Look, you’re my ticket to the White House: you, Pennsylvania. No, it’s not hyperbole. You’re the ticket to the White House.
— President Biden, quoted by the Washington Post.
He’s not wrong, but Arizona and Wisconsin may be the two most important states for a Democratic victory in 2024.
As 2016 demonstrated, we can’t rely on conventional wisdom to predict electoral success in the future. While many think Trump’s capture of the Blue Wall1 in 2016 was a one-time event, that’s only because Biden won it back in 2020. That’s the only presidential election we have had since then, so we can’t say with any confidence it won’t happen again. However, there is reason to believe that Biden can once again win the Blue Wall. Will that guarantee him re-election? Not this year. It may guarantee him an electoral vote tie, but not an outright victory.2 That’s because of the changing relative population of the states in the last decennial Census, which translates into a redistribution of electoral votes.
There are four states that can probably guarantee a Biden victory in 2024: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona. By holding onto all the other relatively safe Democratic states, adding these four states will get Biden to 280 electoral votes, ten more than he needs for victory. But why do I focus on Arizona and Wisconsin today? It’s not just because I think Biden will win Michigan and Pennsylvania,3 but because there are important dynamics in the other two states that demand attention from potential traveling campaign volunteers.
To be sure, all four states have Senate races and at least one important Congressional race. In that sense they all qualify as trifecta states and any of them can use your help this year. But I want to pay special attention to Arizona and Wisconsin because either one of them may actually be the tipping state to a Biden victory in November. I think that is less true of Pennsylvania and Michigan, but it’s not out of the question.
UVA Center for Politics’ Larry Sabato explains how important these two states could be this year:
Though Biden carried both states by less than a percentage point in 2020, we’ve considered Wisconsin the must-win state for him while if he carried Arizona again, it would have been, to us, “icing on the cake.” Our reasoning is that while Arizona was an important flip for the Biden campaign in 2020, Biden winning Wisconsin would likely be a sign that he’s holding up well in the electorally critical Midwest. Wisconsin was also the tipping point state in the last two presidential elections.
But let’s consider Map 1. In this scenario, Trump does just well enough in Georgia to narrowly flip it back and picks up Nevada, which is friendlier to third parties than many other swing states. Biden’s strength in the Midwest mostly holds but, with Nebraska using a winner-take-all format, Arizona, with 11 electoral votes, becomes more critical than Wisconsin, with 10. Biden 2020 minus Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Nebraska’s 2nd District vote would leave him at 269, one vote short. But swap out Arizona for Wisconsin, and Biden gets to exactly 270 in this scenario.
Map 1: Hypothetical scenario with Arizona providing Biden’s 270th electoral vote
- Larry Sabato, Making Sense of Arizona’s New Electoral Landscape
You can see the problem here if Biden wins Arizona, but not Wisconsin. In that scenario, Biden and Trump tie at 269 electoral votes.4 If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes (270), then the House of Representatives chooses the president from the top three vote-getters. It does this by delegation, with each state getting one vote in the process. Currently, 26 states have Republican-majority delegations, 24 have Democratic-majority delegations, and three have neither party as a majority delegations. The vote in the House must also be by majority, and Republicans have a bare majority of states at 26. This means an electoral vote tie will result in a Trump victory.5 Biden needs to win at least 270 votes to be re-elected, so winning Arizona is more important than winning Wisconsin – but only in a world where that is an actual trade-off. It is likely that if Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota all vote for Biden, so will Wisconsin. Regional election trends tend that way, but it is by no means certain.
There are other reasons to focus on Arizona and Wisconsin this year. Both states have important state supreme court retention elections. In Wisconsin, the battle over the state supreme court was key to reversing the extremely partisan legislative maps the Republican legislature has had in place over the past decade. Those maps made it possible for Republicans to have (near/actual) supermajorities in the state legislature and Congressional delegation despite Democrats winning the statewide vote in 14 of the past 17 elections. This year, thanks to a landslide 2023 victory by progressive Janet Protasiewicz, new maps are in place that make Wisconsin competitive in state and federal legislative races.6 A step backwards in composition of the court could upend this - not this year, but in future elections.
In Arizona, an important abortion question is on the ballot. As you no doubt have heard, the state supreme court ruled that under Dobbs7 an 1864 statute outlawing abortion can be enforced. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, elected in 2022 by a margin of 300 votes, says she will not enforce it. However, she cannot do much to stop local district attorneys from enforcing it. The ballot measure will guarantee Arizonians a right to reproductive healthcare. The court case is playing out so badly for Republicans in Arizona that likely GOP Senate nominee Kari Lake, who just a couple years ago supported banning abortion, has spoken out against the ruling.8
Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
It may guarantee a victory depending on what Nebraska and Maine do about their winner-take-all systems. See Note 4 below.
I do.
In Sabato’s hypothetical scenario, Nebraska has gone to a winner-take-all electoral system and Maine has remained a state that gives electoral votes by Congressional district. So, in Map 1 Trump wins all of Nebraska’s votes and one from Maine. However, Maine Democrats are floating the idea that if Nebraska makes the change to winner-take-all, Maine will also. If that happens, then Biden would win 270 votes with a Wisconsin victory and an Arizona loss and the presidency.
Assuming the vice-presidency is also a tie, the Senate picks the winner. In this case, each Senator gets a vote and the winner must get a majority (51). If the House has not picked a president by January 20th, the Senate’s choice for VP becomes acting President.
Johnson v. Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, et al., Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Case No. 2021AP1450-0A (2024).
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org., 142 S. Ct. 422 (2021).
She is not the first Republican who has cynically called for outlawing abortion to excite her base when it appeared it would not be outlawed. She is not the only one now running from her past statements because her base is too small to win her elections on their own.