ALABAMA
Alabama, the home of the Crimson Tide and the heart of Dixie, is predictably an extremely conservative state. In the 2020 Presidential election, 62% of residents cast their votes for Donald Trump, while only 36.6% did so for Joe Biden. Trump's performance was strikingly similar to his 2016 run, where he won with 62.1% of the vote. These two races were the best ever by a Republican Presidential candidate in the state, besides George Bush in the 2004 election.
Since 1964, Alabamans have only voted for a Democratic candidate once, fellow southerner Jimmy Carter in 1976. However, Alabama did join other deep South states in voting for their infamous segregationist governor, George Wallace, in his 1968 run on the American Independent Party ticket.
But today, 56 years later, the most famous name in Alabama politics is their senator, former college football coach Tommy Tuberville. Going up against incumbent Doug Jones in 2020, Tuberville cruised to victory with 60.1% of the vote. The fact that Jones, a Democrat, was even elected to Alabama’s Senate seat in the first place is a story of its own. During a 2017 special election, his Republican opponent Roy Moore was accused of sexually assaulting several women, including two underage girls, a month out from election day. As a result, Moore lost narrowly, 48.3% to 50%, to Jones.
So, in 2020, with Tuberville not having the baggage Moore had 3 years prior, he was able to handily defeat the Democrat Jones. Since taking office, Tuberville became infamous for his blockage of military nominations in protest of the Department of Defense’s policy to grant leave and reimburse travel costs for servicewomen seeking out-of-state abortions. From February through December of 2023, Tuberville held all Department of Defense nominations, blocking over 450 promotions and leaving the Marine Corps, Army, and Navy without leaders. Although Tuberville eventually relented on his hold in the final weeks of the year, this stunt certainly damaged his reputation, but it isn’t likely to hurt the GOP’s performance in Alabama in the long run.
In fact, according to the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are doing better than ever in the Cotton State, receiving 70.1% of the vote in the state’s house races. Additionally, in the state’s senate election, Republican Katie Britt beat Democrat Will Boyd 66.6% to 30.9%, a sizable improvement from the retiring six-term Republican Richard Shelby’s performance of 64% of the vote in 2016.
With this in mind, we predict that Donald Trump will win Alabama with a significantly higher percentage of the vote than in 2020. If the former president can even come close to matching the GOP’s performance in the midterm elections two years back, he can count on big gains in this deep southern state.
LOUISIANA
In the new millennium, Louisiana voters have opted for the Republican Presidential candidate 100% of the time. The once swing state is now solidly red, with the GOP increasing their popular vote percentage in six of the last seven presidential elections.
So, will history repeat itself once again? And will Donald Trump eke out even more gains in the already MAGA-heavy state this November?
The culture war is in full swing in Louisiana; there’s no better example of this than the law passed this past spring requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom in the state. Needless to say, this law was met with fervor by all believers in the separation of church and state, and legal challenges have already been mounted by the ACLU to get it struck down. But Louisiana isn’t a part of the Bible Belt for nothing, so it remains to be seen whether this battle will alienate the state’s more moderate voters.
But there’s still good news for the Republicans; if this election turns out at all like the 2022 midterms, then Donald Trump can expect big gains in the Pelican State. To put it simply, the GOP absolutely demolished the Democrats two years back. Republicans won over 68% of the votes in the house races compared to a paltry 28% for the Democrats. This was an admirable 7% increase in vote share (only 61% of house votes went red in 2020).
All in all, we think Donald Trump will ever so slightly be able to increase his vote share in Louisiana. Kamala Harris may have a better chance to rally the state’s over 30% Black population, but it’s unlikely to make a dent in Trump’s performance. So, without any divine intervention, it seems this November Louisiana will go solidly Republican.
SOUTH CAROLINA
One of the most consistent states in the nation, South Carolina is always on the verge of becoming a swing state, but never makes it there. The Palmetto State has voted red in every election since 1980; and in the last four Presidential elections, the Republican candidate has won South Carolina with between 53.9% to 55.1% of the vote, a range of 1.2 points.
Interestingly, in the other Carolina, things are even more steady. In the last four Presidential elections, the Republican share of the vote has ranged from 49.4% to 50.4%, a range of just a single point. While voters in both states have stayed anchored to the Republican party, albeit by significantly slimmer margins in North Carolina, does Kamala Harris have a chance to change that this November?
The Vice President’s greatest advantage in South Carolina is her strength with Black voters. With the chance to be the first Black woman elected to the Presidency, Harris needs to perform well with the state’s 26% African American population. Famously, back in February of 2020, Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary with a 28.88-point victory over the front runner for the nomination at the time, Bernie Sanders. This win reenergized a campaign that had been a disappointment up to that point, propelling Biden to win the nomination and eventually the White House. The only thing that made this possible was Biden’s strength with the Black voters of South Carolina. In 2020, 92% of Black voters cast their votes for Democrat candidate Joe Biden.
But in 2024, these numbers appear to be much lower for Harris. In recent polling, Donald Trump has shown significant improvement with Black voters, receiving 16% support compared to 79% for the Vice President. While Harris is still leading Trump by 63 points, if these numbers hold, the former president will have doubled his support with this crucial group of South Carolinian voters.
Turning our attention to the 2022 midterm election results, it doesn’t get any rosier for Harris. The GOP absolutely dominated in South Carolina’s seven house races. Not only did Republicans run unopposed in two districts, but in all five others, they had significant improvements. Most impressively, in the predominantly African American district of Democratic congressman and former House Majority Whip, Jim Clyburn, Republican challenger Dave Buckner delivered a stunning improvement for the GOP, winning 37.9% of the vote, seven points more than the Republican candidate in 2020 did.
With this in mind, we predict that Donald Trump will win South Carolina by a greater margin than he did four years ago. Kamala Harris is unlikely to win greater support from Black voters, which will make her path to gains in the state highly challenging. The former president should expect a massive improvement in South Carolina so long as he can even come close to matching the Republicans' midterm performance.
MISSISSIPPI
This upcoming election in Mississippi might not hold immediate national consequences, but it may determine the trajectory of a state – and region – which has long supported Republicans but shows sparks of hope for Democrats.
The Magnolia State is known for its strong conservative lean: since Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980, the state has given its electoral votes to the Republican nominee in every presidential election. In 2020, Donald Trump secured over 57% of the vote, continuing the conservative trend.
As with other racially-polarized states in the South, Mississippi’s partisan composition very closely mirrors that of its demographics: nearly 60% of its population is white, while the remaining 40% is predominantly Black.
Several factors could influence the 2024 election in Mississippi. First, voter turnout will play a critical role. Historically, turnout in the state has been lower than the national average, particularly among Black voters in rural areas and urban centers like Jackson. Additionally, Trump has seemingly improved his standing among Black male voters since 2020, according to recent polling of the current race. Whether Democrat Kamala Harris is able to mobilize voters and stymie this supposed bleeding is an open question – and one that will likely remain unanswered until November 5th.
Another element to watch is how national political trends filter down into Mississippi: issues like broadband access, medicare expansion, and widespread economic inequality could shift political dynamics in Mississippi – particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected working-class and minority residents of the state. Additionally, abortion rights may mobilize certain segments of the population, as Mississippi was at the center of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs ruling. However, a vast majority of Mississippi residents on both sides of the partisan spectrum identify as Protestant Christians – a group which leans conservative on abortion and other social issues.
As Democrats face declining fortunes in regions such as the Midwest, Mississippi – and the South as a whole – presents an interesting and important opportunity for the party. But until they invest the same strategies, time, and resources into the Magnolia State as they did in Georgia, Mississippi will remain staunchly Republican. 2024 is no different: we predict Trump will win the state by a margin between 15% and 20%.
FLORIDA
Florida, where woke goes to die? More like Florida, where Democrats’ hopes go to die… Let us turn back the clock to the infamous Presidential Election of 2000, between Incumbent Democrat Vice President Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. This election proved to be one of the closest in American history, and as the night went on and turned into the next day, one thing became clear: it’d all come down to Florida. The state had shifted from being called for Gore early in the evening to being called for Bush, which made him the winner. However, after Gore had called Bush to concede, Florida was once again moved, this time from Bush to the undecided category, prompting Gore to withdraw his concession.
At this point, Bush led Gore by slightly under 2,000 votes and a statewide recount was ordered. After the recount, Bush’s lead shrunk to just over 300 votes, although it later increased to 930 votes after overseas ballots were counted. What happened next is still fiercely debated to this day. But hanging chads or no hanging chads, Bush was declared the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral votes by the United States Supreme Court that December, and thus the entire election.
This 537-vote margin of victory for the Republicans in 2000 will certainly be greater this November. Four years ago, in 2020, despite Democrat Joe Biden leading Republican Donald Trump by 1 point in the state’s Real Clear Politics polling average, Trump went on to win Florida 51.22% to 47.86%, a margin of 3.4 points. Florida was one of only seven states that Trump won by a greater margin in 2020 than in his prior run; he carried it by just 1.2 points in 2016. So even though Trump lost the general election to Biden, his victory in Florida was significant; it signaled that the state was no longer purple, but that it was red.
In this election cycle, Florida, for the first time in 36 years, isn’t being considered a swing state. This makes sense, as all you have to do is look at the 2022 midterms. While nationally the GOP underperformed, in Florida they absolutely destroyed the Democrats. They won 58.3% of the vote in all the state’s House races, an increase of 6.2 points from their 2020 performance. And perhaps more notably, in the Gubernatorial election, Republican incumbent Ron DeSantis beat former Republican Governor turned Democrat candidate Charlie Crist in a landslide victory. DeSantis, who had gained national attention for his battle against Covid Lockdowns, Vaccine Mandates, and the so-called “Woke Ideology,” performed significantly better than during his first run for Governor in 2018, where he won the election by just 0.4 points.
And while since his reelection DeSantis launched a failed bid for the Republican nomination for President and has seen a massive decrease in popularity, he is merely a product of Florida’s shift to the right, not the cause of it. Today, Trump is up 8.4 points on Harris in Florida according to the Real Clear Politics polling average, and we find this number to likely prove accurate. Trump will certainly win Florida; the once prized swing state is now safely Republican. And although his margin of victory will almost definitely be less than the GOP’s in the 2022 midterms, it will also almost unquestionably be greater than in the 2020 race. Therefore, we predict Trump will win Florida by a margin of 6-9 points, roughly in line with the polls.
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