CALIFORNIA
California, the home of Kamala Harris, is both the nation’s most populated and one of its bluest states. In 2020, over 11 million Californians cast votes for Joe Biden (almost 14% of all votes he received). Democrats have won the Golden State in every presidential election since 1992; and in that time, they’ve consistently grown their support. So will former senator Harris win big in California this November, or will Donald Trump move the state towards the GOP?
In the 2022 midterms, only one of California’s whopping 52 house seats flipped to the GOP, a decrease from the three seats gained in the 2020 house elections. But in 2022, Republicans received 2.5% more of the vote (statewide) than they did two years prior, going from 33.7% to 36.22%. For comparison, in 2020 Donald Trump received 34.3% of the vote, losing the election to Biden by 29 points. Therefore, if Donald Trump is able to replicate the Republican gains during the midterms, there may be potential for him to eat into Harris’ margin of victory.
Another factor to consider are the results of California’s 2022 gubernatorial race. Just 16 years after electing the Terminator to the Governorship, Californians chose to reelect Gavin Newsom. First elected back in 2018, Newsom handily survived a 2021 recall attempt, with 62% of voters seeking to keep him in office. In 2022, he performed worse than the state’s incumbent Democrat senator, Alex Padilla, receiving 59% of the vote compared to Padilla’s 61.1%. Since his reelection, Newsom’s approval rating has fallen below 50%, with a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll placing it at 44% (Joe Biden received a 42% rating in that same poll).
As a result of Governor Newsom’s unpopularity, many California voters may be scared away from supporting Harris this fall. We predict that although Kamala Harris will win California in a landslide, off the back of the GOP’s growing support in the state and the Governor’s shrinking popularity, her margin of victory over Donald Trump will be lower than Joe Biden’s in 2020.
NEW MEXICO
New Mexico is a state unlike any other. The Land of Enchantment was the 47th state to enter the Union, is the 5th largest by area, 36th by population, and has the highest percentage Latino population in the nation. Yes, a whopping 47.7% of New Mexico’s population is Latino, and another 10% is Native American, the 2nd highest behind Alaska. These demographics make New Mexico one of five Majority-minority states (the others being California, Hawaii, Texas, and Maryland) and leave only 36.5% of the population as Non-Hispanic White.
These unique demographics give Hispanics and Native Americans an outsized influence on New Mexican politics, and in recent years these voters have supported the Democratic party. In 2020, Joe Biden carried the state with 54.3% of the vote, the best finish since Barack Obama in 2008, and Donald Trump finished a distant second at 43.5%. Both parties received a greater percentage of the vote in 2020 than in 2016, due to Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, siphoning an impressive 9.3% of the vote in that election.
However, Biden’s margin of victory, at 10.8 points, is a massive improvement for the Democrats; only 20 years ago, New Mexico was perhaps the closest swing state in the nation. In 2004, Incumbent Republican George Bush narrowly defeated Democrat John Kerry 49.8% to 49.1% in New Mexico, flipping the state red for the first time since 1988. And four years earlier, in the election of 2000, Democrat Al Gore defeated Bush in the state by 366 votes, making the margin of victory in New Mexico that election even smaller than in Florida, where the results were famously disputed.
The glory days for Republicans in New Mexico have long since passed, and the state is no longer regarded as a key battleground state. But this election, as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in a dead heat for the White House, the results in The Land of Enchantment may be closer than you think. Trump is performing significantly better with Latino voters this election cycle than in 2016 or 2020. A recent national NBC poll found that 40% of registered Latino voters support Trump, as compared to 54% who support Harris. While the former president still has a ways to go to reach Harris’ numbers with this key demographic, this poll shows he’s come a long way from his meager 19% and 27% Latino support in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
With this in mind, we predict that although Kamala Harris will win the state of New Mexico, it will be by a significantly slimmer margin than four years ago. If Trump can come even close to performing at 40% with Latino voters, who make up almost half of New Mexico’s population, then he can certainly boost his performance to upwards of 45%.
UTAH
Once called Deseret, the land of present-day Utah was first settled by famed Mormon pioneer and University namesake Brigham Young in 1847; this unique history gives the state demographics unlike any other in the nation. For starters, Utah is the only state to have a majority of its residents belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; over 60% of Utahns are Mormon, with Idaho coming in a distant second at 26%. Since a majority of the Utah electorate is Mormon, who are generally extremely socially conservative, this makes the state reliably vote for Republicans.
There’s no better example of this than in the Presidential Election of 2012, when Republican Mitt Romney, the first Mormon to be a major party Presidential Candidate, won an astounding 72.8% of the vote. After losing that election, Romney ran and won Utah’s 2018 Senate election; he is retiring once his term ends in the beginning of 2025. Besides Romney, another famous name in Utah politics is former CIA officer Evan McMullin. Best known for his third-party presidential run in 2016, McMullin was able to win 21.5% of the vote in his home state of Utah, an impressive feat, but still finishing third to Trump and Clinton, who received 45.5% and 27.5% of the vote, respectively. In this election, Utah was by far the state with the highest percentage of the vote going to third-party candidates, at 27%.
But in 2020, without any viable third-parties, Trump was able to win over a majority of Utah voters, getting 58.1% of the vote to Biden’s 37.7%. And although both parties improved on their 2016 numbers, Biden’s performance was the strongest by a Democrat in the state since LBJ in 1964. So, will Kamala Harris expand on Biden’s impressive gains in Utah this November? Unfortunately for Democrats, the answer is probably not. Biden’s 2020 performance in the Beehive State is likely an outlier, and the 2022 midterm elections back this up.
In Utah’s four House races, GOP candidates received 63.1% of the vote, while their Democrat opponents only got 32.2%. This was a respectable improvement for the Republicans, who only received 61% of Utahns' votes two years earlier. And although in the 2022 Senate election, incumbent Republican Mike Lee beat our old friend Evan McMullin by just 10.4 points, the closest Senate election in Utah since 1974, this tight race says more about McMullin’s strength with Utah voters than any GOP weakness in the state. Furthermore, Utah has the third lowest black population per capita in the nation, spelling big trouble for Harris. She is highly unlikely to appeal to Utah’s majority white, majority Mormon voter base as well as Biden did back in 2020.
Therefore, we predict that Donald Trump will win Utah by a significantly greater margin than he did four years ago. Trump won’t do close to as well as Romney did in 2012, but expect his numbers to be in-line with John McCain’s 62.6% of the vote way back in 2008.
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