GEORGIA
It’s hard to think of a state in this election with greater consequences and implications – both this year and beyond – than Georgia. The fate of both the Democrats and Republicans, along with their future trajectory in the ever-bitter fight for national dominance, will depend on which candidate Georgians vote for, and how these results vary based on demographics, geography, and industry,
You’re likely asking: “Why? Sure, Georgia will be important: everyone says it’s one of the 7 swing states, and 16 electoral votes are nothing to laugh about. But why is it more important than Michigan, with its 15 electoral votes? Or Pennsylvania, with 19?”
Let me ask you to look beyond electoral votes for a moment. Georgia is located at the heart of the Deep South, both geographically and demographically. It lies between South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee. Its population, which is around two-thirds white and one-third black and heavily religious across the board, is in line with these surrounding states. For most of the 21st century, the South has been among the least favorable regions for Democrats across the nation. But when Democrats won Georgia by 0.2% in 2020 – breaking a 28-year-long Republican voting streak in the state – on a coalition of Black voters and suburban voters, it represented a turning point not just for Georgia Democrats, but for Southern Democrats on the whole. No longer were they reliant on the ancestrally-Democratic rural white voters who had long forsaken the party: Democrats could count on a stronger, higher-propensity, and above-all, consistent coalition. Or so they thought.
In 2022, Republicans nearly swept the board in Georgia. Apart from the Senate race, where Republican nominee Herschel Walker ran his campaign into the ground amidst reports of domestic abuse, carpetbagging, and funding past abortions, Republicans won every statewide office up for election by large margins. Incumbent Republican governor Brian Kemp won reelection by nearly 8% in 2022, a significant improvement from his sub-2% victory in 2018. Lieutenant Governor Brad Raffensberger, who received widespread national attention after refusing to entertain Trump’s election challenges in 2020, won reelection by more than 10% – the highest among all statewide Republicans that year.
On a national level, 2022 represented a promising electoral landscape for Democrats: one where suburban and independent voters’ recent gravitation towards the left might not have simply been caused by Trump, but was instead a more lasting ideological shift. In Georgia, however, the results told a different story. Voters in the heavily-suburban, highly educated, mostly secular, fast-growing, and historically-Republican counties surrounding Atlanta (think Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Forsyth) had supported Democrats by record margins in 2020. But in 2022, they largely shifted away from the party. Additionally, where minority voters turned out in record margins in 2020 (across the nation, but especially in Georgia), these numbers had shrunken substantially – even considering that midterm elections usually depress turnout compared to presidential contests.
With this in mind, let’s look to the present. 2024 will either confirm Georgia’s purple tint or reaffirm its redder-than-blue hue. Democrats enter the race with a crucial starting advantage, or so it might seem. Donald Trump is running again – remember, he is arguably the man who instigated Georgia’s massive leftward shift in the first place, winning the state by 5% in 2016 (compared to Romney’s 9% in 2012) and outright losing in 2020. However, there is evidence to suggest that Trump is not the political toxin he once was. Since leaving D.C., Trump’s favorability numbers have risen to a career-high: many polls show him at a near-even standing with voters. Additionally, where in 2020, Democrats coasted on a tide of out-party favorability ratings, in 2024, Democrats’ standing has fallen. Biden’s four years in office have seen notable accomplishments been made – not limited to the Inflation Reduction Act and pivotal American Rescue Plan – but have been marred by high inflation, and a generally-sluggish economy in the aftermath of COVID-19. Although the economy has sped up in recent months, the (perception) damage has been done.
Thankfully for Democrats, Biden isn’t their nominee. Kamala Harris is: and it doesn’t seem she has bore the blunt of the blame for the unpopular Biden administration, despite being his No. 2.
Current polls indicate a highly competitive race in Georgia. A Marist College poll shows a tie between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, each securing 49% support among likely voters. Similarly, a FiveThirtyEight aggregation reports Trump leading by a narrow margin of 1%.
In a state as significant as Georgia – both for the next 4 years and the next decades – the closeness of the race is maddening. It is impossible to confidently predict, in good faith, who will come out on top. But we’ll give it our best guess.
When in doubt, stick with the fundamentals. It’s not at all difficult to believe that Republicans, now the ‘out’ party facing a damaged Democratic party whose struggles have especially manifested among minority voters, will claw their way back to victory in Georgia.
This is where we stand (albeit on shaky and wobbly feet): Trump +0.5%.
WISCONSIN
Historically the reddest of the Rust Belt 3, Wisconsin may again prove pivotal in 2024.
Democrats’ clearest path to victory come Tuesday is through the Upper Midwest: if they win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, while holding NE-2, Democrats win a 270-268 victory in the electoral college.
The most common reason for this belief: while Kamala Harris has shown relatively weak numbers (compared to Biden’s 2020 showing) among minority groups including Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, she’s held up surprisingly well among white voters – including older, working-class ones. For this reason, the conventional narrative has shifted the focus from the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina (which were arguably the more notable and important results from 2020) towards the Rust Belt – a region that has been no stranger to supporting Democratic candidates since the 1980’s but has taken a sharp turn to the right in the Trump era.
Currently, most analysts believe that Pennsylvania is the shakiest of the three. Polling-wise, this assessment seems to be (tentatively) correct.
Let’s compare the two states, starting with Pennsylvania. An Echelon Insights poll conducted from October 27-30, 2024, showed Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris by 6% – a significantly larger margin for Trump than what most other polling has shown. For instance: a Marist College poll found Harris ahead by 2 points.
In Wisconsin, the race is similarly close – albeit the slightest bit more friendly for Democrats. The same Echelon Insights poll reported a tie between Harris and Trump, at 48% each. The FiveThirtyEight polling average indicates Harris leading by approximately 0.7 percentage points, roughly equivalent to Biden's 0.6% victory in the state in 2020.
So here’s the polling picture: while Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are bound to be close, it seems that Wisconsin is poised to be slightly more blue than Pennsylvania in the coming election.
There’s reason to believe this is true. Although Wisconsin has supported Trump by the largest margins out of the Rust Belt 3 in his two runs for president, the elections preceding 2016 tell a different story. In 2008 and 2012, Wisconsin supported Barack Obama by 14% and 7%, respectively, while Pennsylvania supported him by 10% and 5%, respectively. Small, but notable differences.
Looking even farther back, Wisconsin has been a cornerstone of Progressivism in the United States. The La Follette dynasty, a political family that led the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, called Wisconsin home. In 1988, Wisconsin was the only one of the Rust Belt states to support the ‘Massachusetts liberal’ Michael Dukakis against incumbent President George H.W. Bush. In the early 21st century, Wisconsin thrice voted for Senator Russ Feingold – a champion of modern progressive causes until he was defeated for reelection in 2010, and denied a comeback victory in 2016.
For Harris to win, she must do a couple of things.
First, she must turn out the core coalition: the majority-minority residents of Milwaukee and Madison, the two major cities in Wisconsin. National demographic polling of the race has painted a potentially dire picture for Harris among minorities: she’s consistently polled worse than Biden (in 2020) among Hispanic, Black, and Asian voters. We will see in the coming days how much of this alleged racial depolarization comes to fruition, but I would be inclined to believe the story the polls and experts are communicating.
Because of this dropoff in minority support, Harris must do some heavy lifting among Wisconsin’s other core political factions. She must hold the fort in rural areas across the state, where only 15 years ago Barack Obama had won but have shifted heavily rightward in the years since. More importantly, however, Harris must build on Democrats’ strong recent performances in suburban Wisconsin – both the bluer areas and the red.
For the former category, Dane County (which contains Madison and its surrounding suburbs) is Democrats’ prime target – not just to win, but to win by a lot. In 2022, Gov. Tony Evers won nearly 80% of the vote in Dane, turning out a massive 236,000 voters. Harris will need to replicate this margin of victory, or at least come extremely close, in order to win statewide.
For the latter category, Harris must continue Democrats’ struggle in the WOW counties surrounding Milwaukee. Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington County have supported Republican presidential candidates by over 60% since the turn of the century. However, there is some evidence to suggest that the counties have began shifting leftward in the last few years. In 2022, Evers narrowed the Republican shares of the vote in Waukesha and Ozaukee below 60%. Harris should hope to continue Evers’ efforts in 2024.
All this being said, it is easier than easy to see Wisconsin going either way in 2024. Amidst a sea of uncertainty, my one personal insight is this: if Pennsylvania is going Republican, so will Wisconsin (with one caveat). Wisconsin is whiter and more rural than Pennsylvania, and its metro areas are just as prone to depressed turnout as those in the Keystone State.
With this is mind, you might think that we’re predicting a narrow Trump win. But we’re not.
Here’s that caveat: Wisconsin’s geographic situation near the Great Plains means that the supposed ‘blue surge’ polling has predicted in Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa (looking at you, Selzer!) might have more of an impact of Wisconsin’s rural electorate compared to Pennsylvania’s. Because of this, we predict Kamala Harris will ever-so-slightly beat Trump in Wisconsin, likely by a fraction of a percentage point. To be any more specific would prioritize precision at the cost of accuracy.
MICHIGAN
Go Blue! Or will it…
If there was any state out of the Swingy Seven we were confident in making a prediction about, it would be Michigan. Out of Rust Belt Three, Michigan is generally agreed to be the bluest – but don’t let this fool you: it’s still a purple, purple state.
If you’ve been paying any attention to the political development of the last 8 years, you likely know a great deal about the Upper Midwest – how three reliably-democratic states abandoned Democrat Hillary Clinton amidst a storm of white, working-class resentment towards Democrats fueled by decades of perceived apathy and outright disdain from the party.
After decades of voting consecutively Democratic in presidential elections since 1988, the state flipped to Donald Trump in 2016 by around 10,000 votes. In 2020, however, Joe Biden reclaimed Michigan for the Democrats, winning by 2.8%
Michigan is about three-quarters white, 14% Black, 5% Hispanic or Latino, and 3% Asian. This racial makeup is remarkably similar to the nation’s at large, albeit with a slightly higher white proportion of the population.
The substantial Black population (primarily concentrated in urban areas such as Detroit and Flint) will play a significant, if not crucial role in deciding the election. Poor turnout in these areas in 2016 arguably made the difference between a Clinton win and her actual 0.2% loss in the state. Suburban counties around Detroit and other metro areas have grown and diversified within the last decades. Latino and Asian communities have helped contribute to shifting political dynamics.
There are a few counties that hold outsized importance in Michigan’s politican landscape, starting with Wayne County, home to Detroit. Wayne is Michigan’s most populous and a stronghold for the Democratic Party. In 2020, Biden secured approximately 68% of the vote here, bolstered by high turnout among Black voters. As we mentioned, this is an area where Harris must turn out voters: or else, she’ll have to claw her way back with less friendly voters.
In terms of suburban Micigan, Oakland and Macomb are perhaps the most important. Oakland County, a historically Republican-leaning suburb, has trended Democratic in recent elections due to its increasingly diverse and educated population. Biden won Oakland County with about 56% of the vote in 2020. The county serves as a bellwether for suburban voters nationwide and will be a primary target for both parties in 2024. Macomb County is another proto-typically conservative country which exemplified the “Reagan Democrats” of the 80’s. Macomb County exemplifies the blue-collar voters who swung to Trump in 2016 but showed more mixed results in 2020, with Trump winning narrowly. This county's response to the economic policies and populist rhetoric of the candidates will be a key indicator of working-class sentiment in the state.
Urban centers such as Detroit, Flint, and Ann Arbor are Democratic bastions, driven by racially diverse and younger populations. Suburbs, particularly around Detroit, have become increasingly important as their populations have grown and become more competitive. In contrast, Michigan’s rural areas, including the Upper Peninsula and regions in the northern Lower Peninsula, tend to vote overwhelmingly Republican. It’s a pattern replicated across nearly the entire country, and one that will hold true for the foreseeable future.
Educational attainment might be the most important factor in Michigan’s political dynamics, apart from ethnicity. Counties with a higher percentage of college-educated residents, such as Washtenaw County (home to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan), lean heavily Democratic. On the other side of the coin, areas with lower levels of college education (typically rural and whiter) tend to favor Republicans, especially as of late. Turnout in these areas and among these voters – who tend to be lower-propensity – will be crucial if Trump hopes to improve his standing in the Wolverine State.
Religiosity also plays a similar role here, particularly in more rural and conservative parts ofthe state. Evangelical Christians and Catholic communities in West Michigan and the rural north often align with the socially-conservative platform of the modern Republican Party. We saw this come to fruition in the 2022 elections and abortion referendum, when heavily-religious counties actually shifted rightwards in the wake of the Dobbs ruling while the rest of the state bolted left.
Michigan's economy has long been associated with manufacturing, particularly the automotive industry. Detroit, historically known as the “Motor City,” has been the epicenter of auto manufacturing for decades. The prominence of unions, particularly the United Auto Workers (UAW), has historically aligned with Democratic policies that support labor rights and job protections. The 2007 recession arguably caused Michigan voters – especially those in the auto industry – to back Barack Obama by over 15% in 2008. However, many of these same voters flocked to the Republican side of the aisle less than a decade later, for the exact same reason: their struggles went utterly unnoticed by a D.C. which seemed to prioritize coastal elites above all other Americans.
Michigan’s importance in the 2024 election cannot be overstated. For Democrats, maintaining robust turnout in urban centers and growing suburban support is essential, while Republicans will seek to amplify their rural base and recapture voters swayed by economic and cultural issues. We believe Kamala Harris will win Michigan: whether by a 0.1% or 5% margin, we are far from certain, though we’ll wager it’s closer to the former.
NEVADA
Although it may be the only swing state this election that Donald Trump didn’t win in 2016, Nevada is far from being a newcomer to this club. In the last 12 elections, the Silver State has gone red 6 times and gone blue the other 6. From 2008 through 2020, the state exclusively voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. Most recently, Joe Biden won the state with 50.1% of the vote to incumbent Republican Donald Trump’s 47.8%. Nevada was one of only 7 states that Trump performed better in 2020 compared to his 2016 run, an indicator of the state’s shift to the right in recent years. Today, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris are in a tense race to take Nevada’s 6 electoral votes. Will Trump become the first Republican to win the state since George Bush way back in 2004? Or will Harris be able to retain Nevada for the Democrats?
Nevada is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation. Its population has almost tripled since 1990, from 1.2 million to 3.2 million people, largely due to the growth of Las Vegas into the 21st largest urban area in the US. In fact, Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and its suburbs, contains 73% of the state’s population, making Nevada the most centralized state in the nation. This rapid population growth has been fueled in large part by immigrants from Latin American nations. While in 1970 non-Hispanic whites made up 88% of Nevada’s population, today that number is just 45.93%. Hispanics are now 28.68% of the population, with Blacks, Asians, and Mixed-Race people coming in at 9.4%, 8.57%, and 5.38%, respectively. Tellingly, as Nevada’s non-Hispanic white population decreased from 65.21% in 2000 to 45.93% in 2020, so too did Republican performance decline. Historically, Hispanics as a whole have supported the Democratic Party; with 66% of them voting for Clinton in 2016. But in 2020, Biden’s performance with this key group slipped; he received just 59% support. Moreover, examining the results based on the educational divide, in 2020 Trump won 41% of Hispanics without a college degree. This is very important in Nevada, as the state has the 7th lowest percentage of residents with a college degree, coming in at a mere 27.57%. So, Trump’s path to victory in the state is simple: win over working-class white and Hispanic voters.
Recent polling has shown that Trump has completely erased the Democrats’ lead with Hispanic men; now he and Harris draw equal support from this group. Additionally, Harris now has the support of just 54% of all Hispanics, down 5 points from Biden 4 years ago and a whopping 12 points from Clinton 4 years before that. These numbers aren’t good for the Democrats and certainly point towards a Trump victory in Nevada, where even a minor shift in the preferences of this key group of voters can determine the outcome of the entire race.
Now, looking at Nevada’s polls, Trump has taken a narrow lead over Harris of 0.9 points in the RealClearPolitics average. Interestingly, Trump actually underperformed expectations in Nevada in 2016, losing the state to Clinton by 2.42 points when the polls had him up 2 points on November 1st. However, in 2020, Trump overperformed, losing the state to Biden by 2.39 points when the polls had him trailing by 4 points. With this in mind, we’ve decided that trusting this election cycle’s numbers is our best bet at predicting the winner. Therefore, we believe that Donald Trump will win Nevada by between 0.5 and 2 points.
NORTH CAROLINA
The only swing state this election that went red in 2020, North Carolina proved to be an unlikely tossup; after all, Trump won the state by 1.34 points against Democrat Joe Biden four years ago. In an election where Trump is expected to perform significantly better than his last run, how can North Carolina possibly not go Republican? Well, there’s been a perfect storm of bad circumstances for the GOP, and I mean that literally; the state was just devastated by Hurricane Helene in late September, which took over 101 lives and caused over $53 billion in damages. Helene ravaged the western portions of the state that heavily supported Donald Trump back in 2020, raising questions of whether disruptions from the storm will lower turnout in this key region for the Republicans.
But the other storm in the state is over their Republican Candidate for Governor, Mark Robinson. Having been narrowly elected North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor back in 2020, Robinson took the logical next step and announced his bid for the governorship last year, cruising through the Republican primary. And while Robinson being both a Republican and the first African American major party nominee in a state that is over 20% Black might make him seem like a shoo-in, he turned out to have more skeletons in his closet than any politician in a long time. For starters, Robinson has been criticized for his stance on abortion. After openly calling it “murder” even in cases of rape and incest, he admitted that back in the 1980s he paid for his girlfriend to have one. Additionally, he has met backlash for comments made about the LGBTQ community; Robinson has previously called homosexuality “an abominable sin” and just this past February supported arresting transgender people for using a restroom that doesn’t match their birth sex. The Lieutenant Governor has also faced resistance for his alleged antisemitism, such as in a Facebook post where he declared that the movie Black Panther was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists.” But these controversies from earlier in his campaign pale in comparison to the firestorm that was released in September when CNN found posts Robinson made on the pornographic website Nude Africa from 2008 to 2012. In these posts, he referred to himself as a “perv,” voiced his hate for Martin Luther King, and, most famously, declared himself to be a “Black Nazi.” Needless to say, all of these abhorrent statements have caused Robinson to tank in the polls; he now trails his Democratic opponent Josh Stein by between 15 and 20 points.
While Mark Robinson’s political career will almost certainly end after this election, he may just take Donald Trump’s with him. The gubernatorial candidate’s controversies are undoubtedly hurting Trump’s performance in the state; he now leads Vice President Kamala Harris by just 1.7 points in the North Carolina RealClearPolitics Average. There’s the possibility that the former president loses the state, and its 16 electoral votes, due to Republican voters who are already planning to not vote for Robinson deciding to skip out on voting for Trump too. But whatever the case may be, thanks to Robinson, you can expect to see many split ballots in the Tarheel State this November.
Although the controversy surrounding Mark Robinson will without a doubt hurt Trump’s performance in North Carolina, we find it unlikely that it’ll be enough to tip the state to Harris. While she may have briefly caught Trump in the state back in September, the former president’s numbers quickly rebounded and have been rising steadily since mid-October. Therefore, we predict that North Carolina will remain red for Trump by roughly the same margin it did in 2020, of between 1 and 1.5 points.
PENNSYLVANIA
Pennsylvania:
If there’s any state that could be the tipping point in this election, it’s Pennsylvania. The rust belt state of 13 million people has played an outsized role in the last two presidential races. From 1992 to 2012, the state voted blue in every presidential election; however, in 2016, when Republican Donald Trump upset Democrat Hillary Clinton, the Keystone State went red for the first time in 28 years, albeit very narrowly. Trump received 48.2% of the vote to Clinton’s 47.5%, a margin of victory of just 0.7 points. Along with his success in Wisconsin and Michigan, it signaled the collapse of the “blue wall,” a collection of states that had gone for the Democrats in every presidential election since 1992. But in 2020, Trump’s luck in the commonwealth ran out, with the incumbent losing the state to Democratic challenger and native Pennsylvanian Joe Biden, 48.7% to 49.9%. This November, Donald Trump once again finds himself battling it out in Pennsylvania, this time against Vice President Kamala Harris. And the arguably most important question in this election remains: will Trump be able to defeat Harris and flip this all-important rust belt state back to the Republicans?
Several factors indicate that Pennsylvania is heading towards a GOP victory. For one thing, the early voting data is certainly a good sign for Republicans. According to the University of Florida election lab, as of October 29th, registered Democrats in Pennsylvania have cast 837,916 votes early, while registered Republicans have cast 458,055 votes. And although this means Republicans are being beaten by Democrats in early voting 31.6% to 57.8%, these numbers are significantly better than in 2020, when Democrats were winning this share of the vote 64.7% to 23.7%. While other factors could be at play, such as the Trump campaign encouraging early voting during this election cycle, which they didn’t in 2020, the significance of this shift can’t be overlooked when a single point sway towards Trump could determine whether he wins back the White House.
Beyond this, Trump has had several high-profile campaign moments in Pennsylvania. Most famously, he was almost assassinated at a rally in Butler, PA on July 13th. In the aftermath of this horrible event, Trump jumped significantly in the polls and saw his highest odds of winning the election to date: 66.2% on the RealClearPolitics Betting Average. His comeback rally to the site on October 5th, featuring Elon Musk, was also widely watched and turned out a crowd of over 50,000. Additionally, Trump’s visit to a McDonald’s in Bucks County and appearance at the Steelers game two weeks ago were two more bright spots for his campaign in the Keystone state. While these moments are unlikely to change the election’s outcome, their memories may persist in the minds of undecided voters and net the former President some key votes.
Turning to the polls, Trump holds a small lead of 0.6 points, which is within the margin of error in almost any poll; so, effectively, the two are tied. However, as we have seen so often in the past, the polls can get it completely wrong. Historically, Trump has significantly overperformed in Pennsylvania. In 2016, Hillary Clinton held a lead of 5.1 points at this time in the election cycle, and in 2020, Joe Biden held a lead of 3.8 points. Clinton went on to lose the state by 0.7 points, a difference of 5.8%, and Biden went on to win by just 1.2 points, a difference of 2.6%. Therefore, with Trump being ahead in Pennsylvania for the first time in an election, his odds of winning the state look encouraging.
But at the end of the day, this race is basically a coin toss. And while it’s certainly hard for us to choose between Trump and Harris, we feel that Trump has a slight edge. It’s a mixture of the near-misses, the consistent underestimation, and the promising early voting numbers that compel us to choose red over blue. We predict that Trump will carry the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by between 0.1 and 2 points.
ARIZONA
Arizona:
Arizona is a bellwether of sorts. The winners of 8 of the last 12 presidential elections have also won the state, which is exactly what Donald Trump did in 2016 and what Joe Biden did in 2020. Now in 2024, Republican Donald Trump is once again in a tense race, this time against Democrat Kamala Harris, to claim Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. But before we make our prediction, let’s find out how the Grand Canyon state has become so important for both parties.
Only gaining statehood in 1912, Arizona was largely a blue state during its early years. But after voting for Republican Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, the state has only voted for a Democratic candidate twice: Bill Clinton in 1996, and, crucially, Joe Biden in 2020. While Biden led Trump in the polls by a sizeable amount, he saw his lead shrink to less than a point by election day, and the results were even closer than that: Biden won the state by 11,057 votes, or just 0.3%. This was a spectacular fall for the Republicans, who won the state by 3.5 points in 2016, and by 9.1 points in 2012. But several signs suggest that they may be able to turn their luck around this November.
For one thing, Arizona is a border state, and the issue of immigration is front and center this election cycle. According to a report by the House Committee on Homeland Security from this April, the United States is on track by the end of the year to reach 10 million encounters at its borders since Joe Biden has taken office. This has had a massive effect on states bordering Mexico, like Arizona. In a recent NY Times/Siena poll, Arizonans ranked immigration as their 2nd most important issue, being beaten out by the economy and followed closely by abortion. 55% of respondents said they believe Donald Trump would do a better job on immigration, while only 42% said Harris would, indicating that the former President is significantly stronger on this hot-button issue. However, Kamala Harris is just as strong on abortion as Donald Trump is on immigration; an identical 55% of respondents say that they prefer the Vice President on this issue, a good sign for her campaign. Additionally, just as Trump and Harris are on the ballot in Arizona, abortion is too. Proposition 139 is an amendment to the state’s constitution on the ballot this November that seeks to provide the fundamental right to abortion up to fetal viability, or about 22 weeks. This measure is very likely to pass, with polls showing that between 60-70% of voters support it. If there is significant turnout, especially by women (a group which Harris wins a majority of in the state), then Harris may be able to overcome Trump’s lead on issues like the economy and immigration.
But perhaps the best sign for Trump in Arizona this time around is the polling; in the past two elections, the former President spent most of the race trailing his opponents in the state. This time, however, he has taken a narrow, but nevertheless meaningful, lead of 1.5 points on Harris. And while mid-August saw the newly selected Democratic candidate overtaking Trump across all 7 swing states, Arizona by far held the firmest, with Harris only holding a lead over Trump in the RealClearPolitics Average for a single day.
With this in mind, we predict that Donald Trump will flip Arizona back to the Republicans this election by between 1 and 2 points. Biden’s narrow 2020 win is unlikely to be replicated by Harris, especially due to her weakness on key issues for Arizonans like the border and the economy.
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