'Why isn’t Trump doing a little better here?' Swing state residents weigh in on election

26 October 2024

The Electoral College majority will come down to which candidate can win a handful of hard-fought battleground states that have shown a tendency to swing from red to blue in recent elections. A new report delves into how residents of these states are feeling as Election Day rapidly approaches.

According to the Guardian, residents of some hotly contested states like Pennsylvania are "beleaguered" by ads in what is the most expensive presidential election on record. OpenSecrets counted nearly $16 billion spent as of early October, outpacing the $15.1 billion spent in 2020. The publication interviewed voters in other swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin to learn what's motivating the most coveted voters to turn out on November 5.

In Arizona, where no Democrat aside from President Joe Biden in 2020 had won the state's electoral votes since Bill Clinton in 1996 (and Harry Truman before that, in 1948), voters noted how the political climate has become noticeably more favorable for Democrats. In addition to the presidency, voters in the Grand Canyon State are also electing a U.S. senator, and the state is home to two of the most competitive House of Representatives elections in the country. Arizona could end up determining which party controls the House, Senate and White House.

Arizona residents are also voting on a ballot initiative that could enshrine abortion rights into their state's constitution. So far, no abortion-related ballot measure has ever lost — even in Republican-controlled states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Ohio — since the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health ruling in 2022 that paved the way for states to ban abortion outright. There is also a significant number of "McCain Republicans" defecting from former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement that Democrats may benefit from in November.

University of Arizona political science professor Samara Klar told the Guardian that the Grand Canyon State's previous reputation as a Republican stronghold no longer holding water is puzzling, given the conditions that would normally lead to a Republican victory.

"Arizona is not a blue state,” Klar said. “Arizona has had very high inflation rates, very high increases in the cost of living, and an increase in the cost of gas. It’s a border state during a border crisis. A Republican candidate should be cleaning up in Arizona. So the question is: why isn’t Trump doing a little better here?”

Another state proving to be an enigma for political forecasters is Georgia, which broke for Biden by less than 12,000 total votes in 2020 after previously voting for Republicans in the past five consecutive elections. The Wall Street Journal recently predicted that should Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris win both Georgia and Pennsylvania, they would be the "overwhelming favorites" to win the entire election.

Like Arizona, Georgia has also seen an exodus of more moderate Republicans in the wake of Trump's ascendancy. Guardian reporter George Chidi wrote that "suburban moderates in the Atlanta region turned against Trump in 2020, and he has done little since to win them back." This could be why Georgia has two Democrats representing it in the U.S. Senate for the first time in decades.

Meanwhile, North Carolina is particularly difficult to pin down given not just its status as one of a few states with a two-term Democratic governor that voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Now, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in a heavily Republican part of the state, the disaster could depress turnout that would be beneficial to Trump. The Guardian's Ed Pilkington wrote that Harris' campaign is "waging an intense ground game, with hundreds of staffers fanning out across the state to squeeze out every vote." He added: "The thinking is that if Trump can be blocked in North Carolina, he can be stopped from regaining power."

Polls in all seven swing states have Harris and Trump both within the margin of error. 2024 could repeat the pattern seen in 2016, in which tens of thousands of votes spread across a handful of battleground states end up deciding who wins the Electoral College majority.

Click here to read the Guardian's report in its entirety.

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