What’s Going on with the Swing States?

The 2016 presidential election was an interesting one. First, the winner of the popular vote did not win the electoral college. Second, the winner of the electoral college won it by the narrowest of margins. 

Now, the actual electoral college results were themselves not that close, 304 to 227. That said, there were three states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – where the popular vote difference was under 1%. And those 3 states accounted for 46 electoral votes. In other words, less than 30,000 people across those 3 states could have swung the election!

2020 Vs. 2016

Right now, it looks like Biden’s ahead. CNN’s got him up 5%, CBS 6%, Reuters and Monmouth 9%, and Quinnipiac 11%. 

Something very similar, though, happened back in 2016, didn’t it? On November 6, 2016, the website 270towin.com averaged 10 major polls, and found Clinton ahead of Trump by a good 3%.

Needless to say, that was not reflected in the final results, was it? 

To be truthful, there really wasn’t that big a difference relative to popular vote. Clinton still won by 2%. 

What really made a difference, though, was what happened in those swing states mentioned above. In particular, each of those states had Clinton leading by a good bit – 3% for Pennsylvania, 5% for Michigan, and 7% for Wisconsin.

So, how do these numbers compare to those from 2020 (percentages are for Dems)?

State	2016 Poll	2020 Poll	Difference	Result
PA	3%	6%	3%	Biden
MI	5%	5%	0%	???
WI	7%	3%	-4%	Trump

In other words, based on what happened in 2016, Pennsylvania may be the only swing state to flip in 2020. With everything else the same, that would give Biden 247 electoral votes, still short of 270. If, however, Michigan were also to go blue, the total would then be 263 – still not enough.

Additional Swing States?

Needless to say, 2020 won’t be exactly like 2016. There may, in fact, be some states that might flip even though they weren’t that close back then. 

In particular, I noticed that there are a couple of states that were red in the polls and the election back in 2016, but are now leaning blue in the latest 2020 polls – North Carolina (1%), Arizona (3%), and Florida (4%).

Applying the same kind of logic as I did to those original 3 states, here’s how these new swings states shook out back then (percentages are for Republicans this time):

State	2016 Poll	2016 Election	Difference
NC	1%	-4%	-3%
AZ	4%	-4%	0%
FL	0%	-1%	-1%

In other words, that difference is what Biden will need to overcome in polling to actually have a shot at swinging these states. Though it’s a draw in Arizona, he’ll have to do a little better in Florida and a lot better in NC.

Now, let’s see how that shakes out given Biden’s current polling (percentages are for Biden this time):

State	2016 Difference	2020 Poll	Result
NC	3%	1%	Trump
AZ	0%	3%	Biden
FL	1%	4%	Biden

In other words, he only needed to do better than Trump in Arizona, and he got it. Similarly, he only needed to do better than 1% in Florida and did so. Only in NC was he unable to overcome the polling bias from 2016.

So, if we add the 2 states swinging toward Biden to the 2016 baseline, we’ve got 267 – 3 short! Only when we add Pennsylvania, from above, do we get over 270 – 287, to be exact. Finally, the Dems win.

Major caveat here … Yes, a lot will change before November. This is definitely something we can keep our eye on ‘til then though. 

Stay tuned!