One thing worth noting about how much the devil is in the details.
Arizona and Nevada are still leaning pretty solidly R at the moment.(Trump’s hispanic margins have steadily gone up since 2016, dropping the wall focus helped a lot). Wisconsin and Michigan are the closest to going D albeit Trump still leans ahead. PA is in the middle and is the most important of the set.
(North Carolina is the strongest R of all 7, and Georgia is the Libertarian Ex-Democrat Chase Olivers homestate which combined with Cornell West’s strong focus there and the election commission shenanigans means those two are out of play barring some good luck and Roy Cooper being picked. Trump would have won Georgia in 2020 with no third party vote and those have leaned left since. I don’t consider them swing states unless Andy or Roy are on board).
In the Rust Belt Focus scenario(They pick Shapiro or Walz and make Pennsylvania the biggest focus as it’s the most important state, and manage to finish ahead in all 3, at the cost of Arizona, Nevada, and the Southern States), the final score is 268-270. A win, but a damn tight one.
Except…Nebraska. Nebraska is putting a law up in September to change the way their state distributes to be Winner Take All. If it goes through it would be passed in October, taking away one D vote from Omaha and giving it to R. (Maine has threatened to do the same if Nebraska does, but they wouldn’t have it done til after the election if they did, not enough time).
That would change the above scenario to a 269-269 decided by the current House…which is Trump run and even if it wasn’t it’s state by state and more than 26 states are safe red even in a blue wave scenario. Though it would leave the VP pick to the Senate, which is democrat right now, and while it couldn’t be Harris due to her current spot anyone else would be came. So there’d be a very real chance of a Trump/Shapiro ticket which would be a dysfunctional nightmare and would have a massive chance of one of the two getting murdered.(I can’t find a source if it’s the current senate or the newly elected one as they get inaugurated seperately from the president, but if the senate falls which looks likely the Republicans can pick the VP, and while the House is leaning democrat due to it being state by state it would be R regardless).
This ALSO happens in the reverse scenario, where the Dems focus on the Southwestern States with Mark Kelly(taking Arizona and Nevada) AND manage to put on enough pressure to take Wisconsin and Michigan(which are the closest and Kelly while he isn’t a winning deal there is still better than nothing), but are unable to win Pennsylvania(which is a lot more red leaning and without Shapiro or Walz is probably going red). 270 - 268 win for Democrats…unless Nebraska changes the law in which case it’s a tie, House picks, see above.
The specific configuration of which states go where makes a tie super likely this year especially if Nebraska switches their rules(which isn’t unconstitutional, they picked a weird unique system and they can unpick it, the other system is used by 48 states that’s all above board. The scummy part is the timing as it would leave Maine without time to change their own system before the election and thus secure an extra R vote without an extra D vote from changing Maine). There are also tie scenarios in the event Nebraska doesn’t change, namely the “Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia go blue, everything else goes Red” possibility if someone like Beshear or Cooper is picked ends in a 269-269 tie, as does a couple of scenarios where Maine-State swings Red(which it has come extremely close to more than once), turning narrow Blue wins into ties. And if those scenarios happened alongisde a Nebraska change they’d suddenly be 270-268 clean wins.
One thing worth noting about how much the devil is in the details.
Arizona and Nevada are still leaning pretty solidly R at the moment.(Trump’s hispanic margins have steadily gone up since 2016, dropping the wall focus helped a lot). Wisconsin and Michigan are the closest to going D albeit Trump still leans ahead. PA is in the middle and is the most important of the set. (North Carolina is the strongest R of all 7, and Georgia is the Libertarian Ex-Democrat Chase Olivers homestate which combined with Cornell West’s strong focus there and the election commission shenanigans means those two are out of play barring some good luck and Roy Cooper being picked. Trump would have won Georgia in 2020 with no third party vote and those have leaned left since. I don’t consider them swing states unless Andy or Roy are on board).
In the Rust Belt Focus scenario(They pick Shapiro or Walz and make Pennsylvania the biggest focus as it’s the most important state, and manage to finish ahead in all 3, at the cost of Arizona, Nevada, and the Southern States), the final score is 268-270. A win, but a damn tight one.
Except…Nebraska. Nebraska is putting a law up in September to change the way their state distributes to be Winner Take All. If it goes through it would be passed in October, taking away one D vote from Omaha and giving it to R. (Maine has threatened to do the same if Nebraska does, but they wouldn’t have it done til after the election if they did, not enough time). That would change the above scenario to a 269-269 decided by the current House…which is Trump run and even if it wasn’t it’s state by state and more than 26 states are safe red even in a blue wave scenario. Though it would leave the VP pick to the Senate, which is democrat right now, and while it couldn’t be Harris due to her current spot anyone else would be came. So there’d be a very real chance of a Trump/Shapiro ticket which would be a dysfunctional nightmare and would have a massive chance of one of the two getting murdered.(I can’t find a source if it’s the current senate or the newly elected one as they get inaugurated seperately from the president, but if the senate falls which looks likely the Republicans can pick the VP, and while the House is leaning democrat due to it being state by state it would be R regardless).
This ALSO happens in the reverse scenario, where the Dems focus on the Southwestern States with Mark Kelly(taking Arizona and Nevada) AND manage to put on enough pressure to take Wisconsin and Michigan(which are the closest and Kelly while he isn’t a winning deal there is still better than nothing), but are unable to win Pennsylvania(which is a lot more red leaning and without Shapiro or Walz is probably going red). 270 - 268 win for Democrats…unless Nebraska changes the law in which case it’s a tie, House picks, see above.
The specific configuration of which states go where makes a tie super likely this year especially if Nebraska switches their rules(which isn’t unconstitutional, they picked a weird unique system and they can unpick it, the other system is used by 48 states that’s all above board. The scummy part is the timing as it would leave Maine without time to change their own system before the election and thus secure an extra R vote without an extra D vote from changing Maine). There are also tie scenarios in the event Nebraska doesn’t change, namely the “Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia go blue, everything else goes Red” possibility if someone like Beshear or Cooper is picked ends in a 269-269 tie, as does a couple of scenarios where Maine-State swings Red(which it has come extremely close to more than once), turning narrow Blue wins into ties. And if those scenarios happened alongisde a Nebraska change they’d suddenly be 270-268 clean wins.
worst fucking timeline