Deep dive shows 2024 election could hinge on just 400K voters in 3 states: Dem strategist
As part of a deep dive into what to expect in the 2024 presidential election, one noted Democratic strategist claimed the outcome between presumptive nominees Donald Trump and President Joe Biden could hinge on just 400,000 voters.
According to the report from the Washington Post, the continued use of the Electoral College means that the few remaining swing states will have an outsized impact on the results of a national election.
As the report notes, there is once again the possibility that the candidate who gets the most votes nationally will be standing on the sidelines come inauguration Day.
"That 18th-century system — which is unlike anything used by the United States’ 21st-century democratic peers — has aged in surprising ways," the report reads. "Premised on the idea that states should each choose electors who would then select a president, the system increasingly distorts the democratic process as partisan divisions grow along geographic lines."
The report adds that campaign analysts have refined where to focus their efforts down to what are described as "persuadable voters" who can flip an election one way or the other.
Noted Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who worked on campaigns for former Govs. Jerry Brown (D-CA) and Howard Dean (D-VT), pointed to how tiny the margin of error has become.
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“It’s now getting to the point where you are probably talking about 400,000 people in three or four states. That is what it is getting down to,” he told the Post. “It does mean that more and more people feel that they don’t have a say.”
Republican strategist Mike Shields agreed.
“We are in an era of politics where data makes campaign strategy highly sophisticated and specialized, which creates smaller and smaller universes of what we call ‘gettable voters,’” he stated. “Instead of using increased spending to target a broader swath of voters, you have more and more money focused on specific voters that campaigns think will be decisive in the electoral college.”
Michael Whatley, chair of the North Carolina GOP admitted their outreach in the swing state will zero on a minuscule number of voters, telling the Post, "We’re looking at 5.5 million votes that will be cast in North Carolina. It’ll be down to 100,000 voters who are undecided going into the election that we’re going to be targeting and communicating with. We can target them.”
Ben Wikler, the Democratic Party chair in increasingly important Wisconsin claimed both parties start with approximately 48 percent of the vote and work from there.
“We look for inconsistent voters who will probably vote for a Democrat if they vote and then we look at ticket splitter or swing voters,” he explained.
As a cautionary note, the Post reported, "In 2020, about 45,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin could have changed the outcome of that race, even though Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million."
You can read more here.
Donald Trump
MSNBC