The Hill gets down to nitty gritty….
Three years after a presidential election that came down to 77,000 votes in three Midwestern battlegrounds, Democrats and Republicans are eyeing a much larger battlefield ahead of the 2020 contests, one that stretches from the picturesque coastline of rural Maine to the high desert of Arizona.
Both President Trump’s campaign and the Democrats vying to replace him are scrutinizing a political map in flux, one in which attitudes and alignments are shifting and new regions are coming into play.As many as a dozen states could be up for grabs next year as economic and international uncertainty pairs with a cauldron of domestic discontent in government.
Interviews with two dozen strategists, political scientists and observers show the 10 counties across the country that will determine the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The critical tipping points are as diverse as the American electorate. Some are suburban neighborhoods where both Trump and former President Obama won. Others are longtime Republican strongholds that show signs of slipping. Still others have voted Democratic since the New Deal, only to be broken by Trump’s historic campaign.
Here are the 10 counties that will determine whether Trump gets a second term…
This is rather simplistic as stated, because each of these counties will move in tandem with many other counties in its state. Rather they are belwethers, weather-vanes, or indicators.
If those ten counties shifted, it’s almost certain that other counties shifted in the same direction, so you can’t say the 10 counties “decided” the election in the way that Florida decided (or should have decided) the election of 2000 or California decided the choice between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes in 1916.
This is different from counting state delegations to the Electoral College. If North Carolina and Nevada both move 10% towards (or away from) the Democrats, they might or might not vote the same in the Electoral College. And it likely won’t prove a 10% shift in Electoral Votes.
But if a 10% shift in, say, both Kern County (Bakersfield) and San Francisco would suggest that (or be likely associated) with a 10% statewide shift that could flip all of California’s 50-odd Electoral votes from one party to the other.
I think my point goes with ur final sentence….
There ARE always local influences , but the way Trump is trending ?
He could generate negatives that bond them together AGAINST HIM and therefore his party…
We’ll know this a year from now at the latest….
The Mooch and Jack this afternoon i believe have raised the possibility that Trump seeing himself underwater by the Spring could just bail out of office rather then suffer a loss?
Crazier shit has happen involving the guy….