1. In case you hadn’t noticed, most of us don’t matter.
Once rare, the frequency with which the electoral college has skewed the overall result has increased: The “general mass” — now called the popular vote — has been won in two of the past six contests by someone who lost the White House. In both cases, the Republican candidate benefited.
At the same time, the count of swingable states has narrowed. The 2024 presidential campaign is likely to target a smaller share of Americans than at any point in the modern era, despite massive increases in spending due to online fundraising, a Washington Post analysis found.
During the last election, just 10 states and two congressional districts were targeted by Republican or Democratic (presidential) nominees’ campaigns. It was a precipitous drop from the 26 states on average that were targeted each year between 1952 and 1980, according to a forthcoming book by political scientists Daron R. Shaw, Scott Althaus and Costas Panagopoulos. The research is based on internal campaign documents, interviews with campaign leaders and media reports.
The Washington Post’s analysis found that just 1 in 4 Americans lived in such areas in 2020, down from roughly 3 in 4 in the earlier period. If the major parties do not contest Florida in 2024, as is widely expected, only 18 percent of Americans would live in battlegrounds.
The targeted voters in the decisive states should expect a barrage of communications — on their phones, in their mail, from their friends, family and colleagues, over radio, television, streaming services and social media networks. The rest of the country’s citizens will find themselves on the sidelines, watching the news or the occasional live candidate event with a diminished voice in their own futures. Their vote will still count but is unlikely to decide anything.
“It’s now getting to the point where you are probably talking about 400,000 people in three or four states. That is what it is getting down to,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns since 1980. “It does mean that more and more people feel that they don’t have a say.” (Source: washingtonpost.com)
2. Two “battleground states”:
Former President Donald Trump has the upper hand over President Joe Biden in two critical battleground states – Michigan and Georgia – with broad majorities in both states holding negative views of the sitting president’s job performance, policy positions and sharpness, according to new CNN polls conducted by SSRS.
In Georgia, a state Biden carried by a very narrow margin in 2020, registered voters say they prefer Trump (49%) over Biden (44%) for the presidency in a two-way hypothetical matchup. In Michigan, which Biden won by a wider margin, Trump has 50% support to Biden’s 40%, with 10% saying they wouldn’t support either candidate even after being asked which way they lean. In both Michigan and Georgia, the share of voters who say they wouldn’t support either candidate is at least as large as the margin between Biden and Trump.
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