With less than a year until the 2024 presidential election ends, most people believe the political landscape couldn’t be more uncertain. Will Trump secure the GOP nomination? Will Biden remain on the Democratic ticket? Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be on the ballot in all states, or at least the ones that matter? Will No Labels issue a unity ticket? Are Trump’s accusations (which most believe to be politically motivated) will lead to convictions and will Hunter Biden’s corruption investigation ruin his father’s chances?
As conservatives, it’s fun to think about the political earthquake that Biden’s departure would cause. This is also unlikely to be ours the latest nationwide survey shows that the Democrats’ most viable support, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is fine, but not all that doable. In the duel with Trump, he loses six points and is 11 points behind Independent voters.
These are massive variables. Any combination of outcomes could drastically change the dynamics of the election. In search of a constant variable, this election really comes down to a tale of two electoral maps based on a modern set of battleground states. In previous elections, Republicans looked to states like Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and Florida as battleground states ripe for potential victory. Traditional battlefield architecture remained relatively unchanged during the years of globalization between the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Trump’s candidacy changed that.
While 160 million people may vote in November’s election, only about 50,000 voters spread across a modern battleground map that includes Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin will decide the next occupation of the White House.
With the exception of Nevada, each of these modern battleground states went for Trump in 2016 but opted for Biden in 2020. Since then, Ohio and Florida have gone solidly red and reliably Republican in 2024, largely thanks to Trump. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin contributed to Trump’s victory in 2016, and the “forgotten men and women” constituency defeated both country club Republicans and urban elite progressives. These were states where Trump really got into the “flip” column where Republicans before him couldn’t.
For Republicans who “never support Trump” or “don’t want Trump,” it might be fun to imagine someone else, like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, winning the GOP nomination. But according to almost every national poll, including ours, the likelihood that someone other than Trump will secure the GOP nomination is as likely as the likelihood that Sen. John Fetterman will want to wear a suit to work.
This modern battlefield map provides a better path to victory than the previous map. But victory may look different when a non-Trump Republican leads the vote. For example, if Nikki Haley, who is currently having her moment as a distant second to Trump, manages to win the GOP nomination, she will likely win three of the five battleground states: Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. And he probably wins more easily than Trump in those states.
That leaves Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Both states have Democratic governors, two Democratic senators in Pennsylvania and a party split in Wisconsin. Both abandoned Trump in 2020 after repositioning themselves in 2016. Could Nikki Haley or another non-Trump Republican be able to turn out enough voters in these states to secure victory? Here again, unlikely.
In this scenario, non-Trump Republicans represent a return to the senior legacy map, as opposed to what voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin see as a return to being part of an unrepresented and forgotten electorate. Without Trump, it’s unlikely someone like Haley will be able to take over as her champion and get voters to the ballot box in the same way Trump has shown.
The modern battleground map is more favorable to Trump and Republicans who didn’t vote. But the only way to win is to eliminate Trump’s forgotten men and women of 2016 while winning over suburban voters.
Trump’s emergence in politics has marked a modern era and a modern map for 2024 – one more favorable to a Republican victory in 2024. As GOP momentum weakens, and regardless of the outcome, Republicans must build on this map, prepare to expand our efforts on the ground, and expect tight margins. Remember that these states will be decided by 50,000 voters – every vote counts.
Mitch Brown is a pollster and director of political strategy at Cygnal, the Republican Party’s fastest-growing and most true research firm.
