point. Last spring, Caraveo announced that she was running for her old seat, though she later withdrew from the race. At the end of June, Democrats nominated Manny Rutinel, a member of the Colorado legislature.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

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• Florida’s 7th District: In 2016, Stephanie Murphy (D) was able to flip this suburban House seat, which is located north of Orlando. However, in 2022, she chose not to run again, since this district was gerrymandered in such a way as to make her re-election almost impossible. That year, Cory Mills (R) won this seat, and in 2024, he easily won re-election. Since then, Mills has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, and in August, he lost the Republican primary to Ryan Elijah. This fall, Elijah will face Bale Dalton (D), a veteran and former chief of staff at NASA, and it should end up being fairly competitive.

  Rating: Leans Republican

• Florida’s 13th District: This St. Petersburg district was more competitive last decade, but when Florida’s legislature redrew the state’s congressional map after the 2020 Census, it moved part of St. Petersburg out of the 13th. Despite this, the 13th remains somewhat competitive, and in both 2022 and 2024, the House race here was decided by single digits. This seat probably won’t flip this fall, but the race should be close, and the matchup this fall will be Leela Gray (D) against Anna Paulina Luna, the incumbent Republican.

  Rating: Likely Republican

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• Iowa’s 1st District: In 2018, Democrats flipped three of Iowa’s four House seats, a reflection of how competitive Iowa’s congressional map can be under the right circumstances. This fall, Iowa’s 1st district, which covers the southeastern portion of the state, will be a top target for Democrats. In 2024, the House race here was decided by just 800 votes, and this fall, we’ll have the same candidate matchup as last time. Given how much more Democratic the political environment will be this fall compared to 2024, this seat is likely to flip.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

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• Iowa’s 3rd District: Centered around the state capital of Des Moines, this district is Iowa’s most suburban, though it still has a decent rural component. Cindy Axne (D) flipped this seat in 2018 and narrowly won re-election in 2020, but then lost a close race to Zach Nunn (R) in 2022. In 2024, Nunn won more comfortably than he had in 2022, but he should expect a tough race this fall. His opponent will be Sarah Trone Garriott (D), a state senator who represents the suburbs west of Des Moines.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

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• Michigan’s 4th District: When Michigan’s newly formed independent redistricting commission redrew the state’s House map in 2022, it created a competitive district in the southwestern part of the state. Although historically Republican, this region has been resistant to Trump, and despite Michigan’s shift to the right in 2024, Harris held up well in western Michigan. Sean McCann, a state senator who represents the Kalamazoo area, is the Democratic nominee, and will be facing Bill Huizenga (R). McCann should be able to make this a real contest for the first time in years.

  Rating: Tossup

• Michigan’s 7th District: This district, centered around the state capital of Lansing, is very competitive, and the House race here was decided by just a few points in 2024. This fall, the matchup will be William Lawrence (D) against incumbent Tom Barrett (R). The 7th is among the easier targets for Democrats in 2026, and I’d also consider it a bellwether: on election night, if Democrats have won this seat, they have very likely won control of the House.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

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• Michigan’s 10th District: John James, the Republican who currently represents this district, is running for Michigan’s governorship. As a result, the 10th will be an open House seat this fall, and his departure from this seat means it will be more competitive than if he was seeking another term. In early August, Christina Hines convincingly won the Democratic nomination in a three-way race. She will face Mike Bouchard (R), who won in an even more crowded primary. Of the three competitive House races in Michigan, I envision this one being the closest this fall.

  Rating: Tossup

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• Missouri’s 2nd District: This district is based in the affluent suburbs of St. Louis, and in 2024, incumbent Ann Wagner (R) won by 12 points. That’s not an overwhelming margin, and Wagner also had close races in both 2018 and 2020. This seat was made a bit more Republican when Missouri redrew its House map last year, but it’s also one of the most highly-educated districts in the country. Given Democratic gains in suburban areas, I think this will be a closer race than anyone is expecting.

  Rating: Likely Republican

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• Montana’s 1st District: After the 2020 Census, Montana gained a new House seat, going from one district to two. But funny things happen when a state suddenly has to be divided in half. In Montana’s case, the western half of the state is now home to a competitive House seat. In fact, when Montana first used its new map in 2022, this district ended up being a 3-point race. This fall, the matchup will be Aaron Flint (R) against Sam Forstag (D), since the Republican incumbent, Ryan Zinke, is retiring. Open seats tend to be more competitive, and though winning here will be a bit of a challenge for Democrats, this should end up being a close race.

  Rating: Tossup

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• Nebraska’s 2nd District: In 2024, many of us learned about this Omaha-based district, which has an electoral vote in presidential elections. Harris won the district, but its House member, Don Bacon (R), won re-election by about two points. Last summer, he announced that he’s retiring after 2026. Even if Bacon had run again, this seat would’ve been a good target for Democrats, but now, it’s even more likely to flip. In mid-May, we learned that the final matchup will be Denise Powell (D) versus Brinker Harding (R).

  Rating: Leans Democratic

• New Jersey’s 2nd District: Back in 2018, Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat at the time, flipped this Republican House seat, but then switched parties about a year later. Ever since, Van Drew has had little difficulty keeping this seat in Republican hands, but this fall, he will face a tougher challenge than usual. In June, Zack Mullock won the Democratic nomination, and I envision him giving Van Drew a close race. I still expect Van Drew to win, but I wouldn’t be shocked if he only won by a few points.

  Rating: Likely Republican

• New Jersey’s 7th District: In what feels like another lifetime, I grew up in this district, which is a rare suburban House seat that Democrats do not currently hold. The 7th has a long Republican lineage, and it tends to elect moderate Republicans. In 2018, Tom Malinowski became the first House Democrat to win the 7th in decades, and he served two terms in Congress before narrowly losing to Tom Kean Jr. in 2022. In 2024, Kean won a second term, but it’s hard to envision him winning this fall against Rebecca Bennett, who convincingly won the Democratic primary in early June.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

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• New York’s 1st District: This Long Island district hasn’t been represented by a Democrat since early 2015, when Lee Zeldin (R) began his first of four terms in the House representing the district. In 2022, he ran for New York’s governorship, and Nick LaLota (R) ran for the 1st district, winning by about 11 points. In 2024, LaLota won by a similar margin against John Avlon, a CNN anchor. The fact that this seat didn’t flip in 2018 is telling, and though LaLota may have a closer race than usual, he’s in decent shape to win a third term. His Democratic opponent this fall will be Chris Gallant.

  Rating: Likely Republican

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• New York’s 17th District: Mike Lawler, the Republican incumbent of this Hudson Valley district, first won his House seat in 2022 in a very close race. In 2024, he won by about 6 points, even as Harris narrowly carried the district. Lawler had initially been considering running for New York’s governorship, but he announced last summer that he would not be running for statewide office. This fall, his opponent will be Cait Conley, an Army veteran who won a crowded Democratic primary.

  Rating: Likely Democratic

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• North Carolina’s 11th District: North Carolina will be using a heavily gerrymandered map this fall, but Democrats have a real target in the 11th district, which is centered around Asheville in western North Carolina. This is a rare part of the country that was bluer in 2024 than in 2020, and even though Trump won the 11th by double digits in 2024, I think it will see a surprisingly competitive race. The Democratic nominee, Jamie Ager, is a farmer who strikes me as a good fit for the district.

  Rating: Leans Republican

• Ohio’s 7th District: Last fall, Ohio’s Redistricting Commission reached an agreement on a new House map for 2026, since a new map was required. The map is, like the old one, a Republican gerrymander, but it also doesn’t endanger any of Ohio’s Democratic House members, at least not in 2026. On the other hand, one district, Ohio’s 7th, could present a real opportunity for Democrats to flip a seat. The 7th, which is based in the suburbs and exurbs south of Cleveland, is currently represented by Max Miller (R), who won re-election in 2024 with just 51% of the vote. In early May, Brian Poindexter won the Democratic primary, and I expect him to make this a close race.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

  ---

• Pennsylvania’s 1st District: Pennsylvania will be home to four competitive House races this fall, with Democrats favored in three of them. However, the most difficult one for them to flip will be the 1st District, which is mostly compromised of Bucks County. Bucks is a suburban county that is perhaps the most evenly divided in the entire nation, and it often mirrors the national popular vote. Brian Fitzpatrick, who has represented this district for nearly a decade, is arguably the most moderate Republican in the House, and he survived the blue wave of 2018. Even so, his Democratic challenger, Bob Harvie, has a real shot at flipping this seat in the fall.

  Rating: Tossup

• Pennsylvania’s 7th District: This House seat, centered around the Lehigh Valley, is a key swing district. It tends to be very close at the presidential level, and similarly, House races here have been decided by narrow margins in the recent past. In 2024, Susan Wild (D) lost to Ryan Mackenzie (R), and Wild decided not to run for her old seat. This fall, firefighter Bob Brooks (D), who had the support of both Josh Shapiro and Bernie Sanders in the primary, will face Mackenzie, and I would say that Brooks is in a strong position to flip this seat.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

  ---

• Pennsylvania’s 8th District: This district in northeastern PA is home to Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and the Poconos. It covers a part of the state that was historically Democratic, but that swung dramatically to Republicans in 2016. Last summer, we learned that Matt Cartwright, who held this seat for 12 years, will not be running again. As with Susan Wild’s decision not to seek her old House seat, the news of Cartwright forgoing another run came as a surprise, and he was arguably the strongest nominee Democrats had. Paige Cognetti, who has been Scranton’s mayor since 2020, is the Democratic nominee, and I think she has decent odds to flip this seat.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

  ---

• Pennsylvania’s 10th District: Scott Perry (R), who has been in Congress since 2013, has been a top target for Democrats ever since he was drawn into this district in 2018. The 10th contains Harrisburg, Carlisle, and York, and has historically been fairly Republican. In 2024, Perry had his closest race yet against Janelle Stelson (D), who is running again this fall. Even though Perry managed to win in the blue wave of 2018, this part of Pennsylvania has become quite a bit more Democratic since then, and I see Stelson as more likely than not to win.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

  ---

• South Carolina’s 1st District: Back in the 2018 midterms, this Charleston-area seat narrowly flipped to Democrats in one of the biggest surprises that cycle. A few years later, the 1st district was purposely drawn to be more Republican, but I still think there is the potential for an upset this fall. The matchup this fall will see Jenny Costa Honeycutt (R), who serves on the Charleston County Council, facing off against Nancy Lacore (D), a former Navy officer. I would imagine that this race will be decided by single digits, and if 2026 proves to be a blue wave, Lacore may have a shot at winning.

  Rating: Likely Republican

• Virginia’s 1st District: In 2024, Harris improved upon Biden’s 2020 margin in just 19 congressional districts (out of 435) across the country. Among them was Virginia’s 1st, an exurban district located in the eastern part of the state. This House seat has been represented continuously by Republicans since the late 1970s, but incumbent Rob Whittman (R) will very likely have his toughest race this fall. Shannon Taylor looks to be the probable Democratic nominee, although Virginia will not be holding its primaries until early August.

  Rating: Likely Republican

• Virginia’s 2nd District: This district, dominated by the large resort city of Virginia Beach, is almost as evenly divided as can be. In 2020, Biden won the district by 2 points, while Harris and Trump finished in a tie here in 2024. Jen Kiggans (R), the incumbent who was first elected to this seat in 2022, won her race in 2024 by 4 points. Even with setback of Democrats’ redrawn House map in Virginia being struck down, the Democratic frontrunner, Elaine Luria, is well-positioned to flip this seat.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

• Wisconsin’s 1st District: Located in southeastern Wisconsin, and home to Janesville, Kenosha, and Racine, this district was represented by Paul Ryan (R) for about two decades, up until 2018. His successor, Bryan Steil (R), had little trouble winning that year, despite the national blue wave, and he has never had a particularly close race since then. However, Steil’s 10-point margin of victory in 2024 suggests that this seat could be competitive in a midterm year. In Wisconsin’s August primary, Mitchell Berman, an emergency room nurse, won the Democratic nomination, and I expect him to give Steil a more competitive race than he is used to.

  Rating: Leans Republican

  ---

• Wisconsin’s 3rd District: Rounding out this list is a fairly rural district that stretches across western Wisconsin and contains two mid-sized cities, Eau Claire and La Crosse. This part of the state has become somewhat more Republican since the 2010s, though the 3rd was represented in Congress for over two decades by Ron Kind (D), who chose not to run again in 2022. In 2022 and 2024, Republican Derrick Van Orden won by roughly three points, which was a bit of an underperformance, given the district’s overall partisanship. Rebecca Cooke, who challenged Van Orden in 2024, is once again the Democratic nominee, and she has a good chance of flipping this seat blue.

  Rating: Leans Democratic

  ---

Overall, I would estimate that Democrats will flip roughly 15 to 20 of these House seats.

Of course, we have to account for the seats Democrats could lose due to mid-decade redistricting. In Texas, let’s assume that two Democratic seats flip to Republicans.

In Missouri, one Democratic seat will likely flip this fall. In North Carolina, the seat currently held by Don Davis (D) will probably flip to Republicans, though there is a chance that it doesn’t. In Florida, the new House map could cost Democrats two seats. And finally, the recent Supreme Court decision will cost Democrats one seat in Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

We also have to consider California, which will offset some of these Republican gerrymanders. California’s new House map will very likely give Democrats five seats, partially counteracting the gains Republicans will make elsewhere. On top of that, Democrats will pick up a House seat in Utah this fall due to a recent state court decision.

In short, as important as the redistricting wars have been, they have ended up being close to a wash, at least for the 2026 midterms.

One final seat, Maine’s 2nd, bears mentioning. It is one of the reddest districts that Democrats are defending this fall, and the matchup will be Matt Dunlap (D) versus Paul LePage (R). For now, I would rate it as a tossup.

Overall, our expectation should be that the House is all but certain to flip this November.

I’ll continue to update this post regularly right up until the midterms, and please consider sharing it! I haven’t come across any other post quite like this one, and I hope this list proves helpful.

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Given the usual pattern of midterm elections breaking against the party in power, 2026 could provide Democrats an opportunity to claw back ground in the Senate. But at the same time, most of the Senate seats up for election next fall happen to be in uncompetitive states.

The long-term trend has been towards fewer competitive Senate seats, a testament to polarization, and the growing correlation between presidential and Senate voting. As more states have become solidly Democratic or Republican in presidential elections, so too have their Senate seats.

As recently as 2000, the epitome of a 50-50 election, North Dakota was still electing a Democratic Senator (and continued doing so up until 2018), while Vermont elected a Republican Senator to his third term (though he left the party a year later). But that level of ticket-splitting is long gone, and it should come as no surprise that in 2026, nearly all of the Senators up for re-election represent a state that their party won at the presidential level last fall.

For today, I’ve picked the five races that I think form the core of the 2026 Senate playing field. These are by no means the only potentially competitive races, but if any Senate seats were to flip in either direction next year, it would most likely be one (or more) of these.

I’ll go in order of partisanship, from the most Democratic state to the most Republican, based on the 2024 presidential results.

Maine:

As the only state on this list that Harris won last fall, Maine occupies a unique place on the 2026 Senate map. Its incumbent, Susan Collins, has been a fixture in Maine politics for decades, and she’s arguably the most moderate Republican in the Senate, along with Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

Just to give a sense of Collins’s crossover appeal, in 2008, even as Obama won Maine by roughly 17 points, Collins won re-election by nearly 23 points. That 40-point overperformance is simply unheard of today. For comparison, last fall, the largest Senate overperformances came from Larry Hogan in Maryland (17 points) and Dan Osborn in Nebraska (14 points), a reminder of how much ticket-splitting has declined, but also, how strong Senate candidates can defy their state’s partisanship to some degree.

In 2020, Collins’s overperformance in Maine was much reduced from 2008, but still substantial enough that she was able to win re-election by over 8 points even as Biden won Maine by 9 points. Maine was among the states where Harris held up relatively well last fall, and it’s by far the bluest state on this list. Even so, Collins is not in as much danger of losing as it may seem.

Jared Golden, a House Democrat who represents the rural, more conservative half of Maine, might be one of the stronger challengers that Collins could face. But even if he or another prominent Maine Democrat decides to run, the race probably leans towards Republicans. Collins has a proven track record, and she made it known last fall that she intends to run for re-election. Notably, Collins has never yet had to run in a strong Democratic midterm year, which 2026 could prove to be.

Michigan:

Back in January, I briefly mentioned how Gary Peters, Michigan’s senior Senator, was in a decent position to win re-election in 2026 if he chose to run. Surprisingly, he announced a few weeks later that he would retire, leaving Michigan with an open Senate race in 2026.

Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was quick to remove herself from consideration after Peters’s announcement. Initially, Pete Buttigieg, who moved to Michigan a few years ago, expressed interest in running, but has since announced that he won’t be running. For now, Mallory McMorrow, a state senator who gave a speech that went viral in 2022, seems to be the most likely Democratic nominee. On the Republican side, Mike Rogers, who nearly won his race against Elissa Slotkin last fall, has shown interest in running again.

Regardless of the matchup, Michigan’s Senate race is, in my mind, close to a toss-up. That could change, but the state’s three most recent Senate races provide some context. In 2018, a generally strong midterm year for Democrats, Debbie Stabenow won re-election to her seat by a somewhat modest 6.5 points. In 2020, Peters won by under 2 points, and last year, Slotkin won her Senate race by a fraction of a point.

If Peters were running next fall, this race could have been said to lean towards Democrats, but as an open seat, it will likely come down to the wire.

Georgia:

As with Michigan, Georgia is a state Trump won in 2024 but that has two Democratic Senators. Next fall, it will be Jon Ossoff, Georgia’s 38-year-old senior Senator, up for re-election. He and Raphael Warnock both won their Senate seats in runoff elections at the very beginning of 2021 (Warnock won his first full term in 2022, and won’t have to run again until 2028).

Ossoff is perhaps one of the least visible Democratic Senators, and that’s not meant as criticism. If 2024 taught us anything, it’s that Senators with national profiles tend to underperform. Last fall, Adam Schiff (California), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Josh Hawley (Missouri), and Ted Cruz (Texas) all won by smaller margins than Harris or Trump won their respective states. To my eye, Ossoff doesn’t have any obvious liabilities, and to his benefit, Georgia only shifted modestly towards Trump in 2024.

Ossoff’s single biggest fear would be having to face Brian Kemp, who is currently serving his second term as Georgia’s governor. Since winning the governorship in a close race in 2018, Kemp has seen his approval rating climb, and he is among the nation’s more popular governors.

Unless Ossoff draws a weak opponent, this race has all the trappings of a toss-up. Georgia was among the closest states at the presidential level in 2024, and electorally, Ossoff would seem to be a roughly average incumbent, neither a clear overperformer nor underperformer.

North Carolina:

In 2014, Thom Tillis first won election to North Carolina’s Senate seat, narrowly winning in a strong year for Republicans. In 2020, Tillis had another close race, winning by about 2 points.

Two Senate elections isn’t much of a sample size, but electorally, Tillis strikes me as being a fairly average Republican. In 2020, when his Democratic opponent had a scandal late in the race, Tillis only won by a slightly higher margin than Trump did statewide.

Even though North Carolina is significantly more Republican than Maine, the former is perhaps the easier Senate seat for Democrats to flip, a reminder that not all incumbents are created equal. In fact, North Carolina is arguably the best offensive target for Senate Democrats next fall.

Democrats would have a strong nominee in Roy Cooper, a former two-term governor who just left office at the beginning of this year. But the party has other potential candidates if Cooper decides to pass, and the race will likely end up being competitive almost regardless of the matchup.

Ohio:

Ohio’s Senate race next year will be a special election to fill the vacancy left by JD Vance, who first won his Senate seat in 2022. Jon Husted, who had been serving as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, is now filling Vance’s vacancy, and will almost certainly be the Republican nominee in 2026. Keep in mind, whoever wins this race next fall will have to run again in 2028.

Just to emphasize how much less competitive Ohio is compared to North Carolina, Trump won the latter by about 3 points last fall, but his margin of victory in Ohio was 11 points. That’s not a trivial difference, and it would be somewhat shocking to imagine this seat flipping.

But then, there’s the Sherrod Brown factor. Brown, who first won his Senate seat in 2006, lost his race last fall by just a few points. That was a significant overperformance, given Trump’s double-digit win in Ohio. If Brown were to run next year, the race could perhaps be considered a toss-up, but there’s no indication yet of his plans.

If Brown doesn’t enter the race, other possible Democratic contenders include Tim Ryan, a former member of the House who lost to Vance in 2022, and Greg Landsman, who currently represents the Cincinnati area in the House. However, if we knew right now with certainty that Brown had no interest in running, I probably wouldn’t even have Ohio on this list.

It truly is a sign of the times that only five Senate seats are potentially up for grabs in 2026. It’s a real contrast to 2018, when ten seats could be deemed competitive going into the election.

That being said, there are a handful of Senate races that might become competitive. Last month, we learned that Democrat Tina Smith, Minnesota’s junior Senator since 2018, won’t be running next year. I wouldn’t personally rate Minnesota’s Senate race as a toss-up, but even in a midterm environment that favors Democrats, it could end up being decided by single digits. New Hampshire, another light blue state that will have an open seat, may also see a close race.

Several other Senate races could be competitive in 2026, but are on the periphery of the Senate map for now. Alaska, Florida, and Iowa, all states Trump won by about 13 points last fall, have Senate seats that are likely to remain Republican, though that could change if strong challengers emerge. Similarly, Texas and Montana, which both had close Senate races in 2018, are basically safe for Republicans, but may be worth watching.

I highly recommend checking out 270toWin, a fun little website (with way too many ads) that lets you look at the 2026 Senate map and color it according to your own ratings. If nothing else, the map serves as a reminder that there aren’t too many obvious flips for either party next year. There’s certainly a world in which there’s no net change in the Senate’s composition, which is currently 53-47 in favor of Republicans.

I’ll share my own 2026 Senate predictions, even though I have no business doing this so far in advance. If I had to take a stance on the states listed above, I could envision Democrats flipping North Carolina, defending Georgia/Michigan, and coming up short in Maine/Ohio. As seen below, that would produce a Senate that is closer to parity, with a 52-48 Republican majority.

As we approach next fall, a key metric to watch is the generic ballot, which can give us a sense of the overall political environment. Rather than being asked which candidate they would vote for in a particular matchup, respondents in generic ballot polls share which party they support.

In the months prior to the 2018 midterms, generic ballot polling generally showed Democrats leading Republicans by roughly 7 to 10 points, which turned out to be a good estimate of the final results. In fact, the midterm polling in 2018 was quite accurate, arguably the best year that polling has had in the last decade.

There has already been some generic ballot polling for 2026, but it feels a bit early to read too much into it. For now, special election results might be the better indicator of the political environment, and this fall’s gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia will also be important data points.

We’ll call it a day there, but if you have thoughts on any of 2026’s Senate races, do share them in the comments, especially if you feel there’s a state I should have mentioned, such as New Mexico or South Carolina.

But for now, we simply have to talk about Pennsylvania, and there’s a reason I saved it for last: it truly is the single most important swing state. It’s not a stretch to say that if we somehow knew at this moment which party won PA in 2028, that alone would likely be enough to know the winner of the election.

It’s remarkable how long Pennsylvania has been at the center of US politics, and how well it tends to reflect the national mood. Since 1992, it has never deviated from the nationwide popular vote in a presidential election by more than 5 points, something that only one other state (New Hampshire) can claim. True to form, last November, Pennsylvania came incredibly close to matching the national popular vote.

On top of that, Pennsylvania even ended up being 2024’s tipping-point state. Basically, if the election had been closer, let’s say with a tied popular vote and every state shifting 1.5 points towards Harris, Pennsylvania would’ve been the state that decided the winner. It was Pennsylvania that clinched Trump’s Electoral College victory, just as PA could have potentially been Harris’s 270th electoral vote if she had first won Wisconsin and Michigan.

So, you get the idea: Pennsylvania matters in a way no other state quite does. I’ll spend the first part of today’s post giving an overview of how the state flipped red last fall, and then I’ll look at the major role Pennsylvania will play in determining control of the House in the 2026 midterms. If you’ve had enough reading about 2024, feel free to skip to the bottom of this post.

The first thing to know from last November is that Trump won Pennsylvania by 1.7 points, making it the reddest of the three northern swing states. From 2020 to 2024, PA swung almost exactly 3 points towards Trump, putting it right in the middle of the swing states in terms of their shifts (Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada swung to Trump by more, while Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin swung to him by less).

Compared to the other swing states, I think Pennsylvania sort of defies any single narrative. Part of that is because PA is arguably the most complex of the swing states, being a mix of different regional and political cultures. The state is a hybrid of the Northeast, Appalachia, and the Midwest, and at first, I was tempted to simply go through the 2024 results in each region, but that would only make it harder to see the bigger picture.

Instead, I think we can get at the story of PA in 2024 with a map that divides the state into a western and eastern section, each of which contains roughly half of the state’s population. We’ll pretend these are two separate states (and honestly, they almost could be), with the red half named West Pennsylvania and the blue half named East Pennsylvania.

By the way, I promise this is my last swing state map for a long, long time.

Just to give a quick sense of how demographically distinct these two halves are, eastern Pennsylvania is roughly 61% white and 39% non-white, while western PA is about 84% white, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates. As the map makes clear, East PA is the much denser half of the state, being home to Philadelphia, Allentown, Reading, and Scranton, among other cities. Although West PA does contain Pittsburgh, Lancaster, Harrisburg, Erie, and York, these are smaller cities, and even when combined, they come nowhere close to matching the population of Philly (which also has more extensive suburbs). This helps explain why it takes so much of PA’s western land mass just to reach about half of the population.

To understand how Pennsylvania flipped red in 2024, we first have to realize that it has very little to do with West PA. In 2020, Trump won western PA by 18 points, and in 2024, he won it by 19 points, a shift barely worth mentioning. I was surprised to see this at first, but it does make a lot of sense. In an election defined by racial depolarization, Trump had little to gain in western PA, which is overwhelmingly white. And in two key parts of West PA, the Pittsburgh and Harrisburg/Lancaster area, Harris generally matched Biden’s margins from 2020, even outperforming him at times.

East PA, however, is another story entirely. This half of the state shifted meaningfully towards Trump, and its demographic profile (diverse, but home to multiple counties with lower levels of educational attainment) meant that Harris had significant room to fall compared to past Democrats. Notably, most of the state’s Hispanic population lives in East PA, and almost no other group of voters swung more to Trump last November.

But on top of that, Harris fell short of Biden even in the suburbs of eastern PA, which came as a real surprise. For example, Harris won Montgomery County, the third-most populated county in the state and the epitome of suburban southeast PA, by a little under 23 points, down from Biden’s 26-point win in 2020. That may not sound like much, but a reasonable benchmark going into the election was that Harris would at least match Biden’s margins in affluent, highly-educated counties like Montgomery. Harris’s weaker showing in Chester County was also genuinely surprising, as was Trump flipping Bucks County by the thinnest margin.

Of course, we’ve got to talk about Philly. The city’s shift away from Harris could easily be an entire post, but the map below gets the basic point across. As you may have guessed, the precincts that swung the most towards Trump from 2020 to 2024 are in the darkest shade of red. Northeast Philly really stands out here; this diverse, working-class section of the city has a mix of Hispanic, Black, and Asian neighborhoods. Even Biden, despite winning PA in 2020, did worse in this part of Philly than Clinton had in 2016, a reminder that Democratic erosion with the non-white working class predates 2024.

It might be tempting to think that Philly was the main reason PA flipped red, but keep in mind, the city only cast about 10% of the statewide vote last fall. Even if Harris had somehow matched Obama’s 2012 winning margin in Philly (the largest in its history), that alone would not have changed the result in PA.

Looking further north in East PA, we come to Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and the Poconos, all of which shifted quite a bit to Trump in 2024. This, at least, did not come as too much of a surprise. Whether it was due to his Scranton roots, Catholicism, or working-class upbringing, Biden did fairly well in northeastern PA back in 2020. This region had moved sharply towards Trump in 2016, and Biden’s ability to claw back ground here was a key reason he flipped the state blue in 2020, but Harris did not even quite match Clinton’s 2016 margins. Harris’s losses in northeast Pennsylvania are, in my mind, among the most important shifts seen in PA last fall.

Overall, eastern PA went from Biden +22 in 2020 to Harris +17.5 in 2024, which tells you almost everything you need to know about why PA flipped red. As mentioned earlier, western PA only swung to Trump by a single point, a nominal shift. Given the 2024 results nationwide, in which diverse, urban areas generally moved most dramatically towards Trump, this east-west split in PA is not surprising. Simply put, eastern PA was the part of the state where the new political alignment, which has inverted the traditional voting patterns of class and race, was bound to hurt Harris the most.

Pennsylvania in 2026

Even though Pennsylvania doesn’t have a Senate race next year, and probably won’t have much of a governor’s race (I doubt Shapiro will draw a particularly strong challenger), the state will feature three competitive House races next fall. By themselves, these three House races could flip control of the chamber. A fourth House seat, which I’ll mention at the very end, could also be worth watching. In rough order of competitiveness:

• Pennsylvania’s 7th district: If someone asked me which of our 435 House districts best captures the country as a whole, PA’s 7th would be at the top of my mind. This Lehigh Valley district, home to Allentown and Bethlehem, is demographically comparable to the nation, and is highly competitive. Last fall, Democrat Susan Wild, who first won the seat in 2018, lost by a point to Republican Ryan Mackenzie. Regardless of who Democrats nominate next year, this district could end up having the closest House race in PA in 2026, and is arguably the most likely to flip.

• Pennsylvania’s 10th district: This Harrisburg-centric district was newly drawn in 2018, when Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court struck down the state’s gerrymandered Congressional map. Since then, incumbent Scott Perry, a Republican initially elected to a much redder district, has seen a few close races, and he won by just a little over a point last fall. The 10th district, which extends from Harrisburg to the areas around Carlisle and York, has clearly been trending towards Democrats in recent years. Harris did relatively well in this part of the state, even as much of the rest of PA swung against her. Expect a highly contested race, especially if Democrats once again nominate Janelle Stelson, who gave Perry his most narrow win yet last fall.

• Pennsylvania’s 8th district: Directly north of the 7th, this district includes Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, and much of the Poconos. This part of the state was historically Democratic, but has become significantly redder since 2016. The 8th district is currently a bit more Republican than either the 7th or 10th, and its former representative, Democrat Matt Cartwright, was able to hold onto the seat longer than might have been expected. Having represented northeast PA in Congress for over a decade, Cartwright would very likely be the strongest Democratic nominee next year, but if he decides not to run for his old seat, the 8th would only be somewhat likely to flip; its demographic/educational profile makes it a challenge for Democrats.

• Pennsylvania’s 1st district: This House seat, located primarily in Bucks County, is represented by Brian Fitzpatrick. He is arguably the most moderate Republican member of the House, and has overperformed in all of his elections, often winning by double digits. He did have a close race in 2018, but 2026 would have to be an exceptionally blue midterm for Fitzpatrick to be in real danger. At this early stage, my best guess is that Fitzpatrick will win by single digits next year, closer than what he’s used to. Still, the seat should be seen as potentially competitive, and I assume it will receive much more attention in 2026 than it has in the last few election cycles.

But if 2020 had hinted at Michigan gradually trending back to Democrats, 2024 put an end to any such notion. Long the bluest of the three northern swing states, Michigan ended up redder than Wisconsin last November, and it gave Trump almost an identical margin of victory as Pennsylvania did.

In focusing on Michigan today, I’m eager to understand the 2024 results as much as all of you (hopefully) are. But for those of you who are simply done reading about 2024, feel free to skip to the bottom of this post, where I’ll talk about Michigan’s key races in the 2026 midterms.

So, how did Michigan swing 4 points to the right in 2024? Basically, Harris underperformed Biden almost everywhere in the state. The Detroit area was, predictably, especially bad for Harris, but even elsewhere in the state, she consistently fell short of Biden’s 2020 margins. Whether we’re looking at rural southern Michigan, the post-industrial Flint/Saginaw area, or the Upper Peninsula, the same pattern shows up: Harris did a bit worse than Biden fairly uniformly across the state, with the exception of western Michigan.

In my previous posts about Wisconsin and Georgia, I divided both states into two roughly equal halves in order to help make more sense of the shifts from 2020 to 2024. With Michigan, I think we’ll benefit from dividing the state into three sections, as its political geography is a little more complicated.

In the map below, I’ve divided Michigan into a blue, purple, and red region. The blue region, consisting of seven counties, is the urban and suburban core of the state, home to Detroit, Lansing (the state capital), and Ann Arbor.

The purple region, consisting of 14 counties mostly along Lake Michigan, is how I would define western Michigan, a distinct area of the state both culturally and politically. Western Michigan has historically been staunchly Republican, but it has become much more competitive since 2016.

Finally, the remaining 62 counties in the map, which I have in red, cover a large swath of the state that is mostly rural, though a few major cities, such as Flint and Saginaw, are in this region.

To give my usual disclaimer, this is not a map showing who won each county in 2024 (for that, you can look here). Instead, my goal is to show how each region of the state shifted from 2020 to 2024. I’m treating the blue, purple, and red regions as aggregated units.

Somewhat by chance, the blue and red region each cast about 40% of the statewide vote last November, while west Michigan in purple cast about 20% of the total vote. This 40-40-20 breakdown is hopefully an easy way to understand how much electoral weight each region has.

First, looking at the seven counties in blue, this is the urban/suburban heart of the state. It’s long been the most Democratic region, but it also happens to be the part of Michigan where Harris lost the most ground compared to Biden in 2020. Whereas Biden won this group of counties by about 25 points, Harris only managed to win them by slightly under 20 points.

In Wayne County, Michigan’s most populated and diverse county, Harris underperformed Biden by almost 10 points, the single most important swing in the state. Part of that was due to Harris’s weaker margin in Detroit proper, but the real story was the large shift among Arab-Americans, who make up a majority of the population of Dearborn and a sizable share of Dearborn Heights. Both of these cities are located right outside of Detroit.

Although the war in Gaza looms large in explaining the Detroit region’s red shift, what we saw last fall is part of the larger trend of racial depolarization and ideological sorting, in which non-white voters (particularly moderate and conservative non-whites) have gradually moved away from Democrats since 2016. It’s possible that even without the conflict in Gaza, Harris would still have underperformed Biden in the Detroit area, given its demographics.

Trump’s gains with non-white voters in 2024 may seem surprising, but the pattern over the last few presidential cycles offers some context. In 2016, Trump improved slightly with non-white voters compared to Romney, though it wasn’t a major story following the election. In 2020, the trend continued, with Trump’s inroads among Hispanic voters being especially notable (and covered more extensively). In 2024, the bottom fell out for Democrats, as Trump made historic gains among non-white voters across the country.

Harris’s historically weak showing in Wayne County was compounded by her underperformance in the suburbs of Detroit, particularly Oakland and Livingston County. Biden had done especially well for a Democrat in these two affluent, highly educated counties, but Harris did slightly worse than Biden had. Further west in the blue region, Harris’s underperformance in the Lansing area was much more modest than what was seen in the Detroit metro, but the picture was still the same: counties that had seemed to be trending Democratic were simply not giving Harris stronger margins.

One region, west Michigan, mostly bucked the state’s lurch to the right. The group of purple counties in the map barely shifted, going from Trump +3 in 2020 to Trump +4 in 2024. This part of the state, settled by Dutch Calvinists in the mid-1800s, has a religious, conservative political culture that has never been a great fit for Trump. One result from the region that stands out: Harris slightly outperformed Biden in Ottawa County, which has historically been Michigan’s most Republican county. It’s a fairly large county of about 300,000 people, and was one of the very few places in the state where Harris did better than Biden. Next door to Ottawa, in Kent County (home to Grand Rapids, the main population center of western Michigan), Harris came close to matching Biden.

Finally, looking at the red region from the map, this area is made up of 62 counties. Almost all of these counties are rural, but I included a few urban ones, such as Saginaw and Macomb, because electorally, they shifted in much the same way as the rural counties did. Collectively, Biden lost these counties by 17 points in 2020, while Harris lost them by about 21 points.1 This erosion in Democratic support was a bit surprising, as polling had suggested that in predominantly white, rural areas, Harris was holding up fine. But as we saw with Wisconsin and Georgia, rural losses have yet to abate for Democrats, and losing ground in a bunch of rural counties adds up.

In sum, Trump flipped Michigan by doing unusually well in the Detroit area and by outperforming his own 2016 margins elsewhere in the state (besides western Michigan). One or the other would very likely not have been sufficient on its own, but by doing both, Trump was able to win Michigan by 1.4 points, over a full point more than his narrow 2016 win.

Michigan in 2026

In my last post, I mentioned that I would start turning an eye to the 2026 midterms, which are only 660 or so days away (not that I’m counting). As crucial as Michigan was in 2024, it could end up being just as pivotal in 2026, given that it has competitive gubernatorial, Senate, and House races on the ballot. Few other states can claim that level of importance in 2026.

House:

Back in 2018, Michigan saw two of its House seats flip to Democrats, and in the 2026 midterms, two of its House districts could once again flip. Michigan currently has a commission-drawn Congressional map, and unlike the gerrymandered map from last decade, the new map features a handful of competitive districts:

• Michigan’s 7th district: This House district, centered around the Lansing area in central Michigan, flipped to Republicans last November by just a few points (it was an open seat being vacated by Elissa Slotkin, who narrowly won her Senate race). It’s a highly competitive district, being close to 50-50 at the presidential level, and it’s a very winnable district for either party. Expect it to get plenty of attention next year.

• Michigan’s 10th district: This seat, held by Republican John James, saw an unexpectedly close race in 2022, when Michigan’s new House map was used for the first time this decade. Last November, James won by a comfortable 6 points, but he will likely have a close race next year. The 10th district, based in Macomb County, is predominantly white-working class, and is the type of House seat that I could see narrowly flipping to Democrats in 2026, but then being a tough hold in 2028.

• Michigan’s 4th district: Based in southwest Michigan, this House seat is located in a part of the state with a long Republican lineage, but it could be worth watching. The district is home to Kalamazoo, a mid-sized city, but is otherwise mostly exurban in character. The incumbent, Republican Bill Huizenga, won by about 12 points in both 2022 and 2024. This is not a seat that I would expect to flip, but it could potentially be close if 2026 ends up being a similar political environment to 2018. In 2020, Biden only lost the area covered by the district’s current lines by 4 points, a reminder of how much western Michigan has shifted politically.

Senate:

As important as these House races could be, Michigan will also have a key Senate race in 2026. The incumbent, Democrat Gary Peters, tends to keep a low profile, and his electoral strength is a bit tough to discern: he initially won his Senate seat by double digits in 2014, an abysmal year for his party. But in 2020, even as Biden won Michigan by nearly 3 points, Peters only won re-election by under 2 points, a closer race than expected. If 2026 ends up being comparable to 2018, then Peters is fairly likely to win another term. But if he decides to retire, or if the national environment in November 2026 is only mildly pro-Democratic, then this could end up being a competitive race.

Governor:

Finally, Michigan will have an open gubernatorial contest in 2026, since incumbent Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited. Governor’s races can be tough to assess this early, as they tend to be less tied to a state’s partisanship, instead revolving more around the candidates and state-specific issues. The pattern in Michigan so far this century is interesting: in the 2002 midterms, Michigan elected a Democratic governor who served for two terms, which was followed by a two-term Republican governor who ran in two strong Republican environments (2010 and 2014). Then, in 2018, Whitmer won in what was a good year for Democrats (outside of the Senate, at least).

It’s possible that the governor’s race could largely come down to the national political environment in 2026, and though that would augur well for Democrats, I expect a closer race than what we saw in 2018 and 2022, when Whitmer won by roughly 10 points both times. All else equal, it’s typically more difficult for a party to hold a governorship after having already held it for two consecutive terms. Until we learn the nominees, the race is maybe best thought of as leaning towards Democrats, though I’d argue that it has more potential than the Senate race to become competitive.

Today, I’ll focus on the 2024 results in Georgia, which to my surprise, had some common themes with what we saw in Wisconsin. Broadly speaking, both states were resistant to the national shift to Trump, swinging to him by a modest 1.5 points (Wisconsin) and 2.4 points (Georgia). In both Wisconsin and Georgia, Harris basically matched Biden’s 2020 margins in the urban and suburban parts of the state, while falling short in the rural areas. This stands in contrast to Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Harris’s urban underperformance was more central to those two states flipping red.

It’s ironic that Wisconsin and Georgia can even be compared at all, given that they are perhaps the two swing states most unlike each other. Wisconsin is among the whitest and most secular states in the nation, and has a population that skews on the older side. In contrast, Georgia is racially diverse, has a large evangelical population, and is among the youngest states by median age. Yet, despite all of their demographic differences, when it comes to the 2024 election, a similar story emerges in both states.

So, as I did with Wisconsin last month, let’s split Georgia into two halves to help make sense of the state’s political geography and electoral trends. This is much easier to do with Georgia than it was with Wisconsin, as Georgia has one large metro area, Atlanta, that is home to roughly half of the population.

In the map below, I have 15 counties in blue, which align closely with the Atlanta metro area. Almost exactly half of the votes cast in Georgia in 2024 came from these 15 counties, which include Fulton (the county that is home to most of Atlanta), Cobb, DeKalb, and Gwinnett, among others. Remember, the colors do not necessarily indicate who won that county in 2024 (though Harris did, in fact, win most of the blue counties and lost most of the ones in red). The key thing to realize with this map is that I’m aggregating a bunch of counties into two distinct regions of the state in order to generalize about how each half voted.

In red, I have the 144 counties outside of metro Atlanta, and though this half of the state is predominantly rural, it is home to several mid-sized cities, such as Augusta, Macon, and Savannah. The red half also contains part of the Black Belt, an area stretching across the South that was defined by plantation slavery until the Civil War. Georgia’s section of the Black Belt, where much of its rural African-American population lives, stretches from the southwestern corner of the state to the border with South Carolina in the east.

Let’s look at the blue half first. Harris came very close to matching Biden’s 2020 margin in metro Atlanta. Four years ago, Biden won those 15 counties in blue collectively by 62% to 37%, a margin of 25 points, while Harris won them by about 24.5 points. Even though the overall margin was almost identical in 2020 and 2024, there was one key difference: Harris did slightly worse than Biden in Atlanta proper, but in nearly all of the suburban counties that surround the city, she improved on Biden’s 2020 margins.

Given the national political environment last month, Harris’s gains in suburban Atlanta are pretty notable. For example, in Douglas County, west of Atlanta, I was kind of shocked to see that Harris did over 6 points better than Biden had in 2020. Similarly, in Fayette County, south of Atlanta, Harris overperformed Biden and came within a few points of tying Trump in the county, which last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976. These kinds of improvements in a year of widespread Republican gains say a lot about where the Atlanta metro is heading politically.

It’s worth emphasizing just how much the Atlanta area has shifted over the last few election cycles. In 2008, despite his strong national performance, Obama won the Atlanta metro (as I defined it in the map) by only around 10 points, a reminder of how well Republicans were still performing in the suburbs prior to Trump. In fact, in 2012, Romney held Obama to only a single-digit win in the Atlanta metro. But 2016 was the inflection point, as Clinton won the metro area by about 17 points, a major reason Georgia was among the small handful of states that became bluer from 2012 to 2016.

As a quick aside, Harris’s strength in metro Atlanta is part of a larger story of realignment in cities and suburbs across the South. Starting in 2016, formerly Republican metro areas such as Lexington in Kentucky, Oklahoma City in Oklahoma, and Fort Worth in Texas began shifting away from Republicans, sometimes dramatically. Those are far from the only examples, but the pattern has often been the same: Romney in 2012 was the high-water mark for Republicans in these southern metros, while Biden in 2020 surpassed any recent Democratic presidential nominee. In most cases, Harris fell short of Biden in these types of areas, but in Georgia, she was able to nearly match his levels of support from 2020.

So, if Harris basically matched Biden’s margins in urban/suburban Georgia, why did the state flip to Trump? Well, you probably already know the answer. In the more rural half of the state, where Harris lost by nearly 29 points, she underperformed Biden by just a few points, but that was all it took to erase his incredibly narrow margin of victory from 2020.

One area worth highlighting as an example of rural Democratic erosion is the state’s 2nd Congressional district in southwestern Georgia. The district, which has been represented in Congress by Democrat Sanford Bishop Jr. since 1993, is roughly 50% African-American, and only once in his long career in Congress has Bishop had a close race. But at the presidential level, Democrats have seen more narrow margins in this rural part of the state since 2016, and Harris fell short of Biden in the district by several points.

Harris’s underperformance in rural Georgia was important on its own, but another thing that hurt her was that metro Atlanta made up a lower share of the statewide vote in 2024 than it had in 2020. Four years ago, those 15 blue counties in the map cast about 51% of Georgia’s total votes, but this year, it was down to almost exactly 50%. To be clear, raw turnout was up from 2020 in metro Atlanta, but it increased by even more in the rural half of the state.

The difference between the Atlanta area casting 51% versus 50% of the statewide vote might not sound like much, but if the relative turnout patterns of 2020 had held up in 2024, Harris would have lost Georgia by roughly 1.7 rather than 2.2 points. That’s not nothing, but I think it suggests something that was generally true of the swing states: persuasion (i.e. 2020 Biden voters switching to Trump in 2024) was more decisive than turnout.

One thing I hope I’ve shown is just how polarized Georgia is. Unlike Wisconsin, whose blue and red halves (as I had defined them) were won roughly 57% to 42% by each party, Georgia’s two halves are worlds apart politically. It’s a reminder that not all purple states are created equal: while Wisconsin is somewhat uniformly competitive, with plenty of counties where either party can reach 40% of the vote, Georgia is purple only because it has a deep blue half that counteracts its deep red half. And as mentioned, that deep blue half, the Atlanta metro, was only light blue until fairly recently.

The dichotomy between urban and rural Georgia is nothing new, and it’s fascinating just how much the state’s political geography has flipped from only a few decades ago. In the 1996 election, when Bob Dole narrowly won the state over Bill Clinton, Dole easily won nearly every suburban Atlanta county, while Clinton won a good number of rural counties that have longed since flipped to Republicans. To understand the national realignment in American politics since the 1990s, one could do worse than studying Georgia, which features the urban-rural divide with a southern twist.

On a final note, even though Trump won Georgia by a greater margin than he did Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, I think there’s a case to be made that Georgia is among the better targets for the Democratic nominee in 2028. If Harris’s 2024 performance in rural Georgia represents the nadir for the party, then ongoing Democratic gains in metro Atlanta could push the state back to where it stood in 2020, when Biden eked out a narrow win. If nothing else, it would be hard to imagine Georgia reverting to its former status as an uncompetitive state, as it had been for much of the 2000s and 2010s.

As we head into the new year, I just wanted to sincerely thank all of you who’ve been reading my posts. This newsletter ended up being the highlight of 2024 for me, and I’m really grateful that quite a few of you have stuck around, even though I cover the more mundane side of politics.

Next month, I’ll take a look at Michigan and Pennsylvania, and from there, I plan to start turning my attention to the 2026 midterms. Yes, that’s kind of absurd, but it’s never too early to talk about key Senate and House races. Control of the House is clearly up for grabs in 2026, and even the Senate could see at least one or two seats flip. But more on that down the road.

For now, here’s wishing all of you a happy holiday season, and hope you all have a great start to 2025!

If so, serious props to you. But for the rest of us, the House results were a bit shocking, given everything else that happened on November 5th. And in some ways, the overperformance of House Democrats was even more surprising, since they entered the election with 213 seats (218 is the number needed for a majority), meaning that they had to defend a handful of competitive seats. Keep in mind, too, that all of this came with Republicans collectively winning the House popular vote by about 3 points, almost double Trump’s popular vote margin.

So, how did House Democrats hold up so well, and why did their winning slightly under 48% of the House popular vote translate to almost winning a majority of House seats?

The most straightforward answer is that over the last decade, the changes in each party’s coalition have been largely to the benefit of Democrats, at least as far as the House is concerned. Of course, those same coalitional changes have made it harder for Democrats to regularly win the Senate, which is well known. But I feel the Democratic advantage in the House is underdiscussed.

It’s helpful to use 2012 as a point of comparison. That year, Obama won a comfortable Electoral College victory, and won the national popular vote by nearly 4 points. At the same time, Democrats won the House popular vote by roughly a point, which only translated into 201 seats, well short of a majority. So, in 2012, winning the majority of the House popular vote did not even come close to giving House Democrats control of the chamber.

Without a doubt, part of the story in 2012 was gerrymandering. In the 2010 midterms, Republicans had flipped state legislatures and governorships across the country, giving them control of the redistricting process in most states. Republican gerrymanders in Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania alone probably cost Democrats close to ten House seats in 2012, the first time that the new Congressional maps were used that decade.

But on top of that, the Obama coalition was, surprisingly, not well suited for easily winning the House, at least compared to how effective it was in winning the Electoral College. The same coalition in 2012 that won Obama a handful of now-red states such as Florida, Ohio, and Iowa wasn’t nearly as effective at winning House seats, even putting aside gerrymandering.

Broadly speaking, the Obama coalition in 2012 produced lopsided wins in diverse, urban House seats, yet tended to come up short in potentially competitive suburban and rural House seats. But since then, Democratic gains in the suburbs have reshaped the landscape of the House. Some of the suburban House seats that come to mind are those in southern California (the old CA-45 and CA-49), greater Chicago (IL-6 and IL-14), and northern New Jersey (NJ-5, NJ-7, and NJ-11), as well as Kansas’s 3rd, Michigan’s 11th, and Texas’s 7th.

Among those suburban House seats I just listed, most of which have high levels of educational attainment and had long been Republican pre-Trump, House Democrats won not a single one of them in 2012. Yet, this election cycle, they won all but one. The gains that Democrats have made in the suburbs help explain why the House easily flipped to Democrats in 2018, and remained close in the more neutral political environments of 2020 and 2022.

On the other side of the ledger, the gains that Republicans have made among rural voters starting in 2016 and among non-white voters more recently haven’t translated into a meaningful number of new House seats for the party. Winning by even larger margins in red, rural House seats is irrelevant for House control, and so far, Republican gains in racially diverse House seats have generally come up short in actually flipping them. This could, of course, change in the near future, and it’s not hard to think of certain blue House seats that could soon be winnable for Republicans. But the story of the House in 2024 is that Democrats managed to hold onto these seats, albeit with narrower margins than in the recent past.

In short, continuing Democratic strength in the suburbs, along with a fairer national House map compared to the 2010s (one in which Democratic and Republican gerrymanders are now closer to canceling out), has helped to make the House more favorable to Democrats than it was for most of the 2010s, when the party struggled to even get close to a House majority.

The inefficient House coalition that Democrats had in 2012 now belongs to Republicans, who have struggled to turn their recent House popular vote wins into large House majorities. In this sense, the 2022 midterms ended up being a preview of 2024 when it came to the House; in both years, Republicans won a very narrow majority of House seats despite winning the House popular vote by 3 points.

One more thing that has to be said: Democrats caught some very lucky breaks this cycle, and there really was a degree of chance in their small net gain. Below, I have a list of the closest House races, making note of which party won, and by what margin. I made this list by referencing this incredibly helpful map of the House results from The Cook Political Report.

• California’s 13th district: D+0.1

• California’s 45th district: D+0.2

• Iowa’s 1st district: R+0.2

• Colorado’s 8th district R+0.7

• Maine’s 2nd district: D+0.7

• Nebraska’s 2nd district: R+1.8

• New York’s 19th district: D+1.7

• North Carolina’s 1st district: D+1.7

• Ohio’s 9th district: D+0.6

• Pennsylvania’s 7th district: R+1.1

• Pennsylvania’s 8th district: R+1.6

• Pennsylvania’s 10th district: R+1.3

Note: As of this writing, the first race on the list, CA-13, is still slightly uncertain, but the expectation seems to be that Democrat Adam Gray will ultimately win the seat.

Among the very closest House races (those decided by under a point), Democrats won four out of six. There was nothing preordained about this, and it’s not hard to imagine a world where the national political environment had been slightly worse for Democrats. If that had come to pass, Democrats might very well have lost ground in the House.

Even if that had happened, Republicans would still have had a fairly narrow House majority to work with. It really does speak to how well-positioned Democrats are right now in the House that even a redder environment would not have produced a dramatically different result.

On the flip side, as well as House Democrats performed, they did not have a particularly easy path to 218 House seats this cycle. If every race on that list had somehow ended up a full point more Democratic, it would have gotten Democrats to the cusp of House control, but even that would’ve left them just slightly short of a majority.

So, as we head into 2025, I do think the House deserves more attention than it tends to get, given how closely divided the chamber will be. Republicans won a 220-215 House majority, but three Republican vacancies (due to nominations) will make the House functionally 217-215 for some period of time early next year. Unlike in 2017, when Republicans had a comfortable House majority as Trump came into office, the House will likely serve as much more of a veto point this time around.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and here’s wishing you a good start to the holiday season.

And yet, along with all of its other surprises, the 2024 election gave us one more: only a single state in the country had a margin of under a point: Wisconsin. And it barely even made it into the club, having been won by Trump by 0.9 points.

In part for how close it ended up being, I thought Wisconsin would be a good state to begin my post-election analysis. I know how many folks are disappointed with the outcome last week, but Wisconsin feels like an easy, reassuring place to start understanding the election results.

So, why did Wisconsin shift so modestly, when the nation as a whole swung over 6 points towards Trump? A few potential reasons:

• Wisconsin is overwhelmingly white. Its electorate is over 80% white, and pretty much the only racial group that didn’t move dramatically against Harris compared to 2020 was white voters. Essentially, the racial depolarization that polls foreshadowed was never going to have much impact in Wisconsin, and that’s precisely what happened.

• Wisconsin has long defied its demographics. Despite being primarily white and working class, it votes much more Democratic than we would expect. This is arguably because its population is among the most secular in the country, though there are other reasons for this, too.

• I can’t prove it, but as I’ve said before, I really do think the events in Kenosha in the late summer of 2020 pushed Wisconsin away from Biden that fall. In other words, the state was perhaps slightly redder than it might have otherwise been in 2020, making the swing towards Trump in 2024 more muted.

Another possibility is that because Wisconsin had non-gerrymandered legislative maps in 2024 for the first time in over a decade, voters (Democrats, specifically) had more reason to turn out to vote. Personally, I’m highly skeptical of this having much impact, as Wisconsin has long been a swing state and among the states with the highest voter turnout. It would seem voters in Wisconsin already had plenty of reason to turn out, fair maps or not. And in general, election results in a presidential year are likely driven by the top of the ticket, not by downballot legislative races.

Whatever the reason, it’s remarkable how little Wisconsin shifted from 2020, given how most states swung at least several points to the right. Wisconsin went from being Biden +0.6 in 2020 to Trump +0.9 in 2024. And lest we forget, it was Trump +0.8 in 2016. There’s just no other state that seems so perennially on a knife’s edge, and I haven’t even mentioned how it voted in 2000 and 2004 (hint: well under a point in both elections).

So, let’s take a look at a simple political map of Wisconsin. When I look at presidential election results in a state, I like to subdivide the state in a way that helps people understand the main divide in the state’s political geography. For some states, this is pretty easy; when I get around to looking at Georgia, for instance, I can basically divide the state into two roughly equal halves by population: the Atlanta metro and everything else.

For Wisconsin, splitting the state into two logical halves for the purpose of analysis isn’t straightforward. Unlike Georgia, which is dominated by one dense metro area, Wisconsin is home to several smaller metro areas, such as Madison, Milwaukee, and Green Bay. The state’s population is somewhat dispersed, as its cities are fairly spread out across the state (though more concentrated in the southeastern part of the state).

With that in mind, I have below a map of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, with each county colored in either red or blue. This is not a map of who won each county. Rather, I’m interested in the trends between the 2020 and 2024 elections. In general, the blue counties swung the least towards Trump from 2020 to 2024, while those in red shifted towards him the most. Slightly under half of the state’s population lives in the 61 red counties, and slightly over half lives in the 11 blue counties. The same can be said of the total votes cast in 2024: the red counties cast about 49% of the statewide vote, and the blue about 51%.

The blue half of Wisconsin, as I’ve defined it in this map, is basically the urban/suburban portion of the state, containing all of the state’s major cities, and many (though not quite all) of its mid-sized cities. In 2020, Biden won those blue counties collectively by almost exactly 15 points (57% to 42%).

On the other hand, the red half is, broadly speaking, the rural portion of the state, though it does contain several cities, such as Kenosha, Racine, and Wausau. If this were any other state, such a group of primarily rural counties would be overwhelmingly Republican, but in 2020, Biden only lost these counties collectively by 15 points (42% to 57%, the mirror image of his winning margin in the blue counties).

So, how did each half of Wisconsin shift from 2020 to 2024? Compared to Biden in 2020, Harris won those blue counties in the map by slightly under 15 points. In other words, she almost matched Biden in urban/suburban Wisconsin, despite the state’s modest shift overall towards Trump. That means, of course, that in the red counties, Harris underperformed Biden by a few points. Nothing dramatic, but essentially, almost all of the red shift in Wisconsin came from its more rural half.

This pattern speaks to educational polarization, which has reshaped American politics since 2016. The blue counties that I picked out have a level of educational attainment higher than that of the nation as a whole, with about 39% of the adult population having at least a college degree, according to 2018-2022 ACS data. In contrast, only about 25% of the adult population in the red counties has at least a college degree, which is well below the national figure of 36%.

Even though Harris nearly matched Biden in the denser, more college-educated half of the state, it wasn’t quite enough to offset her losses in the more rural and working-class part of the state. It’s a familiar pattern, and Harris merely continued the trend of Democratic rural underperformance. In fact, even Biden in 2020 did slightly worse than Clinton had in 2016 in those red counties, despite his flipping the state blue in 2020.

That erosion in rural America has made it increasingly difficult for Democrats to win states such as Wisconsin, which Obama had won with ease in both of his elections. Harris did improve over Biden in a few counties (Ozaukee and Washington, for example), but her gains in the Milwaukee suburbs were marginal, and those counties simply don’t cast a meaningful share of the statewide vote.

Overall, the story of the 2024 election in Wisconsin was one of muted change, a major contrast to most states in the country, and even a contrast to a few of the other swing states (looking at you, Arizona and Nevada).

We’ll call it a day there. There’s still much to go through from the election results, and though I don’t intend to cover more than a handful of states, I do plan to look at Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. These three states, along with Wisconsin, ended up being the most closely contested states in 2024, and they should be thought of as the core swing states going into 2028.

1. Trump Improved Almost Everywhere

Compared to 2020, Trump’s improvement was broad, and not specific to one state or region. I think the tenor of the night was set when it became clear that Trump would win Florida by double digits (compared to his 3-point win there in 2020), and as it turned out, that overperformance showed up elsewhere, though not to quite the same degree as seen in Florida.

Even in states where we might have expected Harris to improve on Biden’s 2020 showing (Kansas being the one that always came to my mind), it seems right now that Trump will have either roughly matched or exceeded his 2020 margins in just about every state. In fact, even at the county level, I’m having trouble finding more than a handful of places where Harris surpassed Biden in 2020. Almost every part of the country experienced a notable shift to the right from 2020, though again, it wasn’t uniform.

2. Polling was Generally Accurate, but Underestimated Trump

As we approached Election Day, the polling average for the national popular vote was showing a nominal Harris lead of about 1 point, and nearly every swing state polling average was within a point or so of a tie (with the sole exception, I believe, of Arizona, where Trump led by a bit more). Broadly speaking, the polling averages were close to the final results, though Trump once again overperformed the polls, as was the case in 2016 and 2020. In 2020, the polling misses in the Midwest were especially large, but at the moment, they seem to be a bit more modest. As with 2020, the result in Georgia seems like it will end up being very close to the final polling average (Trump +2). The polling misses that did come up, to my eye, seem to have been in diverse non-swing states, such as Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and New York, among other states.

3. Racial Depolarization

One of the big polling stories throughout 2024 was the potential for historic Republican gains among non-white voters, while Democrats seemed poised to improve (or at least match) their 2020 performance among white voters. From the election results, it seems that only the former manifested, with Trump indeed winning historic levels of support in some of the most diverse parts of the county. One estimate I saw put Trump’s current vote share in New York City at about 30%, up from 23% in 2020 and 18% in 2016.

So, if it turns out (as seems likely right now) that Trump gained more with non-white voters than he did among white voters, that would mean that 2024 did indeed witness racial depolarization compared to 2020, though not quite in the form that we might have expected, as Trump simply ended up improving with voters across racial groups.

4. Educational Polarization

Another major polling story of the 2024 cycle was the growing disparity between the partisanship of those with a college degree and those without one. Going into the election, polling data had suggested that relative to 2020, Harris would extend Biden’s gains with college-educated voters, particularly college-educated whites, but that she would lose some support among those without a degree (among all races, though non-whites in particular). In the end, Harris did not seem to make any real gains among college-educated voters, but did underperform with non-college voters.

Just to make this concrete with a quick example, Chester County, the most affluent and highly-educated county in Pennsylvania, was nearly a tie in 2012 between Obama and Romney. Then, in 2016, Trump lost it by about 9 points, and he went on to lose it by 17 points in 2020. The county’s trajectory seemed clear, but as of this writing, Trump is only losing Chester by about 13 points, whereas one might have expected something closer to the margin from 2020.

It seems that in the final analysis, there might not end up being a major increase in the gap between the partisanship of those with and without a college degree. Basically, both groups shifted against Democrats, though I’d imagine that Harris’s loss of working-class support will still be a bit more pronounced than her loss among those with a college degree.

5. Swing vs. Non-swing States

In a pattern reminiscent of what we saw in the 2022 midterms, Democrats held up somewhat better in the swing states than elsewhere in the county. For example, despite the nationwide shift towards Republicans compared to 2020, Harris will perhaps only lose the seven swing states by 2 or 3 points apiece (not a major shift from Biden’s narrow wins in those states). In contrast, she seems poised to only win Illinois and New Jersey by single digits, and New York by 12 or so points, results that suggest these states will end up being around 10 points more Republican than just four years ago.

And it wasn’t only blue states where Harris underperformed: Florida, Texas, and South Carolina are a few of the red states where Harris did much worse than Biden had in 2020. Basically, some of the most diverse non-swing states in the country witnessed significant shifts to the right.

What Comes Next

Keep in mind that even though control of the White House and Senate has been determined, the House of Representatives is still very much up for grabs (at least, as of this writing around 5 AM). Given the shifts against them seen across the country, it would be pretty astounding if Democrats came even somewhat close to flipping the House. It seems right now that it could potentially take days to figure out who won the majority of House seats, given how tight the margins are in some key races.

Towards the end of the month, I’ll aim to start looking at some of the state election results, though a few of the states I had been excited to write about (Florida and Texas, namely) ended up with very lopsided results. Believe me, I am so very sick of the seven swing states, but those really do seem to be the most logical place to start. By all means, if there are certain results you’d like me to look at later this month, leave a comment! I make no promises, but I’ll consider writing about a certain state if enough people show interest.

Update on 10/26: Just a few days after I published this piece on October 17th, Harris’s lead in the 538 national poll tracker fell below 2 points, and as of the end of 10/25, her lead stands at 1.4 points, the narrowest it has been since the very beginning of August. The state polling averages below are now updated through the end of 10/25.

As for the polling in the swing states, the picture remains the same as ever: all seven swing states are highly competitive, and with the exception of Arizona and Georgia, they are basically as close to 50/50 as one could imagine.

In today’s post, I’ll go through the seven swing states in detail one last time. For each state, I’ll do the following:

• Provide a combined polling average drawn from 538, The New York Times, and Nate Silver’s Substack.

• Share some thoughts on why Harris or Trump could win the state.

• Mention a key county from the state that could be worth tracking on election night.

And yes, I’ve discovered the magic of bullet points, which will hopefully make this post more readable than some of my previous stuff. So, let’s get to it.

Arizona

Current polling average: Trump +2.0

The case for Harris:

• Starting in 2016, few states have moved so decisively away from Republicans. In 2012, Romney won Arizona by 9 points, while Trump only managed to win the state by 3.5 points in 2016. In 2020, it shifted almost another four points towards Democrats, enough to give Biden a narrow margin of victory.

• In the 2022 midterms, Democrats in Arizona narrowly won the governorship, and won the state’s Senate seat by nearly 5 points. Considering the state’s traditional Republican lean in statewide races, these wins were confirmation of how much the state has shifted electorally in the Trump era. The result in the Senate race is particularly noteworthy, given the close relationship between Senate and presidential voting.

The case for Trump:

• Arizona has been one of Trump’s strongest polling states, both before and after Harris entered the race in late July. It was also one of the few swing states from 2020 in which the polling proved to be largely accurate.

• Trump seems poised to improve upon his 2020 performance among Hispanic voters, who make up roughly a quarter of Arizona’s electorate.

• Relatedly, although Trump did worse in Arizona in 2020 than he had in 2016, he improved significantly in several majority-Hispanic border counties in southern Arizona, such as Yuma County.

County to watch: Pima

Let’s be clear: Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, is unquestionably the county to track in Arizona, seeing as it casts around 60% of the statewide vote. But given the sheer volume of votes that Maricopa has to count, it could be slow to report its results on election night. If that ends up being the case, Pima County is worth watching, too.

Pima County is home to Tucson, which is Arizona’s second-largest city after Phoenix. Whereas Maricopa has long voted Republican at the presidential level (Biden’s narrow win in Maricopa in 2020 broke a nearly 70-year red streak), Pima has been consistently blue since 1992. Despite being roughly 17 points more Democratic than Maricopa County, Pima has tended to shift in tandem with Maricopa in recent presidential elections.

If Harris were to improve on Biden’s nearly 19-point margin of victory in Pima County by even a point or two, it would be a decent sign for her chances in Arizona. On the other hand, if she was only just matching Biden’s 2020 margin in Pima, that would potentially mean she was on track to narrowly lose the state, given the erosion she’ll likely experience outside of Arizona’s two major metro areas compared to 2020.

Georgia

Current polling average: Trump +1.4

The case for Harris:

• Of all the swing states, none moved more decisively towards Democrats than Georgia from 2016 to 2020. In that time, it shifted by over 5 points, going from a Trump +5 state to one that Biden very narrowly won.

• The suburbs of Atlanta, especially those with high levels of educational attainment, have shifted dramatically towards Democrats since 2016, and there’s reason to believe that Harris will only further improve on some of Biden’s margins in the areas surrounding Atlanta.

The case for Trump:

• Trump has polled well in Georgia throughout this election cycle, and it has arguably been his best swing state. The polls in Georgia are especially important to consider, as it was the swing state that ended up having the most accurate polling in 2020.

• Polling has consistently shown that Trump will likely improve among African-American voters relative to 2020. Georgia’s population is roughly 33% African-American (more than any other swing state by far), and a modest gain among Black voters could deliver the state to Trump, even if Harris improves among other groups of voters in Georgia.

County to watch: Cobb

Located northwest of Atlanta, Cobb County is a large suburban county of roughly 800,000 people that is demographically similar to Georgia as a whole, though with higher educational attainment than the state. The county’s political trajectory is a testament to how educational attainment has become a major dividing line in American politics since 2016.

The county’s recent presidential election results also make clear why Georgia flipped blue in 2020: Romney won Cobb County by about 12 points in 2012, but Clinton won it narrowly in 2016. Then, Biden went on to win the county by a little over 14 points four years later. Cobb’s shift from 2012-2016 and again from 2016-2020 was pretty dramatic, and it’s just one of several suburban counties around Atlanta that has witnessed this sort of pattern.

If Harris only matched Biden’s margin in Cobb from 2020, it would be a major clue that she’s unlikely to win the state. This is a county where, at a minimum, we might expect her to perform several points better than Biden did four years ago. A 20-point win for Harris in Cobb County might mark the point at which she’s in a good position to win Georgia, given that Atlanta’s other suburban counties will likely mirror the trends seen in Cobb.

Michigan

Current polling average: Harris +0.7

The case for Harris:

• In 2020, Michigan was the bluest of the core swing states, and unlike Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, it swung towards Democrats more than the nation as a whole did from 2016 to 2020.

• Using Biden’s winning margin in Michigan from 2020 as a baseline, Harris has a nearly 3-point cushion in the state, a sizable buffer. National polling does not suggest that she is doing 3 points worse than Biden had in 2020, which would mean that if the state moves in line with the national popular vote, Harris should be in good shape to win Michigan.

• Western Michigan, a somewhat overlooked region, has become a bright spot for Democrats since 2016, and given its levels of educational attainment, Harris might have room to grow in this part of the state. The trends have been especially positive for Democrats in the areas around Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Traverse City.

The case for Trump:

• Polling suggests that Trump could do historically well for a Republican presidential candidate among African-Americans, a major voting bloc in Michigan, particularly in the Detroit area. In fact, Trump did about 3 points better in Detroit in 2020 than he had in 2016.

• Two important white working-class counties, Genesee (home to Flint) and Saginaw, seem poised to give Trump a larger share of the vote than they did in 2020. Both counties have educational attainment well below the national average and yet have remained purple to light blue, even though counties with comparable demographics elsewhere have already flipped to Republicans. A third county, Macomb, is a populous white working-class county that could see further Democratic erosion.

• Recent polling hints at the possibility that Trump could run competitively among Arab-Americans, a small but important demographic group in the Detroit metro.

County to watch: Kent

Although Saginaw County is a good bellwether for Michigan, it’s very likely to flip to Trump in November, which wouldn’t tell us too much by itself. Instead, I plan to keep tabs on Kent County, home to over 650,000 people and the city of Grand Rapids. Biden won the county by 6 points in 2020, and as with much of western Michigan, Kent County has above average levels of educational attainment. Despite having a long Republican lineage, the county has been trending towards Democrats since 2016.

Kent is potentially helpful to watch because a Harris overperformance compared to Biden’s 6-point margin in 2020 would probably foreclose a Trump win in Michigan. I’d almost go as far as to say that if Harris wins Kent County by 10 or more points, the math becomes incredibly difficult for Trump in Michigan, unless he is far exceeding expectations in the Detroit area.

Nevada

Current polling average: Trump +0.1

The case for Harris:

• In 2020, Nevada was the second bluest of the main swing states, and in 2016, it was the only swing state that Clinton ended up winning. In fact, Nevada hasn’t voted for the Republican presidential candidate since 2004.

• Along with Georgia, Nevada has been one Harris’s strongest states in terms of her improvement in the polls compared to when Biden was still in the race.

The case for Trump:

• Nevada has the lowest educational attainment of the swing states, and in 2020, it arguably voted more Democratic than its demographics may have predicted. It’s possible that educational polarization will finally catch up with Nevada’s partisanship, flipping the state red.

• The state’s diverse population offers Trump an opportunity to improve on his 2020 margin, as polling has strongly suggested that he will perform better among non-white voters than he had in 2020. Nevada’s population is about 30% Hispanic, and it also has a notable Asian-American and African-American population.

• In both 2016 and 2020, Trump lost Nevada by almost exactly the same margin, even though Biden won the national popular vote by a few more points than Clinton had. The long-term trend in the state has unambiguously been towards Republicans, though Nevada is also starting from a bluer starting point than most of the other swing states.

County to watch: Clark/Washoe

As with Arizona, most of Nevada’s population lives in a single county. Clark County, in the southern tip of Nevada, is home to Las Vegas, and nearly three-quarters of the state’s population. In 2020, slightly under 70% of the votes cast in Nevada came from Clark County alone, so it goes without saying that watching the results from there is the best way to gauge where things stand in Nevada on election night.

If Clark County ends up being slow to report its election results, Washoe County, a purple county of about half a million people, is a good alternative. The county is home to Reno, the only other major city in Nevada besides Las Vegas. Since 2008, Washoe has been a decent bellwether for Nevada as a whole, though in 2020, the county was a little more Democratic than the state.

Harris probably needs to win Washoe by a bit more than Biden did in 2020 in order to be well-positioned to win the state. One possibility is that both Washoe and Clark will give Harris a winning margin of around 5 or 6 points, which is odd to think about, given how as recently as 2016, Clark County was about 10 points bluer than Washoe. The two counties giving Harris a similar margin would certainly be a sign of the times, and consistent with Nevada being very, very close.

North Carolina

Current polling average: Trump +1.2

The case for Harris:

• North Carolina has the highest educational attainment of the swing states: 37% of its adult population has at least a college degree. In fact, it’s the only swing state with a higher level of educational attainment than the nation as a whole (36%).

The case for Trump:

• North Carolina was the sole swing state that Trump won in 2020. His statewide margin of victory was 1.3 points, which is narrow, but it puts the burden of proof on Harris, who would have to erase that deficit while likely winning the national popular vote by a smaller margin than Biden did in 2020.

• Longer term, North Carolina has voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1980, except for 2008, when it was functionally a tie between Obama and McCain.

• Since 2008, the state has been roughly 6 points more Republican than the country as a whole, meaning that Harris would likely have to be winning nationally by quite a bit more than her current 2 or 3-point polling lead to flip North Carolina.

County to watch: New Hanover

Some folks might forget that in southeastern North Carolina, along the coast, there’s a city by the name of Wilmington. It’s located in New Hanover County, which has been remarkably close in recent election cycles, making it one of the few purple counties in a state where many counties are either deeply blue or red (a common feature in the South, given racial polarization).

New Hanover is among the most highly educated counties in North Carolina, and even though it roughly matched the statewide result (Trump +4) in 2016, Biden ended up winning the county by 2 points in 2020, a decent swing that suggests the county is now a bit more Democratic than the state overall.

My own benchmark would be that if Trump is holding Harris to anything resembling the 2020 result in New Hanover County, he is likely on track to win North Carolina. But if Harris is winning the county by at least 6 or 7 points, it’s a good sign for her chance of flipping the state blue.

Pennsylvania

Current polling average: Harris +0.2

The case for Harris:

• Along with Georgia, Pennsylvania has the second-highest educational attainment among the swing states. Its large suburban counties, such as Chester, Cumberland, Delaware, Lancaster, and Montgomery cast a sizable portion of the statewide vote, and have meaningfully shifted towards Democrats since 2016. In each of these counties, Harris will probably match or even exceed Biden’s 2020 margin.

• In the 30 or so counties of central PA, by far the reddest part of the state, Harris simply doesn’t have much room to fall. Both Clinton and Biden lost central PA, which is overwhelmingly rural, by 42 points, a staggering margin that will probably change little this November.

• Compared to Michigan and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania tends to be a bit less swingy across presidential elections, and even if MI/WI/PA all move towards Trump, it’s possible that PA shifts more modestly.
  

The case for Trump:

• Among the three northern swing states, Pennsylvania has generally polled as Trump’s strongest, which was also true when Biden was the presumptive nominee.

• Based on demographics, it’s not hard to imagine where in Pennsylvania Trump will likely outperform his 2020 margins: northeast PA, southwest PA, and quite possibly in Philadelphia. Combined, these areas cast roughly a third of the statewide vote.

• More broadly, it’s possible that Biden was an unusually good fit for Pennsylvania, and that his 1-point win in 2020 was more than a typical Democrat would have won by. Harris might not really be starting from Biden’s 2020 baseline.

County to watch: Northampton

In 2020, two counties in Pennsylvania stood out for nearly matching the statewide margin: Erie and Northampton County. In fact, both were also the only two counties that flipped in any direction statewide from 2016 (they went from red to blue).

Erie has a lot going for it as a bellwether for the state, but I think Northampton is the county to really focus on come election night. Whereas only about 29% of adults in Erie have at least a college degree, 34% of adults in Northampton do, putting it very near the statewide figure of 35%. Biden won Northampton County by less than a point in 2020, and the county could end up as a virtual tie this time around, not unlike the state itself.

Assuming enough election results are in, if either Trump or Harris is clearly leading in Northampton County on election night, it would bode very well for his or her chances of winning PA.

Wisconsin

Current polling average: Harris +0.6

The case for Harris:

• Since the summer, Wisconsin has typically polled as either Harris’s strongest or second-strongest state, behind only Michigan (the same was true when Biden was still in the race).

• If racial depolarization does end up being the big story of 2024, and Harris performs poorly among non-white voters compared to previous Democrats, the impact will be muted in Wisconsin, a state whose electorate is over 80% white.

• If the events in Kenosha in late August of 2020 did, in fact, hurt Biden’s margin in Wisconsin, then the baseline we have for the state might be artificially red; it’s possible that if not for Kenosha, Wisconsin would have voted more in line with PA in 2020, as it had in 2016.

The case for Trump:

• Wisconsin has the largest share of white working-class voters of any swing state. This demographic is already strongly Republican, but if Trump improved even marginally among this group of voters compared to 2020, it would show up pretty quickly in Wisconsin.

• Rural Wisconsin might still have room for Trump to expand his margins. In fact, Trump did improve slightly in the state’s rural counties from 2016 to 2020, even though Wisconsin as a whole shifted towards Democrats.

County to watch: Winnebago

Wisconsin, despite being a perennial swing state, only has a handful of purple counties that could serve as good bellwethers. A few possibilities include Door, Kenosha, and Racine County, though I personally plan to watch Winnebago County, home to the smaller city of Oshkosh. I promise I’m not making these names up!

Even though Winnebago County is a bit redder than Wisconsin as a whole, its educational attainment (35% of adults there have at least a college degree) is comparable to the statewide figure. Trump won the county by 4 points in 2020 after winning it by 7 points in 2016. This is exactly the type of county where Trump would need to outperform his 2020 margin to win the state, and if he is only winning Winnebago by a few points, that probably indicates that Harris is in a good position to win Wisconsin.

Just as a final word of caution, not one of us can predict who is going to win any of the swing states. No amount of polling data, early voting returns, or even exit polling can change that simple fact.

The actual election results that we’ll start to get after 6 PM on November 5th are the truest source of data, but even with that, there are caveats. Given how polarized voting has become by method (e.g. mail vs. in-person voting), it’s important to wait for a county to have reported most of its results before jumping to conclusions. For the counties I listed above (or any other), I wouldn’t recommend looking at the results until at least half of the vote is in.

Anyway, go into Election Day with an open mind, and maybe a drink or two, and I’ll look forward to seeing you all on the other side.

Without a doubt, the polls have shifted towards Trump to some degree. Even though Harris is still ahead in national polls, her lead has gradually diminished since late August. According to Nate Silver’s ever-helpful national polling averages, Harris was leading by about 4 points a few days after the Democratic convention ended, whereas today, her lead is down to 2.2 points. Last week’s debate, which was seen as a strong performance by Harris, doesn’t seem to have had a major impact on the polls, but it still might be a little too early to say either way.

In the swing states, the story is broadly similar. Right after the convention, when Harris was peaking in national polls, she was ahead in the polling averages of every state, except for Georgia and North Carolina. As of today, she is only clearly leading in Michigan and Wisconsin, while Trump leads slightly in Arizona and Georgia. In the three remaining states, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, there’s no obvious leader.

As always, the order for the state polling averages below is 538, The New York Times, and Nate Silver. But you probably already knew that, if you’ve been reading this Substack for long enough.

Arizona: Trump +0.7, Trump <1, Trump +1.5

Georgia: Trump +0.7, Trump <1, Trump +0.7

Michigan: Harris +1.5, Harris +1, Harris +1.2

Nevada: Harris +0.1, Harris <1, Harris +0.1

North Carolina: Trump +0.5, Harris <1, Trump +0.3

Pennsylvania: Harris +0.5, Harris <1, Harris +0.2

Wisconsin: Harris +2.7, Harris +3, Harris +2.0

Folks, this thing is ridiculously close right now. In no previous update have there been numbers quite like these, where almost every state is a virtual tie.

The only state that stands out for not being especially close is Wisconsin, but as I mentioned last month, it was the swing state with the largest polling error in 2020, nearly 8 points based on the final 538 average from that cycle. I wouldn’t expect that same level of error this fall, but there are few compelling reasons to think that Wisconsin will be a full point or two bluer than Michigan, as suggested by the latest averages.

Even though nearly every swing state has moved towards Trump since late August, the polling averages in North Carolina are very similar to where they stood last time. It’s undeniable that the state is close, and as much as I’ve been resisting it, the time has come to move the state to a toss-up.

I’m still personally skeptical that North Carolina will be a state Harris flips, given that she’s almost certain to fall short of Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in the national popular vote, which was 4.5 points. North Carolina doesn’t strike me as a state that would defy the national trends, as it’s fairly representative of the country’s demographics.

In fact, I can only think of a few states where Harris might outperform Biden’s 2020 margin: Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah, all of which are red states with high levels of educational attainment. The partisanship of these states hasn’t quite yet caught up to the post-2016 realignment, and they’re maybe best thought of as being very conservative, but wary of Trump.

In any case, the polling is clearly showing North Carolina to be on a razor’s edge, so I’ll put my doubts aside and place it with the six other swing states in the toss-up category. Having all seven swing states as pure toss-ups is a reminder of just how much uncertainty this fall will bring. You can see from the map below that 93 electoral votes are up in the air, and I doubt that will change before November 5th.

That uncertainty kind of obscures the fact that we have a historically small number of competitive states this year. For example, back in 2016, we had around a dozen swing states, though a couple of them, namely Iowa and Ohio, ended up being surprisingly lopsided in the end. In 2020, polling at least suggested a competitive race in Florida and Texas, but neither really ended up being too close. The latest polls of Florida and Texas confirm that they’re only on the periphery of being competitive.

So, we seem firmly entrenched in a political environment where just seven states, home to roughly 60 million people, will decide the race.

Some Thoughts on California Polling. No, really.

At some point, there’s only so much that can be said about our seven swing states. To get a fuller picture of how the American electorate might behave this fall, I think it’s helpful to also look at polls of non-competitive states, especially if they can tell us something about key demographic groups.

Back in February, I looked at how Biden was polling in a handful of red states, such as Alaska, Iowa, and Kentucky. The polls at the time suggested that he hadn’t lost much ground in red states relative to the 2020 election results. Unfortunately, most of these states have seen little recent polling.

So, that gives us some reason to look at polling from blue states. Thankfully (and for reasons beyond me), one state of potential interest, which also happens to be our nation’s most populated, has been polled recently.

Yes, California is unrepresentative of America in so many ways, but I think it’s a good proxy for understanding how Harris and Trump are holding up with a broad array of demographic groups. For reference, the state is roughly 34% white, 40% Hispanic, 17% Asian-American, and 7% African-American.

Harris’s current polling lead in California is about 24 points, which is comparable to Biden’s lead when he was still in the race. That fact alone is already striking. Harris, a fixture of California politics throughout the 2010s, isn’t seeing a major gain in her home state relative to Biden, even though her polling is stronger than his elsewhere, such as in the swing states.

There are two things I think we can glean from this:

1.) Harris, like Biden, is struggling to match typical levels of Democratic support among people of color.

2.) Harris’s weakness in California suggests that she might not need to win the popular vote by as much as we’d assume to win the Electoral College.

That first point is likely to come as a surprise, given the historic nature of Harris’s candidacy, but it’s important to realize that the erosion of Democratic support among non-whites is very much a long-term phenomenon, one that first appeared in the 2016 election results, albeit subtly, before becoming undeniable in 2020. It’s bigger than any one candidate, and it speaks to how the historical patterns between educational attainment and partisanship have gradually been inverted over the last decade.

It is true that Harris has recaptured some non-white support since becoming the nominee, but even so, we still seem likely to witness some degree of racial depolarization in November. For the uninitiated, this means that white and non-white voters will move closer to one another in their voting behavior. For example, in 2020, Biden lost white voters by about 17 points while winning non-white voters by roughly 46 points, according to the Roper Center at Cornell, which summarizes exit polling data for past presidential elections. If Harris were to lose white voters by less than 17 points, and/or if she won non-white voters by less than Biden did, that would mean that the electorate in 2024 had become less racially polarized compared to 2020.

Besides the potential for racial depolarization, what else does it mean that Harris is showing weakness in California? I think it’s a sign of how Harris’s coalition will very likely be smaller and less diverse than Biden’s was in 2020, though this alone may not dramatically lower her chances of winning.

Pretend for a moment that this fall, Harris roughly matches Biden’s 2020 margin in every state, except in California, where she falls far short of his 2020 margin. Whereas Biden won the state by 29 points in 2020, imagine that Harris only wins her home state by 20 points. Since California casts about 11% of the national popular vote, that by itself would cost Harris nearly a full point from her popular vote margin, compared to if she had matched Biden in California. Of course, whether Harris wins California by 30, 25, or 20 points is irrelevant in the Electoral College, but it matters for thinking through how large of a popular vote win she may need to win the Electoral College.

To put it another way, it’s notable that Harris even has a roughly 2-point lead in the national polls to begin with, given her unusually weak polling in California. Remember, the national polls will invariably include plenty of respondents from California, so the fact that Harris’s weakness in her home state has not made a major dent in her national lead is worth noting. It’s a small bit of proof that she’s probably holding steady compared to the 2020 results in most other states.

Well, except for states that are demographically similar to California. Keep in mind, if Harris is underperforming in California, she’s probably also underperforming in New York and Illinois, two other large, highly diverse blue states. We have a bit of recent polling in the former (none in the latter, unfortunately), which suggests that Harris might win New York this fall by a decently lower margin than Biden had in 2020.

California, New York, and Illinois combined cast almost exactly 20% of the country’s 158 million votes in 2020, giving them an outsized impact on the popular vote. Harris’s weakness in these three states, if it came to pass, would noticeably hurt her popular vote margin without weakening her position in the Electoral College.

Basically, it’s possible that Biden’s popular vote win of 4.5 points in 2020 is not a particularly helpful benchmark for Harris, assuming that she is primarily losing support in the most populated blue states while holding firm elsewhere. It might be that a 3-point Harris lead in the popular vote indicates a competitive Electoral College for her, whereas for Biden, a 3-point popular vote win in 2020 would have almost certainly lost him the election.

The degree of bias in the Electoral College, which is probably the singular fear of the Harris campaign, will largely depend on the party coalitions that show up in November. But if California polling is any indication, Harris’s loss of support relative to Biden in 2020 seems to be manifesting in exactly the types of places where she’d want it to.

Non-Swing State Counties to Watch on Election Night

For those of you still reading (you’re the best, truly), I wanted to share a few counties that could be worth tracking on election night. Today, I’ll share four counties from outside the swing states, and then next month, I’ll have a list for the swing states.

Why even bother watching counties from outside the swing states, you ask? Well, two of the most important swing states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are going to be among the slowest to count their votes. Another crucial state, Arizona, usually takes days to count all of its mail ballots. It never hurts to know where to look for meaningful election results, in case the swing states end up being disappointingly slow to report theirs.

I’ve tried to pick four counties that are not only representative of key demographic groups, but that are located in states where the polls close early. Of course, that meant states that are either partially or fully in the Eastern Time Zone. So, if you want to be among the first to know how election night is shaping up, read on.

Beyond gaming things out on election night, I think these four counties offer a decent cross section of the American electorate. I’ve tried to include counties that run the gamut in terms of their demographics, educational attainment, and partisanship. Taken together, they can help highlight national trends.

If you do end up wanting to get into the weeds on election night, one website that’s good for tracking election results is Decision Desk HQ. Back in 2020, they announced a day before the major networks that Biden won the election. Politico and The New York Times typically have county-level results, as well.

I’ll start with a county in Florida, which was once the very epitome of a swing state, but lost that status four years ago.

Hillsborough County, Florida:

I’m willing to bet that you’ve never heard of Hillsborough County, even though you very likely know its main city, Tampa. Over the years, we’ve all learned about Miami-Dade County from watching coverage on election night. In fact, let me first explain why I didn’t choose Miami-Dade as a key county to watch.

Florida was one of the very few states that voted more Republican in 2020 than it did in 2016, which had almost everything to do with Biden’s weak showing in Miami-Dade County. Clinton won Miami-Dade by nearly 30 points in 2016, having done unusually well with the county’s substantial Cuban-American population, but Biden only managed a 7-point win four years later.

That massive shift in Miami-Dade is precisely why it wouldn’t be a good national barometer on election night. Demographically and politically, there’s just no other county quite like Miami-Dade anywhere else in the US, and I don’t recommend extrapolating from the results you see there on election night. Well, okay, maybe if Trump is outright winning the county, then feel free to make some assumptions, but even that wouldn’t tell us much about what’s happening in the Midwest, for example.

So, if not Miami-Dade, then where to look in Florida? Personally, I’ll be watching the results as they come in from Hillsborough County, home to Tampa and its suburbs. It’s a diverse county of about 1.5 million people, with Tampa itself being home to a little under 400,000 residents.

What makes Hillsborough County stand out to me is that it has perhaps the most stable voting record of any county I’ve come across. In 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020, the county gave the Democratic candidate a 7-point win each time, which is kind of absurd, given how much those political environments varied. That level of stability is hard to find, and I wouldn’t even say that the county is deeply polarized. Rather, it has experienced countervailing trends that have been remarkably symmetrical: while Tampa itself has gotten redder over the years, the city’s suburbs and exurbs have gotten bluer to just the right degree to make it all a wash.

This stability is exactly why I’d want to know on election night how Harris and Trump are each doing in Hillsborough County. If Harris is falling short of that 7-point win that’s long been the norm for Democrats in presidential elections, it would be a major red flag that signals weakness for her in other diverse parts of the US.

Most of Florida’s polls, including those in Tampa, close at 7 PM, and the state usually counts its votes quickly. So, even if the early election night coverage is fixated on Miami-Dade, don’t get too absorbed by it. I think you can learn more about how the night is shaping up nationally from Hillsborough County.

Hamilton County, Indiana:

Indiana is just one of two states (Kentucky being the other) where most polls close at 6 PM, the earliest of any state. Indiana is partially in the Central Time Zone, but Hamilton County is not, so it could be one of the first places where we get results on election night. This suburban county north of Indianapolis is home to roughly 350,000 people and is among the most highly educated and affluent counties in the entire country. It’s probably a county you’ve never thought about, much less heard of, but take a quick look at its recent presidential results to get a sense of how deep its Republican lineage runs, as well as how much it has swung away from the party since 2016.

Basically, the early results in Hamilton County should give us our first major clue about how Harris and Trump are performing with college-educated voters, specifically those in the Midwest. That regional aspect is important, and it’s one reason that I picked Hamilton instead of an affluent county in the mid-Atlantic; since 2016, Midwestern suburbs have been a bit slower to realign politically compared to their counterparts further east.

Given that lag, I think we might anticipate some decent movement in Hamilton County towards Harris, and that expectation can serve as a benchmark for election night. If she ends up only matching Biden’s 7-point loss from 2020, that would be a bit of a warning sign, and it would suggest that Harris isn’t gaining among a demographic group that has become increasingly Democratic for two presidential cycles in a row. For example, if Harris does no better than Biden in a place like Hamilton County, it would bode poorly for her in a demographically comparable county, Waukesha, that will be important in Wisconsin.

On the other hand, if Harris pushed Hamilton County to anything close to a tie, we could be pretty confident that she’s probably exceeding Biden’s 2020 margins with college-educated voters elsewhere. That alone wouldn’t mean she was bound to win the Electoral College, but it would suggest that she had a buffer for likely defections among working-class voters.

Gloucester County, New Jersey:

Speaking of working-class voters, Gloucester County in South Jersey is one place to keep tabs on this demographic during election night. It’s a predominantly Catholic, white working-class county of about 300,000 people that nearly matches the educational attainment of the US as a whole. It’s also demographically similar to the US overall, though somewhat less diverse.

As far as political bellwethers go, I think Gloucester has emerged as one of the more helpful ones in the last few presidential cycles. Electorally, Gloucester County behaves a bit like Michigan, and the two have given the major parties similar margins for the last decade: in 2012, Obama won Gloucester by about 11 points, but then in 2016, Trump won the county by half a point. In 2020, Biden managed to flip the county, but only won it by 2 points. That voting pattern, combined with its demographic and educational profile, makes Gloucester a decent gauge of how Harris and Trump might be doing in the three northern swing states.

Basically, if Harris is trailing even slightly in Gloucester County with most of its votes counted, that would be a major red flag for her, and would make me question how she is performing in the Midwest.

Horry County, South Carolina:

Yes, there really is a county with that name in South Carolina, and it’s home to about 400,000 people, as well as Myrtle Beach. I’ve picked this county for one demographic group that I’ve missed up until now: seniors, who make up over a quarter of the county’s population, and who vote at a higher rate than any other age group.

One of the big polling stories of 2024 before Biden dropped out of the race was his polling strength with the elderly, which hasn’t really changed much with Harris as the nominee. As the results come in from Horry County on election night, we should get a sense of how well the polls captured Harris and Trump’s strength with seniors.

Horry County is also unquestionably working class; just 29% of its adult population has at least a bachelor’s degree, whereas the national average is 36%. Compared to Gloucester County, Horry is a different flavor of working class, being a southern, Protestant county that revolves around tourism.

By far, Horry is the most Republican county of the four I’ve picked out: in 2016, Clinton lost it by nearly 38 points. Four years later, Biden lost the county by around 33 points, a notable improvement. The difference between losing a county by 38 versus 33 points may seem trivial, but Biden’s improvement in Horry spoke to his gains with seniors in 2020 (which the polls that cycle had suggested, though perhaps overestimated), and just as importantly, his gains among working-class whites across most of the country, relative to Clinton.

Horry isn’t the easiest county to benchmark, but if Harris is performing similarly to Clinton, losing the county by close to 40 points, that portends weakness in plenty of other places, and would make me doubt her odds of winning the Electoral College.

So, these are just a few non-swing state counties that could serve as useful proxies on election night. All of these counties should have a good amount of their results in before midnight, and as mentioned, I think the four of them offer a decent sampling of the national electorate.

By all means, if you want to share other counties from outside our seven swing states, feel free to do so in the comments. And don’t feel that you have to stick to states where the polls close on the early side, as I did.

Next month, I’ll make a list of the most important county to watch in each swing state. And no, I promise it won’t include obvious counties like Philadelphia in Pennsylvania or Maricopa in Arizona. As crucial as they are, those large counties are likely going to be slow to count their votes, and besides, they’re not always as revealing as you might think (e.g. whether Harris wins Philly by 60 or 65 points doesn’t say much about PA as a whole).

May you all have a good start to October, hopefully with no unpleasant surprises, and see you in a month or so.

I think it’s helpful to recount the movement of the race over the last month, given the dramatic events and polling shifts that began in late July. Nate Silver’s Substack, which tracks both the current and past polling averages, shows that from July 21st, the day Biden announced he was leaving the race, to July 31st, Trump went from an average national polling lead of 4.5 points to roughly a tie. Then, from August 1st until about the 10th, Harris built a lead of 2.5 points. Since then, Harris’s lead has been fairly stable, hovering between 2.5 and 3 points, though with the Democratic convention having just ended, she may receive a temporary bounce in the polls.

Bigger picture, Harris’s lead in national polls puts her in a decent, but far from overwhelming, position to win the Electoral College. We know that in 2020, Biden won the national popular vote by nearly 4.5 points, and yet came within some 43,000 votes (spread across Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin) of a tied Electoral College, which would’ve very likely produced a loss for him in the House of Representatives, where the election would have been decided.

Honestly, I’m not even sure that a 5-point national lead for Harris, if it came to pass, would automatically guarantee her victory in the Electoral College. There’s just so much uncertainty when we’re talking about seven swing states where a fraction of a point could make the difference between winning all or none of that state’s electoral votes. Hypothetically, Harris could win four of the swing states comfortably (let’s say Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin) but then just barely lose the remaining three. I don’t see that particular scenario as especially likely, but it would result in a 270-268 Trump win in the Electoral College, a reminder of how a solid popular vote margin could be just slightly mismatched for winning enough electoral votes.

The state polling over the course of August has suggested a close race in all seven of the core swing states, including North Carolina, which has just recently emerged as a truly competitive state after months of seeming peripheral. No other states seem poised to become competitive in the final two-month stretch, whether Florida and Texas on the Republican side, or Minnesota and New Hampshire on the Democratic side.

Kennedy, We Hardly Knew You

The big news this weekend is that RFK Jr. is suspending his presidential campaign and endorsing Trump, which brings with it some real uncertainty, given the closeness of the race. On one hand, it does feel like a minor development in the scheme of things, as his support had been declining since Biden left the race. Kennedy had once been a potential outlet for the so-called “double haters”, a key group of voters who strongly disliked both Biden and Trump, but following Harris’s entry, Kennedy’s support began to fade.

On the other hand, even after Biden’s exit, Kennedy was still generally polling ahead of other third-party candidates. Although polling hasn’t been consistent in suggesting where his supporters might end up in his absence, his leaving the race will probably help Trump, to the extent that it has any effect. Of course, the precise impact will likely vary from state to state.

Two of the first states where Kennedy had collected enough signatures to get on the ballot, Michigan and Nevada, were among his strongest, giving him around 5% of the vote in the most recent polling averages. Arizona had also emerged as another strong Kennedy state, where he was polling at about 5%. But in the other four swing states, Kennedy was averaging below 4%, with Georgia being his weakest state, as we’d expect (like most other southern states, Georgia typically gives third parties a low share of the vote).

Kennedy has announced that he’ll work to have his name removed in the swing states but remain on the ballot elsewhere. For example, he is already in the process of removing himself from the ballot in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Yet, his name will remain on the ballot in Michigan, where it’s too late for minor parties to name a new nominee. In Nevada and Wisconsin as well, Kennedy’s name still seems likely to be on the ballot this fall. Basically, Kennedy’s withdrawal looks to be a confusing, state-by-state affair.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be watching Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada especially closely to see if Kennedy’s exit has any meaningful impact on the Harris-Trump matchup. If September ends up being an unusually stable month in the polls, it might be possible to get a sense of how Kennedy’s exit affected the race in his stronger states.

Swing-State Polling Averages

So, let’s turn to the latest polling averages for our swing states. Last I wrote, we were barely two weeks into the Harris campaign, and only Nate Silver had polling averages for all seven swing states. This time around, I’ll add back the other two sources that I’ve used previously. The order for the polling averages below will be 538, The New York Times, and Nate Silver.

Arizona: Harris +1.4, Even, Harris +1.5

Georgia: Trump +0.5, Trump +4, Trump + 0.7

Michigan: Harris +3.4, Harris +2, Harris +3.4

Nevada: Harris +0.6, N/A, Harris +1.2

North Carolina: Harris +0.1, N/A, Harris +0.3

Pennsylvania: Harris +1.8, Even, Harris +1.7

Wisconsin: Harris +3.8, Harris +2, Harris +3.4

Note: The New York Times does not currently have averages for Nevada and North Carolina.

The takeaway here is pretty clear: all of the swing states are closely contested at the moment, whereas before the June debate, only the northern swing states had been polling competitively. My updated Electoral College map below reflects the new reality of six swing states, all in gray, being toss-ups. I’ve moved Arizona and Georgia from Leans Republican to toss-up, and North Carolina from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.

I don’t plan to delve into each swing state, as there’s not too much new to say from last time, but I’ll bring up three states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina, whose ratings I wanted to justify a bit.

So, why do I have Michigan and Wisconsin rated as toss-ups? Even though both are currently polling as Harris’s two strongest states, they’re not quite at the threshold that would compel me to rate them as Leans Democratic. I’ll admit that the 2020 polling has been weighing on my mind lately, especially with Wisconsin, but with Michigan as well. In 2020, the final 538 polling average for Michigan and Wisconsin was Biden +7.9 and Biden +8.4, respectively. Biden’s winning margin in Michigan ended up being 2.8 points, a miss of about 5 points, and his winning margin in Wisconsin was 0.6 points, a miss of nearly 8 points.

I don’t say this at all to diminish the polls, which were quite accurate in other states (Arizona and particularly Georgia) back in 2020. In fact, it’s entirely possible that after two presidential cycles in a row of underestimating Trump, the polls will be largely accurate this fall. It’s even possible that the polls could end up underestimating Harris. Past polling error doesn’t tell us much, if anything, about future polling error.

Even so, I think we should be circumspect with Michigan and Wisconsin, given the recent history of polling misses in both states. There might just be something about their electorates that makes it hard for pollsters to determine who’s likely to actually vote, or perhaps vote choice is simply more fluid in the upper Midwest. Keep in mind that Michigan and Wisconsin are arguably less polarized than most of the other swing states, which makes voting intention tougher to pinpoint there (Georgia, in contrast, is highly polarized, one reason that its polling might be more accurate). Whatever the cause of the polling error seen in Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020, I think there’s enough uncertainty to warrant keeping both states as toss-ups for now.

As for North Carolina, I expect to take some heat for not having it as a toss-up. Without a doubt, the polls there have shifted pretty dramatically in just the last month, and the polling averages make clear that the state is now closely contested. I remain a little skeptical, and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, North Carolina has been remarkably consistent in voting 6 points more Republican than the nation as a whole since 2008. During that time, it has moved in tandem with the popular vote from one election to the next.

I realize that these sorts of patterns invariably break down at some point, and maybe this will finally be the year that North Carolina votes closer to the national popular vote than it has for decades. But its demographics and educational attainment are surprisingly representative of America as a whole, making it hard for the state to deviate in a major way from any changes in voting behavior seen across the country. Basically, even if Harris were to overperform her current national polling and win the popular vote by 5 points (slightly better than Biden’s showing in 2020), she would still probably come up short of flipping the state.

For now, moving North Carolina from Likely Republican to Leans Republican feels reasonable, and the state’s clearly in a different category of competitiveness than it has been at any point this cycle. If the polling of North Carolina throughout September continues to look like what we’ve seen lately, moving it to a toss-up next time won’t be a tough call.

An Overview of Pennsylvania

The other thing I wanted to do today is talk at some length about Pennsylvania, which is arguably the most important swing state this cycle. More than any other swing state, we can say with some confidence that whoever wins PA is very likely to win the Electoral College. This isn’t simply because PA has the largest number of electoral votes among the swing states, though that doesn’t hurt its case. But on top of that, Pennsylvania occupies the median (i.e. tipping point) position if we were to sort the states by their partisanship, from red to blue (or vice versa). This could easily change by Election Day, and in 2016 as well as 2020, Wisconsin was the tipping-point state. But for now, polling suggests that PA is the state most likely to get either Harris or Trump to 270 electoral votes.

Pennsylvania is also unique among the swing states in that I think we can glean something useful about its trajectory this fall by looking at the 2016 and 2020 election results in different parts of the state. Most of PA’s 67 counties have voted similarly in the last two presidential elections, and for all the ills of polarization in modern America, it does at least make it easier to think through electoral trends, at least in a state as deeply divided as PA.

Below, I have a simple map of Pennsylvania in which I’ve divided the state into five political regions. I did not split any counties, so each region is made up entirely of intact counties. I’ve learned over the years that PA folks can get pretty animated when it comes to categorizing the state’s regions/cultures, but I’m solely focused on electoral trends here, so no offense is intended to anyone in the PA crowd. My main considerations for these regions were demographics and educational attainment, the latter of which has become an especially strong predictor of voting behavior since 2016. I recognize that a few of these regions could have been further subdivided, but I aimed for parsimony to keep things easier to follow.

Something to keep in mind as we go through each region: between 2016 and 2020, Pennsylvania as a whole shifted just 1.9 points towards Democrats. Even with large turnout increases across most of the state from 2016 to 2020, each of these regions made up roughly the same percentage of the statewide vote in both election years. In other words, relative turnout in each of these regions was quite consistent, and I wouldn’t expect any major changes from the 2020 baseline this fall. The margins, not turnout, will be my focus as I summarize each region.

Southeast PA:

In dark blue, fittingly, we have the heart of urban/suburban PA. This region’s five counties are Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia, which combined cast about a third of the statewide vote in 2020. The margins here have been highly stable over the years (even going back to 2008), with Clinton having won this region by 32 points in 2016, while Biden won it by 33 points in 2020. Given the electoral stability seen in Southeast PA across multiple election cycles, I think a reasonable estimate is that Harris roughly matches Biden’s margin this fall, even if the county-level voting patterns are a bit different from 2020 (Trump might very well overperform again in Philadelphia, as he did in 2020, but those gains may be offset by Harris slightly overperforming in the four collar counties, particularly Chester).

Northeast PA:

In purple, I have the region that I’ve long thought will see the most electoral change relative to 2020. Four years ago, Biden did surprisingly well in the northeastern part of the state compared to Clinton, whether due to his roots in Scranton, or because in general, he regained ground among working-class whites throughout the northeastern US. This region has a few mid-sized cities, such as Wilkes-Barre, Allentown, and Bethlehem (the latter two are the main cities of the Lehigh Valley, which behaves somewhat similarly to Northeast PA in presidential elections). Even with some major population centers, the region’s overall character is somewhat exurban, and crucially, its educational attainment is well below the state average.

As an aside, it’s worth realizing how much Northeast PA was responsible for Trump’s flipping the state back in 2016. In 2012, Obama won this region by a point over Romney, but just four years later, Trump won this region by 14 points, a massive shift (for context, the state as a whole only shifted about 6 points towards Trump from 2012 to 2016). Over the long term, the region would seem to be trending Republican, and I’d argue that Biden merely halted that trend for one election cycle. Northeast PA casts about 18% of the statewide vote, and if Harris only managed to match Clinton’s 2016 showing here, that alone would bring the state back to roughly a tie, assuming all else equal in the rest of the state.

South Central PA:

In light blue, I have five counties that folks sometimes forget exist in PA, but which have emerged in the Trump era as a distinct political region of the state. The counties are Adams, Dauphin (home to the state capital, Harrisburg), Cumberland, Lancaster, and York. It’s a relatively fast-growing region with a suburban/exurban character, and its educational attainment is close to the state average, though a bit lower. The electoral trend in these five counties has been fairly clear: Trump won this region by about 19 points in 2016, but then in 2020, only won here by 14 points. Notably, one of its five counties, Cumberland, moved 7 points towards Democrats during that one cycle, and another, Lancaster County, shifted nearly 5 points in the same direction. Being a region in political transition, it’s hard to know for sure where South Central PA will land this fall, but a conservative estimate might be that Harris matches or very slightly improves on Biden’s 2020 margins.

Central PA:

In dark red, the only color that could possibly convey this region’s partisanship, I have Central PA. It’s home to 30 counties, many of which are rural and culturally part of Greater Appalachia. The only competitive county in this region is Centre County, home to Penn State, but it’s very much the outlier here. Even before Trump first ran for president, Central PA was strongly Republican, but the 42-point win he pulled off here in 2016 was unprecedented. Trump won the region by almost the exact margin again in 2020. This stability is very helpful for thinking about the statewide vote, and even more so than Southeast PA, I think Central PA is the region where we can assume with real confidence that the margin this fall will be similar to that of 2020.

Despite its expansiveness, Central PA only casts about 13% of the statewide vote, giving it nearly the same electoral weight as South Central PA.

Western PA:

Finally, in light red, I have a mix of 11 counties that mostly hug the Ohio border and share an industrial past. The single largest source of votes in this region is Allegheny County (home to Pittsburgh), which I could have easily had as its own distinct region. Including it here, though, helps to show how closely contested this region has been in the aggregate since 2012, when Obama and Romney tied here. In 2016, Trump won this region by 6 points, a shift that very closely mirrored how the state moved as a whole. In 2020, Trump won Western PA by just 4 points, which again, happened to reflect the modest statewide shift towards Biden from 2016 to 2020.

For me, this is the hardest region to predict, and I realize that I’ve mixed two types of areas that are trending in opposite directions. I think that a Trump win of 5 or 6 points here would be very plausible, but regardless of the national environment this fall, any shift should be pretty muted, given how the Democratic trend in Allegheny County will probably offset part of the Republican trend elsewhere. The region casts about 23% of the statewide vote, so it’s a decent chunk of the state, behind only Southeast PA.

So, what does this all mean? Basically, I wanted to show that our expectations should be for a very modest change in Pennsylvania’s statewide margin this fall. There are two regions with a Democratic trend that cast a combined 46% of the statewide vote, two regions with a Republican trend that cast a combined 41% of the statewide vote, and then Central PA, which doesn’t seem poised to budge from its 2020 margin. It all potentially amounts to something close to a wash, and for every electoral trend in one part of PA, there seems to be another one offsetting it elsewhere in the state.

For those of you who are into this sort of thing, consider this a very basic framework for making your own assumptions about Pennsylvania, if you’re so inclined to use the same five-region map that I did. Or, maybe you feel there’s a better way to divide the state. Either way, I think PA lends itself especially well to this type of approach, one that can be used to think about how much the state could conceivably shift this fall compared to 2020.

As we get closer to November 5th, I plan to share some counties to watch for on election night, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Even though PA is likely going to be a slow-counting state this fall, as it was in 2020 (envelopes containing mail ballots can’t be opened until the morning of the election), even having the results from its smaller, rural counties could tell us a lot about how the night is shaping up for Harris and Trump.

Today, I have but one goal: to walk through our favorite seven swing states, assessing how each one looks for Harris based on the latest polling, as well as what we know about that state’s demographics and the coalition that Harris might have in place by this fall.

The TL;DR version of today’s post is that based on the latest polling, Harris is performing roughly 4 points better nationally than Biden had been when he left the race, though her gains have varied a bit from state to state. She’s clearly in a stronger position than Biden was post-debate, but Harris faces the same challenge that both Biden and Clinton confronted in their presidential runs: she most likely has to win the popular vote this fall by at least 2 or 3 points to have a good chance of winning the states needed to prevail in the Electoral College, a threshold that she hasn’t yet reached in national polls.

Even if Harris ends up consistently leading Trump in national polls and eventually builds small polling leads in several of the swing states, that would be far from a dominant position (polls do, in fact, have margins of error). And there’s simply no guarantee that her momentum will continue to improve her polling, as both parties have low ceilings of support in our polarized era.

One thing that’s worth thinking about, both for assessing the swing states as well as for understanding modern American politics more broadly, is how Harris being the nominee might affect racial polarization. For the last year, one of the most important trends seen across polls was Biden’s deterioration among people of color, even as he was simultaneously retaining most of his 2020 levels of support among whites. Had he remained the nominee, Biden seemed likely to preside over an election in which the partisan gap between white and non-white voters was going to be historically small (even if still significant, in absolute terms). But with Harris as the nominee, it’s very possible that she reverses (or at least halts) the racial depolarization that had seemed almost a sure thing for most of this election cycle.

The evidence we have so far suggests that Harris has regained some of the support that Biden had been losing among non-whites. Nate Cohn of The New York Times recently shared a helpful table showing how Harris’s level of support compares to Biden’s by racial and educational subgroup. The takeaway from this polling data is that relative to Biden, Harris seems to be gaining among voters of color (both those with and without a college degree) at the expense of white voters without a degree. If this comes to pass in November, it would mean that 2024 could see higher levels of racial polarization than 2020, though perhaps not as much as what we saw in 2016.

It might still be a little early to make solid inferences about the Harris coalition, but as we get more polling, especially after Labor Day, the picture should become clearer.

Before I get into the Harris-Trump polling in the swing states, I have below the final polling averages from 538, The New York Times, and Nate Silver, respectively, for the Biden-Trump matchup:

Arizona: Trump +5.5, Trump +8, Trump +7.2

Georgia: Trump +5.9, Trump +8, Trump +5.2

Michigan: Trump +2.4, Trump +4, Trump +2.3

Nevada: Trump +5.8, Trump +7, Trump +5.4

North Carolina: Trump +6.9, Trump +8, Trump +6.6

Pennsylvania: Trump +4.4, Trump +4, Trump +4.4

Wisconsin: Trump +2.3, Trump +3, Trump +1.9

Even though these averages are now irrelevant, it’s important to realize just how much the race had shifted away from Biden in the aftermath of the debate in late June. It’s also worth having this context for Harris’s polling averages in the swing states, which I’ll turn to now. Be aware that at the moment, only Nate Silver’s Substack has the latest Harris-Trump polling averages for all seven swing states, so that will be the only figure shown for each state below.

Arizona: Trump +2.5

Despite Arizona’s roughly 9-point Democratic shift from 2012 to 2020, Biden didn’t seem to be competitive at all in what had initially looked like a promising state for him. In fact, Biden’s final polling averages placed Arizona among his weakest of the seven swing states.

In the time since Biden left the race, the picture has significantly improved in Arizona for Democrats, but Harris isn’t polling as competitively there as she is in most of the other swing states. Demographically, we have evidence that Harris is performing better among Hispanic voters than Biden was, but Arizona’s electorate is only about a quarter Hispanic, probably a bit lower than what most folks would assume. So, even though Harris has upside in Arizona compared to Biden, it might not be enough to overcome what was a large polling deficit.

Ultimately, the burden of proof is on Harris here, given how far behind Biden had fallen in Arizona before dropping out of the race, and the polls of the state haven’t yet suggested that it’s a true toss-up.

Arizona Rating: Leans Republican

Georgia: Trump +1.5

Compared to Arizona, I think Georgia might offer Harris just a little more upside, and the polls we have seem to point in that direction.

Like most states in the South, Georgia is highly polarized by race, and Harris will probably perform no worse among rural white voters than Biden would have. If that floor of support holds steady, the rest of the state could hold promise for her. If Harris were to perform even several points better among African-American voters than what polls suggested of Biden (who was doing historically poorly for a Democrat among African-Americans), it could bring the state closer to what we saw in 2020, when it was virtually a tie. The state’s electorate is roughly 30% Black, and if Biden’s challenges in Georgia were primarily due to his weakness with African-American voters, Harris could be well-positioned to reconsolidate their support.

But again, as with Arizona, Harris finds herself digging out of a polling deficit that was hovering around 6 points when Biden stepped aside. She has already been able to make up some of that gap, but a narrow loss in the state this fall would hardly be surprising. In my mind, Georgia might be a bit closer than Arizona to being a toss-up, but for now, both states seem to belong in the same category based on polling.

Georgia Rating: Leans Republican

Michigan: Harris +2.4

On paper, Michigan offers Harris one of her clearest opportunities to improve on Biden’s weak standing in a key state. For months, it was apparent that Biden was going to underperform his 2020 margin of victory in Michigan, due in part to his loss of support in Wayne County, the state’s largest by population, which casts nearly 16% of the statewide vote. The county is home to Detroit, as well as most of the state’s Arab-American population, which Biden had largely alienated due to his handling of the war in Gaza.

The optimistic case for Harris in Michigan is that whatever her losses in the rural/exurban white working-class areas of the state relative to Biden, she could improve on his 2020 margins in Wayne County and adjacent suburban counties, such as Oakland. She could also overperform in western Michigan, where Biden made significant gains in 2020 compared to Clinton. In fact, the Democratic trend in western Michigan, which casts roughly 20% of the statewide vote, is somewhat under-discussed. For example, Biden won Kent County (home to Grand Rapids) by an even larger margin than Obama had won it in 2008, a very rare feat in a Midwestern county, given how well Obama had done throughout the region that year.

In terms of polling, Harris has very noticeably improved on Biden’s numbers, and has quickly built a decent lead in the state. Michigan remains highly competitive for now, even if it might be slightly leaning towards Harris. It also currently looks poised to once again be the bluest of the three northern swing states, which has been the case in presidential elections for decades. I’ll leave Michigan as a toss-up for the moment, but next month, it might potentially need a new rating.

Michigan Rating: Toss-Up

Nevada: Trump +1.3

The Silver State has perhaps thrown a fair number of analysts off this cycle, and for months, the polling had shown Biden far behind in a state that he won by over 2 points in 2020. This never came as too much of a surprise to me, given how much educational polarization has shaped electoral trends since 2016. Among the swing states, Nevada has by far the lowest educational attainment, and the fact that Biden performed no better in Nevada than Clinton had in 2016 was revealing.

So, does Harris replacing Biden change this reality? The evidence so far, somewhat to my surprise, suggests that she has indeed reset the race in Nevada. We’ve only had a few polls of the state since late July, but it does seem that she has pushed it back to being competitive, and her polling gains in Nevada have been especially pronounced compared to her gains in most of the other swing states, which have been more modest.

Keep in mind, Nevada only has 6 electoral votes, and is rarely a decisive state in the more plausible Electoral College scenarios. It’s worth keeping an eye on, and hopefully we get some more polling here, but it’s also much less important to the electoral picture than the other swing states.

Nevada Rating: Toss-Up

North Carolina: Trump +2

Even though Harris has made up quite a bit of ground in North Carolina, I tend to still see the state as being slightly irrelevant this cycle. For months, Trump had been posting some of his strongest leads there against Biden, and even if Harris does manage to push it close to toss-up territory, she probably will still fall short of flipping the state this fall. Remember that of our seven swing states, North Carolina is the only one that Trump won, beating out Biden by over a point in 2020. I’ll admit that I put more weight on that result than the polling, which may or may not be the right approach.

In every presidential election since 2008, North Carolina has voted about 6 points to the right of the country as a whole, a reminder of just how convincingly a Democrat would need to win nationally to have a chance at winning the state. If we start to consistently see polls showing Harris within the margin of error in North Carolina (or national polls showing a Harris landslide), I’ll move the state accordingly, but for now, it still seems to be among Harris’s weakest states, as it had been for Biden.

North Carolina Rating: Likely Republican

Pennsylvania: Harris +0.5

Both from Trump and Harris’s point of view, no single state is more important to win than Pennsylvania. It has the largest number of electoral votes (19) of the core swing states, and from the current polling, it seems likely to be the tipping-point state this fall. Basically, if we somehow knew right now who won Pennsylvania, we could say with a high degree of confidence that he or she was also the winner of the election.

For Trump, winning all of his 2020 states plus AZ/GA/NV puts him at 268 electoral votes, and based on current polling, the next state that would most plausibly end up in his column would be Pennsylvania. From Harris’s point of view, PA might prove to be the hardest of the three northern swing states to win, but if she did manage to carry it along with Michigan and Wisconsin, that would put her right at 270 electoral votes (I’m assuming, as I have for months, that the electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district remains in the Democratic column this fall).

At the moment, PA is polling slightly better for Trump than Wisconsin, which was also generally the case in June, before the debate. But interestingly, at a few points during the spring, Trump was polling better in Wisconsin than he was in Pennsylvania. As much as I respect polling, even I have to admit that I’m asking an awful lot here, hoping that the polls can help establish the order of PA and WI, when the two have voted within a fraction of a point of each other for the last two presidential cycles in a row.

In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by 0.7 points, while Biden won it in 2020 by 1.2 points. My expectation has long been that the state will land somewhere in between those two results in 2024, and that happens to be what the state’s polling average is suggesting right now. The outsized importance of the state in the Electoral College, and the fact that even a fraction of a point could make all the difference in PA, is probably weighing on Harris as she considers Shapiro as a potential VP pick.

No state deserves toss-up status right now more than Pennsylvania, and even if Harris does happen to announce Shapiro as her VP in the coming days, I’d be surprised if polling showed PA as being anything other than highly competitive leading up to November.

Pennsylvania Rating: Toss-Up

Wisconsin: Harris +1.2

For reasons that hadn’t always been clear, Wisconsin was generally Biden’s strongest swing state before he left the race. At the moment, it happens to be Harris’s second-best swing state, behind only Michigan. In both 2016 and 2020, Wisconsin was the reddest of the northern swing states, and I’ll admit that it’s been confusing to see it polling as the bluest or second-bluest of those three states during this election cycle.

One thing I’ve wondered is if in 2020, Wisconsin was slightly less Democratic than it would’ve otherwise been due to the events in Kenosha. Kenosha County did give Trump a stronger margin than might have been expected, and if Biden had simply matched Clinton there, his winning margin statewide would have been closer to a point, rather than 0.6 points. Okay, I’m splitting hairs here, but it could be that the baseline we have for Wisconsin from 2020 is a little off, which may explain why the state’s polling has sort of defied expectations at times.

As mentioned near the top, we have some evidence that Harris will struggle to match Biden’s 2020 margins with white working-class voters, something to consider with Wisconsin in particular, which has the largest percentage of this demographic among the seven swing states. To be clear, Biden himself was probably going to perform worse with this group had he stayed in the race, but any additional erosion for Harris will show up most noticeably in Wisconsin.

Overall, I don’t think the small lead that Harris currently enjoys in Wisconsin should belie the fact that the state will probably be decided by a point or two in either direction. Wisconsin is the epitome of a state with countervailing trends that somehow keep it as close as can be. In 2020, Biden overperformed Clinton in metro Madison, Milwaukee, and Green Bay while performing worse than she did in much of the rest of the state. Harris would seem likely to continue that same pattern, which makes it hard to imagine any large swings in either direction.

Wisconsin Rating: Toss-Up

So, with those ratings, here’s my current Electoral College map, which hopefully conveys how the election is still best thought of as a toss-up, even with Harris’s entry into the race.

One final thought: I’ll be very curious how the Harris campaign interprets its position over the coming weeks, and whether it adopts an aggressive or conservative Electoral College strategy. The remarkable turnaround that Harris has created for Democrats will probably make it hard for her campaign not to swing for the fences, and it seems that she will personally campaign in all seven of the swing states, even if at least a couple of them are questionable targets right now.

My own view is that for the time being, Harris should be laser-focused on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Until the state polling has made it clear that the Sunbelt states are indeed viable targets (and that could soon be the case, given the polling trajectory), she should perhaps play it safe by focusing on the path of least resistance to 270 electoral votes. The idea of having multiple pathways to an Electoral College majority can sometimes be overrated, and I feel the Clinton campaign in 2016 made the mistake of aiming for 300+ electoral votes rather than giving priority to reaching 270. It’s a line of thinking that both Harris and Trump would be wise to avoid.

The unprecedented nature of this moment is compounded by the fact that the trigger was a presidential debate. Before 2024, most of us only knew a world where debates were generally uneventful affairs that might marginally change the state of a race. Yet, Biden’s performance profoundly reshaped the campaign, and sparked a crisis among Democrats, with a growing number of the party’s elected officials asking that he step aside as the nominee.

The CNN debate, and everything that has followed it, took what was a fairly competitive race on June 27th and put it on a trajectory that makes Trump the clear favorite to win the presidency this fall. But as dramatic as the shift in the race has been, it’s not what I wanted to focus on today, at least not entirely.

More than anything right now, I’m fascinated by the debate among ordinary Democrats about Kamala Harris, and I’ve been constantly surprised by the low esteem in which she is held by voters, despite her role as VP. At best, Democratic voters seem to regard her as an afterthought, and the discussion as of late has instead mostly revolved around Biden, Trump, the role of the media, and perhaps a few potential Democrats other than Harris.

Relatedly, it’s notable how so few of the elected Democrats who have asked Biden to step aside have mentioned Harris. For these Democrats, if having a new nominee is the primary goal, not specifying an alternative seems unusual, though they may believe the best path forward is an open convention, one in which no individual (including Harris) has the advantage.

Okay, I get it, you want me to stop talking about Harris for a minute to see the latest polling averages. Like I said, Harris avoidance seems to be a real thing.

As of July 11th, here are the polling averages for our seven swing states from 538, The New York Times, and Nate Silver, respectively:

Arizona: Trump +4.4, Trump +6, Trump +7.1

Georgia: Trump +5.2, Trump +6, Trump +5.2

Michigan: Trump +0.5, Trump +1, Trump +0.8

Nevada: Trump +4.8, Trump +5, Trump +4.9

North Carolina: Trump +6.1, Trump +7, Trump +6

Pennsylvania: Trump +3.3, Trump +3, Trump +3

Wisconsin: Trump +1.4, Trump +2, Trump +1.7

These polling averages make clear how much the debate changed the race. Most states have moved away from Biden since the debate, although it seems that the shift has been a bit muted in Michigan and Wisconsin, which are still fairly competitive. Interestingly, Georgia and North Carolina barely shifted from two weeks ago, but these also aren’t close states right now.

Pennsylvania stands out for its shift towards Trump, and though there haven’t been too many post-debate polls of PA, the few we have suggest that it has moved somewhat firmly into Trump’s orbit, at least for now. It’s a must-win state for Biden, but not for Trump.

This is usually the part where I share my Electoral College map, but I’d prefer to hold off on the map for today, as I first want to know with 100% certainty who the Democratic nominee will be. The identity of the nominee matters profoundly, as almost any alternative to Biden would likely be performing better in at least some (if not all) of these swing states.

If Biden ends up as the nominee, the current polling would warrant moving Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from Toss-up to Leans Republican. Surprisingly, the remaining swing states, which are already in various shades of red, probably wouldn’t need any major changes to their ratings, though I think it would be wise to shift Arizona and Nevada from Tilts Republican to Leans Republican. Both states are clearly moving away from being truly competitive this fall, and I’d even argue that Leans Republican might be a little too generous for Biden in both states. But again, I think it’s worth waiting until the Democratic convention to settle on these ratings.

So, let’s return to Kamala Harris. As mentioned, I’m interested in how ordinary Democratic voters have approached the question of whether or not the party needs a new nominee. It’s a debate that has played out in ways I wouldn’t have expected, and the discourse among regular voters has been revealing, perhaps even helping to shed light on the decisions made by party elites, such as Democratic members of Congress.

I wanted to share some of what I’ve heard from ordinary Democrats about Harris. The comments that I’ll share below came from Democratic groups on Facebook that I had previously taken no real part in. Following the debate in late June, I posted about Harris potentially being the new Democratic nominee. In one group, I posted the day after the debate, while in three others, I posted a week after the debate. I didn’t get the sense that prior to my post, there had been any real discussion of Harris, or even what the debate meant for the election, which in of itself is telling.

I wasn’t expecting the intensity of some of the reactions, and when I first posted in these groups, I wasn’t thinking that the responses would even be worth looking at again down the road. More than a few of them were downright unpleasant. But I ended up collecting what I think is a decent range of opinions, which seemed to represent the broad contours of the debate over Harris. I received about 30 unique responses, not counting follow-up responses or new people who joined those subsequent conversations.

To make what I hope is an obvious disclaimer, the folks who responded are in no way representative of the US electorate, or even the Democratic Party. They are almost certainly more highly engaged than the average voter, and being in a partisan Facebook group, they are clearly going to be self-selected. Those who decided to respond to my post about Harris are only further self-selected.

This is all far from ideal, but I could also see it potentially being helpful to have highly engaged voters overrepresented here. To the extent possible, I’m trying to understand how the opinions of partisans might explain the behavior of Democratic elites. The folks I was typically hearing from are the ones I would assume are most likely to make their voices heard about Biden or Harris, namely by calling or writing to their elected officials.

From the responses I got, two pretty distinct groups emerged, one of which I’ll call the Biden Believers, and the other I’ll call the Unsure.

Let’s look at the Biden Believers first. This group made up about half of the responses, and when I raised the idea of Harris being the nominee, the most common reaction was that Biden was undoubtedly the stronger nominee, or that even having the discussion was divisive and would hurt Democrats.

These were a few of the responses that were representative of this group:

One debate in June against a ton of experience in the Senate/Vice President/President, solid accomplishments in four years, and the only guy who’s beaten Trump, and by 13 million votes? You honestly think Kamala Harris measures up to that?

I'm disturbed to see so many people walking into this trap. The media is furthering this narrative and the GOP will LOVE seeing people like you stoke division in our party. While it's lovely to see you supportive of a Black woman candidate (and I think you should be - I would love to see her win), think about how many of your racist, misogynist peers will not. This is a very dangerous game.

First. like it or not, the alternative is Trump. Biden under performed energy wise but add all the facts stated by Biden against all the lies and bravado stated by Trump and the debate , with a lttle more energy on Bidens part would have been more impressive. I do love Biden, wish we had a younger democrat like him running though.

We won’t see a woman become president. It’s the sad truth. Hillary was over qualified and won the popular vote and she was our best shot. Things would be a lot different today if she had won. Women are losing their rights.

If our objective is to win, there are about a dozen different tickets that make sense. Harris isn’t on any of them. She is a weak candidate and it was mistake to pick her for VP. She virtually zero chance of winning. If she was good, Biden wouldn’t be running right now. All the professional operatives know. She’s simply not that good.

That last response in particular stands out, and none other was quite like it for how critical it was of Harris. In general, the Biden Believers had no ill will towards Harris, but expressed little confidence in her ability to win, citing her unpopularity or her race and gender.

As pure speculation, the intensity of this group makes me wonder if Biden would’ve been in any real danger in the primaries earlier this year even if he had drawn a stronger opponent than House Rep. Dean Phillips. There seems to be a genuine affection for Biden among a non-trivial number of Democrats, and if Biden Believers were overrepresented among primary voters this past spring (which I suspect was the case), then it’s possible that Biden’s strong performance in the primaries wasn’t a fluke.

Besides the Biden Believers, the other main group was the Unsure, who made up almost all of the remaining responses. This group expressed support for whoever the nominee ended up being, usually equivocating on the question of Biden versus Harris. They generally had concerns with Biden, but also did not tend to have much faith in Harris. A few typical responses:

I’ll vote for any of them over Trump but to be honest, I don’t think Biden can recover from this. I wish he would’ve said he would only serve 1 term. I’m not that convinced about Harris either but Democrats are in real damage control now.

I will support the Dem candidate no matter what … I am not sure a change would be beneficial at this stage of the game, but it would be best if Biden stepped aside rather than being pushed aside. I think he is a genuinely good person and that needs to be respected…

I’ve never seen a media feeding frenzy like this in my life. The debate was bad and it doesn’t make me more excited for Biden, but if he’s off the ticket Harris is the only other person who could be nominated and I would crawl over miles of broken glass to vote for whomever the democrats nominate. Trump needs to lose.

I’d argue that the sentiment seen with these folks is shared among some portion of elected Democratic officials, who may genuinely have no idea about the path forward, given how unprecedented the situation is. Or, they might first want to see how the next few weeks play out before publicly breaking with the president. This indecision among Democrats in Congress has clearly helped Biden, and even if most House and Senate Democrats have private doubts about Biden, not knowing how to act has frozen what could otherwise be a pivotal group.

Finally, there were a handful of responses that supported Harris, though they typically also expressed support for Biden. One response in particular stands out, being one of the very few that showed real enthusiasm for her:

Harris would be great if Biden would step down and give her a chance to prove herself in the coming months. She has the skills, the experience, and especially the chops to attack Trump, which Biden has failed to do. With a great running mate, she would be a powerful opponent in November.

So, overall, the most vocal reaction I got from these few dozen Democratic partisans was that Biden, even post-debate, was still the strongest nominee, and that having a conversation about his future was harmful. For nearly everyone else, there just wasn’t any real conviction about how the party should proceed, but almost any nominee would be acceptable.

Again, I realize just how unscientific this all is, but I think the breakdown of these responses gives a little context as to why Democratic officials are behaving the way we’ve seen, having probably not received much pressure from their constituents to break with Biden. On top of that, with no widely agreed upon alternative, the status quo of Biden remaining the nominee has been hard to dislodge, even with all the warning signs.

It’s impossible to say with any real certainty what Biden’s fate will be. Having won nearly all of the pledged delegates during the primaries, he has much of the leverage here, though Nate Silver had a great piece on why Biden might actually be in a weaker position than it seems. In any case, it’s just a highly fluid situation that feels different from day to day, and it could be that Biden is one bad media appearance away from the dam breaking.

I should note, the title of this post predates Thursday. Even before the debate, polling pointed to a close race, but one that slightly advantaged Trump, who has more plausible pathways to 270 electoral votes. That assessment is probably only going to solidify in the post-debate polling (of which we have very little right now), and if there’s ever been a reason to watch the polls day to day, we might just have one now. The debate could meaningfully change what for months had been a fairly static race, and even a modest shift of a point or two away from Biden could be highly consequential, given his tenuous position in the Electoral College.

The only thought I’ll share on the debate itself is that it encapsulated much of what is wrong with modern American politics. Not the format of the debate or the moderators, but Biden and Trump themselves, who are both a testament to how much America’s two major parties are dismissive of public opinion. Over the last decade in particular, the parties have hurt their own chances of winning elections, both at the presidential level and downballot, by nominating unpopular candidates, and as much as partisan primaries are a culprit, the parties themselves have struggled to coordinate effectively, even when it would be to their benefit.

Anyway, you’ll find better takes on the debate elsewhere, so let’s turn to the latest swing-state polling averages. For the last few months, I’ve been sharing the averages from 538, but this past week, we gained two new prominent sources of polling averages: The New York Times, and Nate Silver (who also just published an election model, which I’ll link to along with two other models towards the end of this post). There almost couldn’t have been a better week to have these two new sources of polling data, and if the debate does produce real movement in the race, we’ll be able to see how it shows up in each of the averages.

So, here are the polling averages as of June 29th for our main swing states from all three sources. Keep in mind that these figures almost entirely reflect the state of the race before the debate. The order for each state below will be 538, The New York Times, and Nate Silver:

Arizona: Trump +4.6, Trump +5, and Trump +5.6

Georgia: Trump +6.2, Trump +6, and Trump +5.7

Michigan: Trump +1.6, Trump +1, Trump +1.1

Nevada: Trump +3.5, Trump +5, and Trump +4.6

North Carolina: Trump +7, Trump +7, Trump +7

Pennsylvania: Trump +1.4, Trump +2, Trump +1.7

Wisconsin: Trump +0.7, Trump +1, Trump +0.5

These averages account for Kennedy, who is provided as an option in most (but not all) public polls, and who’s polling between 5% and 9% in these states. Kennedy’s best states right now appear to be Arizona and Nevada, where he’s averaging right around 8% or 9%, while Pennsylvania seems to be his worst, though even there he’s in the 5% to 7% range. Kennedy might not appear on the ballot in all of the swing states, but notably, he just submitted signatures in Pennsylvania, is already confirmed to be on the ballot in Michigan, appears set in North Carolina, and is in litigation in Nevada. His campaign has this map showing his current ballot access in each state, which is surprisingly detailed.

Basically, even with some variation among the three sources of polling averages, the state of play in each of the swing states is fairly clear right now, and the overall picture is little changed from a month ago: Trump is clearly ahead in the Sunbelt states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. On the other hand, Biden and Trump are roughly tied in the three northern swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, though Pennsylvania currently looks to be a slightly stronger state for Trump than the other two.

The polling divide between the northern and Sunbelt swing states has been a familiar pattern, and if there is indeed a shift against Biden following the debate, it matters profoundly whether it’s uniform across these seven states, or if that shift varies from one state to another. Biden’s hope would be that any movement against him is more pronounced in the Sunbelt states, where he is already behind, but a more uniform shift would probably be my expectation. We’ll need a few weeks of polling to truly get a sense of the debate’s impact.

Even before the debate, I was going to change my ratings for Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. For the last several months, I’ve had the former two as Tilts Democratic and Wisconsin as Tilts Republican. This was based in large part on Biden’s winning margin in each state in 2020, with Michigan in particular having given Biden a decently strong showing (he won it by 2.8 points). However, the polls have made it clear just how close these three states are, and all of them are better thought of as pure toss-ups.

Besides their competitiveness, the polls also suggest that Michigan and Wisconsin specifically could end up unusually close to one another this fall in terms of their margin, which last happened in 2016, when Trump won Michigan by two-tenths of a percentage point and Wisconsin by eight-tenths of a percent. Although they still voted somewhat close to each other in 2020, there was a bit more divergence, mainly due to Michigan swinging a full 3 points towards Democrats relative to 2016, whereas Wisconsin shifted only modestly towards Biden.

There’s a decent case to be made that Michigan, due to its unique demographics, could witness the largest Republican shift of the MI/PA/WI trio this fall. Its Arab-American population, a group with which Biden will almost certainly fail to match his 2020 margins, is probably the single most important factor, but it also has the largest African-American population of the three states. We know from months of polling that Biden seems poised to underperform among Black voters (as well as other non-white voters), and if this comes to pass, it would show up most distinctly in Michigan.

On the other hand, Wisconsin, the reddest of the three northern swing states in the last two presidential elections, may barely budge this fall from its 2020 result. The state’s population skews older, whiter, and more rural than that of the other swing states, which might at first seem dim for Biden’s prospects there. But the evidence we have from polling suggests that these demographic groups have generally been holding steady for Biden, and if they do vote similarly as they did in 2020, there just might not end up being much movement in the state.

As for Pennsylvania, I’ve often thought of it as falling somewhere between Michigan and Wisconsin in terms of its politics and demographics. In the past, what has also stood out to me about PA is how it’s arguably the most polarized of the three northern swing states, and may have the smallest share of cross-pressured voters who might switch parties from one election to another. That potential constraint had been part of the reason I initially rated it as Tilts Democratic. Even so, it may upend my expectations this time around, and four recent polls of the state, conducted in early and mid-June, all had Trump leading Biden by either 2 or 3 points. If Pennsylvania’s polling averages a month from now all show Trump leading by 2 points or more, I’ll move its rating accordingly.

As always, I have my Electoral College map below showing the state of play as I see it, with Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin now all being toss-ups. As I wrote last time, the election will likely be decided in those three states, with the Sunbelt having become somewhat peripheral, a dynamic that the debate might only reinforce. Both campaigns would be wise to focus as much of their attention and resources on MI/PA/WI as possible.

Among the Sunbelt states, North Carolina and Georgia appear poised to give Trump his strongest margins this fall. I would argue that at this point, the former is basically safely Republican, while Georgia is only slightly more competitive. Out west, Arizona and Nevada are a bit closer to being toss-ups, but still clearly favor Trump as of now.

Astute readers will note that this Electoral College map could only produce a Biden win if MI/PA/WI were all assigned to him, assuming that AZ/GA/NC all vote for Trump (Nevada, with only six electoral votes, doesn’t really affect the calculus either way). The map is a reminder that if Trump were to win any one of the three northern swing states (even Wisconsin, the smallest of them), that alone would very likely foreclose a Biden victory.

As if this past week wasn’t eventful enough, we also had the release of a new election model, with Nate Silver releasing his model on Wednesday. Back in the spring, the 538 team, headed by G. Elliott Morris, had released its model, while The Economist followed suit just a few weeks ago. Broadly speaking, and at the risk of oversimplifying, the three models share a similar methodology, combining polling averages with economic and political fundamentals to simulate thousands of presidential elections, calculating the probability of a Biden or Trump win, as well as rare-but-not-quite-impossible outcomes (such as a tied Electoral College, God help us).

As of June 29th, the 538 model has the race as being nearly 50-50. On the other hand, The Economist shows a roughly 70-29 race in Trump’s favor.

Nate Silver’s election model is behind a paywall, so I can only share what he has put out there publicly. On his Substack the day before the debate, he wrote a detailed narrative about how the race is not a toss-up, with Trump having greater odds of winning than Biden. The election forecast itself, for those paid subscribers to his Substack, can be seen on this page, below the polling averages. Nate has an exceptionally long track record when it comes to election modeling, and in 2016, when he was with 538, his model recognized that Trump had a roughly 30% of winning, whereas most other models saw Clinton as virtually certain to win. Fortunately, after 2016, other modelers realized how much voting outcomes in the US are correlated from state to state, and adjusted their models to account for this.

There are other models out there, and their lack of inclusion here isn’t meant as a slight, but I thought it best to limit this overview to what might be considered the three most prominent models. Plus, at this moment in the race, these three models happen to be showing some interesting variation in their predictions, which is good to see, as it would be more worrisome if all three models were giving near-identical predictions.

For those of you who are interested in modeling, I highly recommend checking out all three models and exploring their methodologies. Even just reading about the logic behind each model is worth your time, and can provide a sense of how we might think about the uncertainty in the presidential race. It would be wrong to say that one of these models is somehow better or more accurate than another one. There are specific choices and assumptions that modelers have to make, and as I’m sure has been said a hundred times, election modeling is both an art and a science. The methodologies for the 538, Economist, and Nate Silver models can be found here, here, and here, respectively. Do check them out.

I’ll admit, this weekend was a suboptimal time to write, in that we’re on the cusp of a potentially significant change in the race that polling has yet to capture. If nothing else, the polling averages from above can hopefully serve as a decent baseline for next time, but for now, we’re very much in wait-and-see mode. Beyond polling, the next few weeks will also bring the announcement of Trump’s VP pick, so excitement abounds. Here’s wishing you all a great 4th of July, and hope to see you back here in August!