MASSACHUSETTS
The home of the Adams, Bush, and Kennedy families, Massachusetts holds an important place in our nation’s history. The birthplace of the American Revolution has been a solidly blue state for decades; in fact, if you ignore elections with Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower, Massachusetts has voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1928. Bay Staters’ commitment to the Democratic Party is shown no better than in 2012, when they overwhelmingly voted for Democrat Barack Obama over their own former governor Republican Mitt Romney (60.7% to 37.5%).
In 2020, Democratic support in Massachusetts increased to a staggering 65.6% of votes for Joe Biden compared to only 32.1% for President Donald Trump. This was the best performance by a Democrat in the state since LBJ in 1964. But it’s not all sunny for Democrats... In 2022, Republicans had their best midterm election performance in the state since 2010, and this fall Elizabeth Warren faces a worthy GOP challenger for her Senate seat in Marine Corps veteran John Deaton.
And with Vice President Kamala Harris being weighed down by the unpopularity of the Biden administration, Former President Trump shouldn’t have a hard time improving his numbers this time around. For these reasons, we predict that although Harris will have a significant victory in Massachusetts this November, Donald Trump will be able to ride Republican momentum in the Bay State to net himself sizable gains from his 2020 run.
CONNECTICUT
Connecticut, the birth state of George W. Bush, today shares the liberal politics of its neighbors to the North, East, and West. But once upon a time, Connecticut was one of the most solid red states in the nation. In fact, in the election of 1932, where Republican Herbert Hoover ran for reelection against FDR, Connecticut was one of only six states to vote for the unpopular incumbent. And up until 1992, Connecticut was a likely Republican state, but since then, they’ve turned blue and never looked back.
In 2020, 59.2% of Connecticutians voted for Joe Biden, while only 39.2% voted for Donald Trump. This was a major improvement for Democrats from the 2016 Presidential election, where Hillary Clinton only got 54.6% of the vote, compared to Donald Trump’s respectable 40.9%. Despite this, the GOP has actually made gains in the last three House elections in Connecticut. In the state’s 2018 House elections, the GOP received 37.78% of the vote; in 2020, they received 38.52%, and in 2022, they received 41.73%.
With these recent improvements for Republicans in Connecticut, will Donald Trump be able to perform better this time around in the Nutmeg State? In Connecticut’s 2022 Senate race, where incumbent Democrat Richard Blumenthal went up against Republican challenger Leora Levy, Blumenthal was reelected with 57.45% of the vote. This performance was significantly worse than during his 2016 run, where he received 63.2% of the vote. The county results from the two elections show that while all eight of Connecticut’s counties went blue in the 2016 Senate race, two counties, Litchfield and Windham, actually flipped red in the 2022 race.
And while in 2020, Donald Trump barely won Litchfield and Windham counties with 51.7% and 51.1% of the votes, respectively, Levy won these counties with 54% and 52.8%, a decent improvement. Unfortunately for Democrats, in his 2022 race, Blumenthal performed worse in every single Connecticut county than Joe Biden did in 2020. Overall, it’s very unlikely that Kamala Harris will be able to live up to Joe Biden’s spectacular performance in the Nutmeg State four years ago. Republicans are winning voters in this state back, especially in the rural regions of Northeastern and Northwestern Connecticut.
As a result of this, we predict that Kamala Harris will win the state by numbers more in line with Hillary Clinton’s back in 2016. Furthermore, we expect Trump to crack the 40% mark and make big gains in Litchfield and Windham counties.
MAINE
The most northern of the lower 48 states, Maine is the largest and youngest member of New England, only gaining statehood in 1821 after seceding from Massachusetts. Politically, Maine has been a relatively blue state for decades. A Republican hasn’t won the popular vote in Vacationland since George Bush in 1988, and only four years later in 1992, Bush embarrassingly finished third in the state behind both Democrat Bill Clinton and Independent Ross Perot, losing to the Texas businessman by just 316 votes.
Despite the GOP’s inability to win the statewide vote in Maine, Donald Trump became the first presidential candidate to capitalize on a 1972 law that divided the state’s four electoral votes between the winner of its two congressional districts as well as the statewide winner. In 2016, Trump earned one electoral vote by winning Maine’s 2nd district with 51.3% of the vote, while narrowly finishing runner-up statewide to Hillary Clinton, 47.8% to 44.9%. This flip of the state’s northern, mostly rural district is truly a testament to Trump’s dominance with this group of voters; only four years prior, Republican Mitt Romney lost this district by 8.56 points to Barack Obama.
In 2020, despite Trump performing significantly worse in the state, winning 44% of the vote to Joe Biden’s 53.1%, the incumbent Republican retained the 2nd district with 52.26% of the vote. While polling is sparse this election cycle in the key district, Trump will likely preserve his victory this November. In the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP performed in line with their 2020 results, receiving 41.9% of statewide House votes to the Democrats’ 58%. In the 2nd District, Democrat Jared Golden was reelected with 53.1% of the vote against Republican Bruce Poliquin, who received 46.9%. Two years prior, in 2020, Golden received 53% of the vote, while his Republican opponent got 46.9% (nearly identical margins).
It’s important to note that many residents of the 2nd district split their votes for Trump at the top and Democrats down-ballot, which is why both the Republican President and Democrat Golden won a majority of votes in the same election. With this in mind, we expect Mainers to split their votes once again, with Golden and Trump both getting slight majorities in the 2nd district, netting the former President an electoral vote. In the battle for Maine’s remaining three electoral votes, Democrat Kamala Harris will easily win the 1st district. We predict she’ll also win the statewide vote by roughly the same margin Joe Biden did in 2020.
VERMONT
Vermont, the liberal bastion where in 2020 Joe Biden got an eye-watering 66.1% of the vote, the home of America’s only socialist senator, is also a state with an extremely popular Republican governor. Yes, it’s often forgotten that while Joe Biden was out getting a higher margin of victory in Vermont than any other state (35 points above Donald Trump), popular Republican Governor Phil Scott was cruising to his second reelection win with 68.5% of the vote (over 40 points above his Democratic challenger).
So how can America’s most liberal state so resoundingly vote a Republican to its highest office? And does this victory give hope for Donald Trump in the Green Mountain State this November? Just to make it clear: Donald Trump will not win Vermont; he’s about as likely to win here as Joe Biden is in West Virginia. Phil Scott’s victories in Vermont are an anomaly, the result of the governor’s fiscally conservative but socially liberal policies. In fact, Governor Scott supported both of Trump’s impeachments and even voted for Joe Biden in 2020, making him a RINO for some on the far-right.
We predict Harris will likely perform slightly worse in Vermont than Biden did four years ago. Although Trump has done nothing since the last election to make himself more popular in the state, since RFK Jr. is on the ballot in Vermont, it’s probable that he’ll siphon a small percentage of votes away from Harris, enough to make winning over more than 66.1% of Vermonters doubtful.
RHODE ISLAND
Rhode Island is certainly Biden country. In 2020, it was one of only three states to have all its counties go blue. Sure, that may be because it only has five of them (none more than 30 miles from its largest city, Providence), but it’s impressive nonetheless. America’s smallest state has voted blue in every election since 1988, and in 2024 it’s poised to stay that way.
Four years ago, Joe Biden won 59.4% of Rhode Island’s vote compared to Donald Trump’s 38.6%. In 2016, Clinton won the state by a narrower margin, getting 55.4%, while Trump performed similarly to 2020 with 39.8%. Trump actually won Rhode Island’s Kent County, right in the center of the state, by 600 votes in 2016; he lost this same county by over 7,000 votes (53% to 45%) in 2020.
This election cycle, Kamala Harris may face problems trying to match President Biden’s performance. In the 2022 midterm election, Democrat Seth Magaziner barely defeated Republican Allan Fung to earn Rhode Island’s 2nd House seat, which is the entirety of Western Rhode Island and half of Providence. Magaziner finished with 50.5% of the vote and Fung came runner-up with a very respectable 46.8%.
If Donald Trump can reach anywhere close to this performance in the 2nd district, which includes the entirety of Kent County (which he won back in 2016), then he can definitely eat into Harris’ margin of victory. Rhode Island isn’t just suburbs; in rural parts of the state, Harris’ appeal isn’t going to be as strong as Biden’s was in 2020, and these voters are likely going to turn out for Donald Trump in greater numbers than they did four years ago.
Therefore, we predict that while Rhode Island will go solid blue this fall, it will not reach the 59.4% threshold set by President Biden the last time around.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
The black sheep of New England, or more aptly red sheep, New Hampshire certainly has a more conservative streak than its neighbors. The Granite State has voted for Republican presidential candidates in 5 of the last 12 elections, although in none since 2004. Moreover, the margin of victory for both parties has been within 10 points in the last eight elections, making New Hampshire a consistently purple (or light blue) state. Most recently, in 2020, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican Incumbent Donald Trump in the state with 52.7% of the vote, to Trump’s 45.4%. This was a far cry from Trump’s 2016 run (where he lost the state to Hillary Clinton by just 2,736 votes) and was the worst Republican performance in New Hampshire since John McCain’s all the way back in 2008.
Yet, for a brief moment after Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate, Trump led in polls from the state, begging the question: does the former President have a chance to flip New Hampshire red this fall? Things appeared bright at the start of July for Republicans: Trump was leading Biden by 3.1 points nationally, and states like Virginia, Minnesota, and, of course, New Hampshire were suddenly in play. However, Trump’s lead evaporated as quickly as it appeared when Joe Biden was replaced with Vice President Kamala Harris. Since Harris was tapped, she has reversed Trump’s lead and is now ahead by 6.4 points as per Project 538’s polling average.
But there are more factors than just polls to consider in the White Mountain state this election cycle. As popular Republican Governor Chris Sununu declines to seek a fifth two-year term, GOP candidate Kelly Ayotte, who represented New Hampshire for one term in the Senate from 2011 to 2017, is in a tense race to take his place. Running against Democrat Joyce Craig, the former mayor of the state’s largest city, Manchester, Ayotte has taken a small lead in recent polls, with the RealClearPolitics average placing her up a single point on Craig. So, if the Republican is able to fend off Craig and win the governorship, she may be able to give Donald Trump a boost in his own race against Kamala Harris.
But at the end of the day, Trump’s lead in New Hampshire was likely just a blip on the map. And while we believe the former President will perform better than in 2020, when he lost the state by 7.4 points, we don’t anticipate him coming within five percent of Harris. Therefore, we predict Kamala Harris will win New Hampshire roughly in line with the polling, by 5-6 percentage points.
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