For many years, I’ve composed one sort of “prediction” based in analysis of various factors in presidential elections. While I used to predict on the basis of the candidates’ charts, I now tend to look at “real world” conditions, since they override any sentimentality.

As many of you know, I’ve also had a long life as a political analyst on various levels, from local to international. During my years as an associate in a Washington DC think tank, I learned a lot about analyzing all kinds of things related to elections and candidates. Today you get some “hard political analysis” based on advanced election analytics.

We’ll begin our class by reminding you that “all politics is local.” That’s why national polls are only of limited use, since we don’t conduct a national election; we conduct 51 local elections. So if we want to get an accurate snapshot of which states will actually vote one way or the other, we have to see the pattern of how each individual state’s citizens voted.

When we tabulate which states have consistently gone to one or the other party, we see that only a few states have swung between the parties over the past 10 elections. That means they are reliably going to vote a certain way. That gives added value to the states capable of voting differently than they did in the last election, and why they are called “swing” or “battleground” states.

These swing states constitute the main focus of our election, since they will show us both who is likely to win the presidency, as well as critical Senate seats determining the majority rule in that body. That means we have to take an even narrower focus on the states supposedly “in play” since they will determine the next administration and Congress.

To give a nod to national numbers, in 2016 Trump got 63 million votes and Clinton got 66 million, with Johnson and Stein getting 6 million between them which was enough to throw the election to Trump. I seriously doubt third party candidates will get 6 million votes this time. As we are on track to have as many as 140 million votes or more, the Dems begin with a serious vote advantage, now that the rolls weren’t stripped of millions of legal voters. Even a 10% increase in voting numbers would give a substantial boost to Dems, especially if those numbers are in swing states.

Also remember that in 2016 Trump was an unknown quantity; now the entire world knows him for what he is and what he isn’t. There are few undecideds to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s now running on his 4 disastrous years in office. Seniors and women are already voting against him in large numbers as of this post.

So Which States Do We Focus on Election Night 2020?

Obviously, because of time zone considerations and the variables in when polls close in certain states, it’s not a clean and easy determination where everything happens in a certain orderly sequences. In GA and KY, polls close at 7 pm EST; in NC and OH they close at 7:30 PM; in FL, PA, and ME, they close at 8 pm; and AZ, MI, MN, WI, and TX close at 8 pm EST. Because some of these states allow mail vote counting before election day, while others don’t allow counting until election day, results are always delayed, sometimes as long as a week. This is history.

Still, we will have enough vote totals from the following states to get a clear picture of which way the winds of electional destiny are blowing by 9 pm EST. They are, in a loose ranking of importance, FL, PA, NC, OH, MI, WI, and to a lesser degree GA, TX, and AZ, more in terms of long term trends than swinging this election.

Based in past voting trends, we begin with assuming that Dems have states totaling 203 Electoral Votes and Repubs having 125, with 210 Electoral Votes up for grabs. Right now, NPR indicates 216 electoral votes are “likely Dem” and 108 are “likely Repub.” There are 63 EV “lean Dem” and 17 EV “lean Repub,” with 134 “tossup” as of a few days ago.

As many swing states are in the Eastern or Central time zones, we’ll have a good picture of whether this election will be a blowout for Biden or a squeaker for Trump. So let’s take a look at the signs and signals available to us as election results come in!

FLORIDA

The perpetual swingiest state of all, Biden can win without Florida but Trump cannot win without Florida. If Biden takes Florida, it’s game over. As results come in, pay particular attention to the counties along the I 4 corridor (Pinellas, Hillsboro, Polk, Osceola, and Orange counties) since they hold the key to understanding the senior vote and the Puerto Rican vote.

The corridor begins at St. Petersburg with its major senior demographic, goes east through Tampa with its urban voters, and includes the huge city of Orlando. The corridor has 900,000 Puerto Rican registered voters living there who trend Democratic, offsetting the slighter larger amount of Cubans in Miami-Dade who trend Republican. If Trump loses that region by 250,000 or more, he loses Florida.

Pinellas with its major senior population consistently picks presidential winners, and Sumpter county will also give us information which way the seniors are trending. Basically, if Biden increases his share of Pinellas, or Trump decreases his numbers in Sumpter, it’s a Biden win, according to one analysis done by Wall Street.

The other major factor in Florida is the turnout in Miami-Dade county. Biden needs at least a 30% victory margin there, as well as Orange county, to take the state. Biden needs a victory margin of 300,000 in M-D and 800,000 in the entire M-D, Broward, and Palm Beach county area.

PENNSYLVANIA

While the state as a whole is trending blue, the majority of rural counties are deep red. And because of state voting laws, it could be a week before we find any kind of reasonably accurate vote totals. That said, Biden’s up at this time. If Biden wins PA, it’s game over for Trump.

In PA, pay particular attention to Beaver county, which Trump won by 19 points in 2016. If he goes even a few points lower, he’ll probably lose PA. Bucks county is another to keep your eye on, because it was a virtual tie in 2016. If it trends either direction, it’s another indicator of who will likely win PA.

NORTH CAROLINA

North Carolina is bluer than its voting record implies, due to Republican gerrymandering which has diluted the vote of African Americans in that state. The state’s been through numerous court cases where Republicans have been busted for deliberately cheating to win, and then rigging the game so no one else can ever win more than a small minority of seats. It is now a true “battleground” state. Also worth noting is that third party candidates siphoned off over 200,000 votes the last time which are up for grabs this time.

Keep your eye on vote tallies from Wake county (Raleigh), Durham county (Durham) and Mecklenburg county (Charlotte), since the first two are part of the “Research Triangle.” If Biden maintains a +30 lead in these three, and/or wins by 500-600,000 votes, he wins NC. Also keep your eye on Bladen and Granville counties to estimate whether the African American turnout is greater than it was for Clinton. If Biden improves the Dem vote in Granville, Gates, and Martin counties he wins. Turnout is key to whether Dems will take the state or not.

GEORGIA

Georgia’s in play this year? That’s one of the unlikeliest scenarios possible, unless we also add Texas which is supposedly in play (it’s not.) But Georgia is. In Georgia, look to the vote totals coming out of Atlanta county, Gwinett county, and Cobb county, since these Atlanta suburbs have been trending blue. If Biden improves by 8 points over Ms. Clinton, and/or gets over 1.2 million votes from these three counties, he wins Georgia.

Here it’s worth noting that both NC and GA have important Senate races which are neck and neck. If Biden prevails, so will the Dem Senate candidates in two races; if Trump prevails, it’s still a toss-up as to which Senate candidate will win. Both Tillis trails Cunningham in NC, and Ossoff has a good chance of beating Perdue because Perdue is ducking charges of insider trading off the coronavirus. That could also be a factor in Loeffler’s Senate campaign in GA, which likely is going to a runoff.

Other Battleground States

OHIO is likely to go Republican. Wood county is a bellweather in that state, since it’s picked every winner since 1964 and all but 7 since 1892. And it splits tickets, since it went for Trump and Sherrod Brown in 2016. I checked the most recent poll done in Wood county (mid-August 2020) and it indicated a split of 48-48 between the two candidates, with 4 undecided. Since then it seems Biden has pulled ahead a little.

MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN are going Democratic in a big way, now that Republicans have been unable to replicate stripping hundreds of thousands of legal voters from the rolls in those states as they did in 2016 via “Crosscheck.” (Yes, it’s all extensively documented.) In MI, Biden wins if Kent county goes blue and Macomb county replicates Obama’s numbers. In WI, Biden wins if he gets more than 450,000 votes from Milwaukee, or if Trump loses Kenosha county.

ARIZONA is definitely a harbinger of the future, as it is a diverse and fast growing state, with the majority of voters concentrated in Maricopa county (Phoenix). The Phoenix area has over half the state’s voters, and the metro area is both very blue and very red, depending on what part you’re in. In AZ, it’s a snapshot of the future of the region, and in a strange twist, it’s as likely that Senate candidate Mark Kelly will pull Biden to victory as it is Biden pulling Kelly to victory, as Kelly is a local hero and very strong candidate who is overwhelmingly predicted to win his Senate race.

AZ demographics break out this way: in 2016, the vote was 1,252,000 for Trump, and 1,161,000 for Clinton. Johnson got 106,000, and Stein got 34,000. Again, third parties siphoned enough votes away from Clinton to make this into a true swing state. In Maricopa county (2016) it was 748,000 for Trump, and 702,000 for Clinton, and in Pima county (Tucson) it was 171,000 for Trump and 236,000 for Clinton. So if Biden improves his vote total by 100,000 in these two counties, he wins Arizona in 2020. Given Maricopa county has been one of the fastest growing counties in the US and is trending blue, there’s a good possibility that Biden will take Arizona.

Again, my call is that Democrats will pick up at least 5 seats in the House, and maybe as many as 10. They will pick up 4 Senate seats in Maine, North Carolina, Arizona, and Colorado, with Iowa a tossup. They will lose AL.

As I’ve said before, the presidential race will hinge on whether the count is honest. If the machines and servers aren’t hacked, Biden wins. If the margin of victory is so large it makes legal challenges moot, Biden wins. If Biden takes Florida, it’s game over. If Biden takes North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Michigan, he wins. If he takes Pennsylvania he wins. The only way Trump wins is to get Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and everything he got in 2016. Even if he gets all of them but loses Georgia and Nevada, he loses. As you can see, Biden’s electoral route to victory is far simpler than Trump’s.

That’s my 2020 analysis. I’ll be watching to see which counties swing which direction. We may even know who’s president earlier than we think!

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