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State of Play: Massachusetts
1920, 1924, 1960 (both parties!), 1972, 1988, 2004, 2012: the last century was replete with Massachusetts natives and officeholders on major party tickets….even if the last one, Mitt Romney, spent a lot of time reassuring his party’s right flank that his days as a moderate New Englander were nothing to worry about. The state carried tremendous political weight in the country’s earliest days, of course, but its combination of commercial heft and professional politics contested between mostly-Protestant Yankee Republicans and mostly-Catholic Democrats of immigrant stock meant that it produced quite a few candidates on the national stage well beyond the days when it when it was a top-ten state in population, as it was through the 1970 Census. There’s not much in the way of competitive races to talk about there this cycle, but that in fact tells its own story: in an era where political divides along educational lines are taking on ever-greater prominence, Massachusetts is not only a highly-educated state but one where its plethora of colleges means that more people work in higher ed here than do in many states with larger populations. It’s not shocking, then, that the state rejected Trump even more harshly in 2020 than it had in 2016: the realignment along these lines is strong and Massachusetts does not have a factor that would offset it, like a high rate of religious adherence.
Click here to continue reading.State of Play: Connecticut
Is it the Nutmeg State? Is it the Constitution State? Only one allows for an easy demonym. That’s all the more important in a state whose name does not facilitate one (“Connecticutian?” “Connecticuter?” The syllable emphasis is awkward). What it is for sure is a Democratic state, and we’re all a bit removed from the days when a wider variety of states might earn a presidential candidate visit on the final weekend before the election – or get an impromptu speech after midnight. That’s what happened in the early morning hours of November 6, 1960, when John F. Kennedy arrived in Waterbury two days before the election. A crowd of 40,000 souls had waited hours in the rain to greet him after a day of campaigning in New York, and an exhausted Kennedy was moved to address his drenched admirers from the hotel balcony before going to bed. He spoke for nearly an hour, calling the crowd the biggest of the campaign so far. In a manner that might remind us of the contrast in vigor that has marked the 2024 race, Kennedy noted that his opponent Richard Nixon had likely been asleep for hours at that point…and not unlike the Harris’ campaign’s emphasis on not going back, he noted that “now we are moving ahead.” Kennedy campaigned the next day in Bridgeport and New Haven, and went on to win the state comfortably over Nixon.
Click to continue reading.State of Play: Georgia
The Presidency: 16 electoral votes
Georgia has made the journey from the old Democratic Solid South of the post-Reconstruction era to the mostly-solid Republican era of the post-Civil Rights era South to a highly-competitive era where it ranks in that most exclusive of categories: the modern presidential swing state. Republicans continue to dominate the Congressional and state legislative ranks thanks to maps they drew for themselves, but Democrats are back in contention for statewide races. They flipped two U.S. Senate seats in 2020 (technically January 5, 2021), one of them for an unexpired term that necessitated another election two years later. Dems won that one too, with Rafael Warnock earning a full term in a hotly-contested race with ample national attention. And of course, in 2020 Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry Georgia since Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory.
State of Play: New Jersey
The Presidency: 14 electoral votes
Every four years, with rare exceptions, Republicans suggest that New Jersey is in play for the presidency. The Bush campaign did so in 2004. McCain did so in 2008. A Romney surrogate did so in 2012. And lo, the usually-demure Donald Trump upheld this time-honored tradition in 2016 and again this year. In reality, no Republican has carried New Jersey in a presidential election since George H.W. Bush did so in 1988. He came close in 1992 and his son substantially reduced the Democratic margin in 2004 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, but the streak remains intact.
State of Play: Pennsylvania
The Presidency – 19 electoral votes
This is, of course, the big one. Pennsylvania’s far from the largest state, with its 19 electoral votes representing a steady fall from its peak of 38 in the 1910s and 1920s. But it’s the largest of the seven close swing states. We can debate how competitive Florida and Texas are this cycle, but it’s clear that a Kamala Harris victory in those states would be icing on the victory cake. Pennsylvania, though, is on a knife’s edge as it was in 2004, 2016 and 2020.
State of Play: Delaware
The First State offers a dearth of state or federal electoral competition these days, with Democrats dominating to a greater extent than presidential results would lead one to assume. The state GOP is moribund, seemingly unable to recruit competitively. They lost their last two statewide offices, Treasurer and Auditor, in the 2018 Democratic wave. In 2022, Democrats tended to struggle in much bluer strongholds (like California and New York, while performing quite well in purple states) but the races in Delaware for Attorney General, Treasurer and Auditor all yielded solid eight-point Democratic wins, while the lone federal race on the ballot was a twelve-point Democratic victory. Further downballot, Republicans lost another seat in the state senate: where once they were tied 10-10 with a shot to flip the chamber in an early 2017 special election, they’re now reduced to a super-minority at 15-6. The situation in the other state legislative chamber is similar, with a 26-15 Democratic majority. Dems have held the Delaware Senate since 1974 and the Delaware House since 2008.
Click to continue reading.Introducing the 2024 State of Play Series
[Note: Ideally, this would be a 50-state series. And hopefully in 2026, it will be! But I got a pretty late start on it, and spun my wheels a bit from to time. I’ve got a bunch of states in the hopper, and we’ll see if I get a few more added to the pile before Tuesday.]
Starting Tuesday morning, each day I’ll be publishing one or two state-by-state looks at the 2024 election.
What does this series look like? For each state, my goal is to weave together three things: political geography, electoral history and the current political environment. This is the frame through which I like to analyze politics, as each element informs the other two. I’ve taken inspiration from the biennial Almanac of American Politics since grad school, before I got my start in government and politics as a career. Those publications certainly influence my writing, though I think 21st century politics – with its 24-hour news cycles and nationalized-to-a-fault political environment – has sanded them down a little bit. I want to recapture some of that exploratory sense of place as part of political discourse.
And for each state, I’ll take a look at the following, including our official WTM ratings for each:
- The presidential contest
- The U.S. Senate race if any (about a third of states do not have a Senate election this year)
- Congressional districts deemed competitive by any of our three-man ratings bureau (Matt, Jim and myself) – or by one of the various respectable ratings publications
- The gubernatorial election, where applicable (eleven states elect their governor in presidential years)
- Occasionally some discussion of the state legislature where notable and/or when time permits
- Some tables and stats and occasionally some pictures from rambles around the country over the years
I hope these are as enjoyable to read as they’ve been to write, and provide a little bit of color and narrative that you might not be finding elsewhere. I’ll see you first thing tomorrow with the first two entries in our series, Delaware and Pennsylvania!
Aurora, Coachella and the Garden
While the Harris/Walz campaign maintains a laser-like focus on the seven states universally considered to be swing states in this presidential campaign (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin), the Trump campaign is taking a somewhat different approach. They’re hitting those states still, but also mixing in large, attention-grabbing events in blue states. Recent stops in Aurora and Coachella are not an indication that they’re remotely competitive in Colorado or California. Nor does Trump’s upcoming date to finally play Madison Square Garden mean he can win New York (though it’ll be tighter than 2016 and 2020 in the Empire State). So what’s he up to?
The Trump campaign argues that these events are necessary to ensure “the media cannot look away and refuse to cover” what their candidate is doing and proposing. Putting aside his campaign’s propensity to say things that are not true, this claim strains credulity because the Trump campaign has no trouble – zilch, nada, none – getting “the media” to cover everything they say and do. The campaign shut down a McDonald’s for an afternoon so Trump could hand French fries to five carefully-selected, non-paying customers, and you won’t have any trouble finding coverage of this non-event.
Democratic observers meanwhile have suggested that these events keep Trump’s profile a little bit lower in swing states at a time when more Trump is not necessarily better for the handful of remaining undecided voters. I’m not persuaded by that; as Ed Kilgore notes, his rallies have some virality regardless of where he does them. Inside the conservative bubble, they’ll argue that it demonstrates that his 2024 campaign is a nationwide cultural phenomenon; mainstream media will reinforce that in the course of normal reporting. Exposure is a feature and never a bug when it comes to the Trump campaign.
When Trump did an event at the Nassau Coliseum (I’m not going to call it by its weird corporate name; we all know it as the Coliseum – or Mausoleum for us Rangers fans) in mid-September, I assumed it was all about ginning up enthusiasm and engagement for Congressional races: there’s a couple of competitive district on Long Island and several more in the Hudson Valley, so an NYC-area rally served to focus attention on seats the Republicans need to preserve and expand their slim majority in the House of Representatives. That holds true for the Coachella rally too, as southern California is host to a number of competitive House seats. Aurora is the focal point of Colorado’s lone competitive House race this year.
To the extent Trump thinks about actual governance and the majorities that facilitate them, there’s a logic to pursuing these events and maximizing his side’s turnout. That said…it’s somewhat presumptuous to pursue downballot supremacy when you haven’t locked up the presidential contest yet. Maybe his internal polling says he’s home and dry, but public polling still shows a coin flip. This may be why some have located a more sinister aspect: this thread from Veterans for Responsible Leadership suggests that Trump is looking to work the rank and file into a frenzy in populous states like California and New York where his supporters are clearly a minority, but are huge in terms of raw numbers. It’s a dark thread, suggesting that the goal of that frenzy is to produce the shock troops to enforce Trump’s inevitable declaration of victory no matter what the vote count actually says. Taegan Goddard, meanwhile, argues that it’s about the House…but not simply a majority. It’s about a majority that will demand a fully Trump-aligned Speaker of the House when it comes time to count electoral votes. Leverage does seem to be a concept Trump understands well enough, so I could see Taegan being right.
I can see any of the above being plausible, but I think Occam’s Razor implies that the biggest showman wants to do the biggest shows, in places that generate bigger headlines. So that means Aurora, which he wants people to believe is overrun by Venezuelan gangs (local law enforcement dismisses Trump’s claim). It means Coachella, home of a festival of some cultural import (Trump understands little as well as he understands a crowd). And it means Madison Square Garden, in his native New York City (many have pointed to the 1939 Nazi rally at MSG as an inspiration, though I suspect Trump’s knowledge there is passing while his obsession with the city’s iconic venue is enduring).
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For the record, I tend to think the unbelievably well-funded Harris campaign would be smart to do some big events in places where they could draw a crowd and dominate local media coverage for a day or two even if they can’t win the state this year. Think Nashville, or New Orleans, or any number of cities in Texas. They should do it not because it stimulates bored political reporters or placates “the base” – but because it would reinforce the Harris/Walz campaign’s message of unity for all Americans, as something bigger than strategic considerations. It would signal that they have something to everyone – even those outside the only seven states thought to matter in presidential politics. It would be a good investment in today’s messaging and tomorrow’s campaign infrastructure.
Within the Margin 