By Elishya Perera
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA (CWBN)_ There are 50 states in the United States of America, but President Donald Trump desperately needs to win majorities in seven ‘Battleground States’ in order to secure a second term at the November 3 Presidential Election. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin appear to hold the keys to the White House.
His challenger, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, appears to be on a better footing, but still needs to win at least three or four of these same Battleground States, which are also known as ‘Swing States’. Some analysts also believe Trump is on a sticky wicket in three other states – Texas, Ohio and Iowa, but he does lead most polls in all of them.
With the US presidential election just around the corner, an average of the latest national polls indicate Trump is trailing Biden by nearly 10 points. However, President Trump keeps insisting “we’re doing incredibly well”, while Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon observed that “every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire”. “The very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race,” O’Malley Dillon said.
Does this mean President Trump still has an avenue to victory, even if national polls suggest otherwise? Regardless of whether or not Trump would remain in the White House for another four years, one thing is for certain; national polls are not necessarily a good way to predict the results of the election.
Four years ago, for example, Hillary Clinton led in the national polls and won nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump, but she still lost, owing to Trump’s victories in six key battleground states that he flipped from blue to red, thereby defeating Clinton in the Electoral College vote, although she won the popular vote with nearly 3 million ballots more than Trump.
The battleground states
Most states already lean strongly conservative or liberal. The unique feature of the battleground states is that the demographic distribution of Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning voters is more balanced, thereby making election results less predictable.
A key point to note here is that battleground states are not actually composed of a greater share of undecided voters than other states. Surveys have revealed that the majority of voters from these states claim that they would “definitely” vote for either the Democratic nominee or for Trump.
However, the number of voters were about evenly split between the two candidates, and therefore, the candidates attempt to shift a few thousand voters, thereby claiming their state’s support in the decisive Electoral College.
Here’s a look at the seven states that will likely decide the election this year.
Arizona
Over the years, Arizona has often backed Republicans in presidential elections. It was home to the father of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater. President Bill Clinton in 1996 was the only Democratic candidate to win the state since 1952. Mitt Romney carried the state by nine percentage points in 2012, while Trump won Arizona back in 2016 by 3.4 percentage points, as white voters made up about 68 percent of voters in 2016. However, the state has long been watched closely and invested in heavily by Democrats, since its demographics continue to change, with registered Hispanics having increased in the state and turning out more for elections. Currently, registered Republicans outnumber those registered Democrat or “other” while Democrats have closed the gap since 2016.
Florida
Florida is the largest of the traditional battlegrounds, with 29 electoral votes. President Barack Obama won the state by thin margins in both 2008 and 2012. However, in 2016, Trump surged among working-class voters, winning the state by 112,911 votes, or 0.8 percentage points. While, Clinton focused attention on mobilising voters in diverse urban areas, Trump performed particularly well with working-class and elderly white voters. Voters over 45 years old made up 60 percent of Florida’s registered voters at the time. During his recent visit to the Sunshine State, Biden said, “Here in Florida you can determine the outcome of this election. We win Florida and it’s all over”. Even though recent polls reveal that that Biden has made significant inroads among older voters, Trump has dampened Biden’s gains by garnering significantly more support from Hispanic voters.
Georgia
Bill Clinton was the last Democrat to carry Georgia in a presidential election back in 1992. In 2016, Trump captured the state’s 16 electoral votes by just 5 points. However, Hillary Clinton had won more raw votes out of Georgia than any Democratic nominee in history, and even in triumph, Republicans began to worry. This year, Biden’s cash-flush campaign has bought an enormous number of ads in the state, and Stacey Abrams’ group Fair Fight Georgia has registered hundreds of thousands of voters and pumped up requests for absentee ballots, in the state with a history of ballot suppression. The Trump campaign has not taken the state for granted either, with the president dropping into Atlanta last week to roll out his “platinum plan” for Black Americans.
Michigan
Michigan was won by the Democrats for decades, and Trump’s victory over the state in 2016 by slightly more than 10,000 votes, a razor-thin margin of about 0.3 percentage points, was unexpected. Obama on the other hand, won the state by a resounding 9.5 percentage points in 2012. Trump managed to flip 12 counties in the state, and performed particularly well in rural and blue-collar areas, carrying white voters without college educations, who make up half of the state’s voters, by 61 percent, compared with Clinton’s 31 percent. Nevertheless, the president’s support among white working-class voters appears to have declined, while a heavy turnout of Black voters is expected this year.
North Carolina
The solid Republican state shifted to a swing state in 2008, when Obama narrowly won, but he lost it to Mitt Romney by two percentage points in 2012. The state was claimed by Trump in 2016, by 3.6 points, as Trump benefitted from a much higher voter turnout from senior citizens compared with young registered voters. Only half of registered voters 18 to 25 went to the polls, while 75 percent of voters ages 45 to 65 and 78 percent of voters 65 and older turned out on Election Day. This year suburban, educated, ethnically diverse voters give the Democrats hope to claim the 15 electoral votes which are up for grabs.
Pennsylvania
It is ironic that Pennsylvania may hold the keys to the White House, with the U.S. Constitution having been written in Philadelphia way back 1787. Obama won the state in 2012 by 5.4 percentage points. Even though Pennsylvania had been a solid Democratic state since 1992, four years ago Trump carried the state by less than 1 percent over Clinton, to capture the 20 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump saw a surge in blue-collar support in western Pennsylvania, where the steel and coal industries have declined in recent years and has traditionally leaned Democratic. According to exit polls, the white women demographic also went 50 percent in Trump’s favour, compared with 47 percent support for Clinton, and with white men, Trump won 64 percent to 42 percent.
Wisconsin
In 2016, like Pennsylvania, Trump broke the Democrats’ quarter-century winning streak in Wisconsin with a razor-thin victory over Clinton. Trump flipped 22 districts in this state that had voted for Obama in 2012, 18 of those rural. Among non-college-educated whites, who make up half of the voters in the state, Trump won by 28 percentage points over Clinton. Wisconsin became a national political flashpoint in August after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in the city of Kenosha. Even though Trump attempted to use the violence that subsequently erupted, to paint Democrats as “weak” on crime, multiple polls conducted following Trump’s strategy revealed that it had little effect on Wisconsin voters.
