States where democrats or republicans won big in 2016 are likely to do the same in 2020.  It is all about who can win  the big swing states.

These states, and their electoral votes  are:  Michigan (MI, 16 votes),  Wisconsin (WI,10), Pennsylvania (PA, 20), Florida (FL, 29), Arizona (AZ, 11).   All total, these 5 states have 86 electoral votes.

There’s not universal agreement on the swing states.  Some forecasters include North Carolina (NC, 15),  New Hampshire (NH, 4) and Iowa (IA, 6) adding another 25 electoral votes to the “who really knows” category.

There’s also a lean republican category, which includes Georgia (GA, 16) and Ohio (OH, 18) for another 34 votes.  Some feel Florida should also be in this category.

So, the lazy man’s approach is to take the solid states’ vote (Rep 125, Dem 188), and all the possible swing states (86 + 25 + 34 = 145) and divide by 2, giving each party 72 votes.  Nobody gets 270 votes, but the Democrats with 260 votes are a lot closer than Republicans with 197 electoral votes.

This approach didn’t work in 2016 and it’s not likely to work in 2020.  It isn’t enough for the candidates to convince voters that they should be president for the next four years, they must be able to get their supporters to show up at the polls.

Another perverse aspect of forecasting – any positive results are likely to make supporters of a particular candidate less likely to show up at the polls, because they figure their vote is unnecessary.  This is the complacency factor, that dogged Hillary Clinton.

However,  the 9 states  (WI, PA, FL, AZ, NC, NH, IA, GA, OH)  is where all the action will be centered.  Well maybe just 8 hot spots because NH has only 4 electoral votes.   Pennsylvania and Florida are super hot spots.

Still very early but let the games begin!

Stay tuned,

Dave