Another presidential cycle is looming. As always, a tiny portion of voters in a select few states will decide the president, and these “swing states” will dominate the candidates’ attention, and therefore national attention as well. 

The idea that only a handful of states are considered “close” and therefore get outsized attention every cycle is a backwards one, but this is the reality we live in when it comes to United States presidential elections.1Plus, it’s not like California and New York don’t have a lot of power – or like they don’t get to also cast electoral votes that do matter. They’re just considered “safe” for the Democratic candidate pretty much no matter who the nominees from each party are, so they don’t figure into the calculus as candidates determine where to place resources. Saying they “don’t matter” isn’t really fair. Data from the National Popular Vote project emphasizes this: in the last four presidential elections, 22 states received no visits from the major party presidential and vice presidential candidates, nine more states received just one visit, and 96% of all of the campaign events featuring those on the ticket took place in just 12 states. 

This may seem unique to our current era of American history, a result of our increased clustering, self-selection, and intensified partisanship. But it’s not really. There’s almost no correlation between the number of states whose margins were less than 5% in presidential elections and the advance in years in the postwar era. In 1972, there were no states which went for either candidate by less than 5%. In 2016, there were 11; just four years prior there were only four.

So where does that leave us coming up on 2024 – what are the swing states this cycle? 

It Depends on the National Environment

2024 will probably be a Democratic leaning year. Not because of any particular event, candidate, or factor – simply because most years are. Republicans have won the popular vote in exactly one presidential election in the last 30 years, and that was almost 20 years ago in 2004. The national environment was about 4.5% Democratic leaning in 2020, 2% in 2016, 4% in 2012, 7% in 2008… Republicans in the 21s century struggle to build a majoritarian coalition and their platform has alienated a majority of voters. There are dozens of takes on this phenomenon that are more educated than mine, but the numbers speak for themselves: the GOP really struggles to win the popular vote in presidential elections, and this is starting to hurt them in midterms too.

2024 will also, almost certainly, feature an incumbent president, an advantage often ignored by pundits and the opposing party. In this century, only one – Donald Trump – has lost. Given that Biden is unlikely to face a serious primary challenge (sorry, Marianne Williamson) within the Democratic Party, he’s tactfully moved towards the center, and can expect the wind at his back in 2024. Biden may have an approval rating that could use some work, so there’s a lot of wiggle room, but it seems pretty clear that between the GOP’s struggle to attract a majority of voters (especially in the Trump era), an incumbent president, and Biden’s performance against an incumbent in 2020, the national popular vote will favor Democrats by somewhere between 2-6%.

That creates a pretty predictable range of states that will dominate the 2024 election. In fact, there are probably only six of them.

The Midwest

We’ll start in the region that gets the most attention, and one which is moving away from Democrats. There are really only two true swing states here: Pennsylvania (Biden +1.2% in 2020) and Wisconsin (Biden +0.63%). Seeing them on this list shouldn’t be too surprising – they were the tipping point states for a Trump and Biden victory respectively in 2020, and Wisconsin was the tipping point state for Trump in the 2016 election too. I’ve always been bearish on both of these states for Democrats in the long run, but – so long as Democrats have an incumbency advantage and these states stay marginally Republican-leaning – they are at least toss ups. 

Though Democrats can afford to move beyond the Midwest for electoral victory, Republicans can’t, and competing in the Midwest all-but-eliminates the GOP’s chance to make pickups in light blue territory like Michigan, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Though Michigan (Biden +2.8%) and, to a much lesser extent, Minnesota (Biden +7.1%) are tempting targets for the GOP, these are uphill battles. When the Republicans are struggling to pull in easy targets in the region like Wisconsin, they can’t afford to shoot for these states. 

However, this region is shrinking relative to the rest of the country, so the electoral votes are fleeting in the long run. So while the continued emphasis here can be useful in terms of focusing resources elsewhere, as the region’s demography continues along its trendlines, it’ll become redder and less electorally appealing. That’s not going to happen by 2024 though – so expect to hear plenty about “Scranton Joe” and the “WOW” counties next year.

The Sunbelt

The majority of the swing states, however, are in the Sunbelt – a region encompassing the southernmost third of the country. It’s here that the demographic trendlines are improving for the Democratic Party, and where the most tempting electoral votes are. 

Georgia (Biden +0.23%) has the potential to be an electoral savior for Democrats as they lose backing in the Midwest. Its 16 electoral votes make it worth almost as much as Ohio, and far more than Wisconsin. This populous, diverse, and rapidly growing state has the potential to be a powerhouse for the Democratic Party, buoyed by strong organizing and Black voters. Compared to the states in the Midwest, Georgia appears to be moving towards Democrats – but Republicans can’t afford to concede the state just yet despite losing three pivotal Senate runoffs and a presidential election there in the last three years.

On the other side of the country, Arizona (Biden +0.31%) offers similar Democratic opportunities. The Phoenix metropolitan area may be slightly smaller than the Atlanta one, and Arizona may have a smaller population overall, but the same general concept is at play: high turn out by urban voters and suburbanites can overcome the deep red rural areas, fortified by a strong underlying base of Black (or, in Arizona, Latino) voters. 

The same concept applies in Nevada (Biden +2.4%), though the Silver State is significantly smaller and its voters are far more concentrated in the suburbs of the Las Vegas metro. Nevada is trending away from Democrats, though – like North Carolina – it seems stuck in limbo, consistently favoring one party in national elections while still close enough to draw a lot of attention. In the 2022 midterm, Steve Sisolak, Nevada’s Democratic governor was the only governor or senator to lose reelection in the country, but it also reelected Democratic Senate Catherine Cortez Masto by just shy of 1%. Unlike the rest of the swing states, Nevada is pretty small – which you’d expect to help drive it out of the narrow election territory as the electorate can change more easily, but it’s only gotten more competitive over the last decade.

I evoked North Carolina (Trump +1.4%) so I might as well pay it some lip service. The Tar Heel State has been a tease for Democrats since 2008 – when it narrowly went for Barack Obama. Though the party has had more success at the state level (their current Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, was first elected in 2016 and reelected in 2020 – both years in which Trump carried the state), and the smattering of liberal and high-growth urban areas across the state seems like electoral destiny waiting to happen, North Carolina is stuck. The theory is that the Democrats’ urban strength should eventually overpower the Republicans and turn the state into a Virginia or Colorado, but that hasn’t panned out in North Carolina, let alone Florida and Texas. So, North Carolina, like Nevada, makes the list by nature of its perpetual lack of momentum: if the election leans Democratic by only 2%, both states are probably Republicans’ to lose. If it leans Democratic by 5%, Nevada’s in the bag and North Carolina could be really close.

Yes, Florida (Trump +3.4%) and Texas (Trump +5.6%) are tempting for Democrats. But, they are like what Michigan and Minnesota are to Republicans – each party needs to be able to win in North Carolina, or at least consistently in Arizona and Georgia, before investing resources in picking off one of these safer states. That said, Florida’s become something of a safe Republican state if recent midterm results are the only indicator you go by, whereas Texas jumped really quickly from a state that favored the GOP by double digits to a mid-sized polling error away from going for the Democrats. I’m not comfortable calling either a swing state for opposing reasons (one is rapidly running one way, the other is running quickly in the other) but, come 2032, don’t be surprised if one former safe Republican state has become a swing state, and one perennial swing state has become devoutly Republican.

Your 2024 Swing States

So there you have it: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are 2024’s swing states in waiting. The combined populations of these six states (and their 78 electoral votes) make up about 15% of the national population, and they will determine the winner of the presidential election. 

Assuming all other states vote as they did in the 2020 election, Democrats have 241 electoral votes without these states and Republicans have 219. The Democrat can win with just two of them, whereas the Republican would need at least three. All six of these states lean Republican, at varying levels (Arizona’s partisan lean is 7.6% more Republican than the nation overall, Nevada is only 2.5%), but Republicans cannot afford to take them for granted. After all, Joe Biden won five out of six of them against an incumbent Republican president just three years ago.