Some experts add Nevada to the list some throw in Michigan, North Carolina or New Hampshire if they’re defining the playing field a little more broadly. These four states are considered by some the top battlegrounds going into 2024. Three of those states - Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania - were within 1 point of Wisconsin. In 2020, the outcome in six other states was within 3 points of Wisconsin’s margin: Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. To get a fuller picture of the top battlegrounds over the decades, you need to widen the lens to include states where the winning margin was close to the margin in the tipping point state. Of course, the tipping point state isn’t the only one that matters in a close election, since there are usually other battlegrounds that differ from it only slightly in their outcomes. They were the places that would have decided the presidency had the Electoral College come down to a single state. But these states occupied the center of the Electoral College in those presidential contests. Not all these states were close, because not all these national elections were close. Outside the Great Lakes region, California was the tipping point state in 1948, Florida in 19 Missouri in 1960 Washington state in 1964 Tennessee in 1992 and Colorado in 20. That’s 11 out of the past 19 presidential contests. Illinois was the tipping point state in 1980 Ohio in 1968, 19 Michigan in 1952, 19 Pennsylvania in 1996 and Wisconsin in 1976, 20. It’s a list dominated by the Great Lakes states, which have for decades supplied a disproportionate share of presidential battlegrounds. Great Lakes states are a perennial presidential battleground The website “Sabato’s Crystal Ball” recently calculated the “tipping point state” in every presidential election since 1948. They could have been captured by the other party without changing the winner. But these states weren’t mathematically indispensable, using this “tipping point” logic. In both these elections, the winner won some additional states by even smaller margins than Wisconsin, padding their electoral majorities: Pennsylvania and Michigan for Trump in 2016 and Arizona and Georgia for Biden in 2020. Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes then put Trump over the top he won it by just under eight-tenths of a point. If you keep adding the electoral votes of the other states Trump carried by decreasing margins, you get to Florida’s 29 votes, which Trump won by 1.2 points, giving him 260 votes. Trump’s biggest margin was 46.3 points in Wyoming (3 electoral votes), followed by 41.7 points in West Virginia (5 votes) and 36.4 points in Oklahoma (7 votes). You can do the same exercise for the 2016 election. Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes then put Biden over the top he won it by just over six-tenths of a point. That gave him 269 electoral votes, one vote shy of an outright majority. If you keep adding the electoral votes of other states that Biden carried by decreasing margins, you eventually get to Pennsylvania, which had 20 electoral votes and which Biden won by 1.2 points. (which had 3 electoral votes), followed by 35.4 points in Vermont (3 votes), 33.5 points in Massachusetts (11 votes), 33.2 points in Maryland (10 votes), and so on. This is calculated by ranking every state and the District of Columbia from reddest to bluest (or vice versa) based on their popular vote margin, then identifying the state in between those poles whose electoral votes are the difference between winning and losing.Īnother way of saying it: the tipping point state is the “median” electoral prize: there are an almost equal number of electoral votes to the right of that state and to the left of that state.įor example, Biden’s biggest victory margin in 2020 was 87 points in Washington, D.C. Instead, it refers to the state that pushes the winner past the finish line, supplying the final votes he or she needs to reach a majority of 270 in the Electoral College. It is not a measure of the state that most closely reflects the national popular vote that was Michigan last time. It is not a measure of the closest state in a presidential election that was Georgia last time. “Tipping point” is a concept that has gained currency among analysts as a way of capturing the relative importance of battleground states to the Electoral College outcome. The case for this lies in its role as the “tipping point state” in 20.
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