(Although given Swift is from PA the art potential is…interesting, to say the least. Which Dragon Ball girl fits her best I gotta do some Biden Blast art)

Harris basically spent the first 15 minutes trying to break Trump’s concentration and get him to start lashing out emotionally. Trump had a brief edge there. Once she got him that was it though, by the time other areas he was strong at or points Harris was sidestepping came up it was too late, Trump was thinking with his mashed potatoes instead of his notes.

That’s basically the game here. Get Trump to act stupid and let him hang his own noose, side step the controversial positions or stuff Harris changed her mind on. Trump needed to keep his cool and play to his strengths, sidestep his faults(he did this ok for Abortion, but after that it crumbled) and tear into economy issues and Harris’s flipflops, which he did initially (I will say he never sounded ‘Old’ in the way Biden did), but once that was gone he went full Weird and lost it, just could not get back on track.

It’s inherently a bit of a gamble especially since Trump’s handlers know the game and he’ll know it today once he’s sobered up and calmed down. If Trump held on long enough Harris could have been in trouble with a couple issues, Harris is inherently on the backfoot due to such a short campaign season and stuff like having to change her policies to appeal nationally can’t be done gradually the way Hillary did it. There’s an inherent vulnerability there that someone like Niki Haley or another democrat would utterly maul her on. Trump can too, if, if he keeps his cool. He didn’t.

Walz doesn’t have the same weaknesses either. Neither does JD, but that’s just mostly going to come down to competency and normalness so Walz is walking in with an edge. (If it was Vance vs Harris and Trump vs Walz there might be a problem for the democrats, that configuration doesn’t play to their strengths)

(Oh and Harris didn’t score a buzzword on the level of “I’m Speaking” or “Will you Shut up Man?”. Best we’ve got for a Dean Scream type Anti-Line is Trump’s “I have a concept of a plan”, which while dumb isn’t ‘We beat Medicare’ tier. Sad media world, but that’s an important thing to note)

General consensus seems to be(among what’s left of the Swing Voters and Moderates, not a large group) is that Harris won the debate, showed she was professional and a capable speaker, and Trump made a fool of himself in the back half and lied chronically in the middle. Harris won, that was what people hoped for.

However, Harris staggered a bit the first 15 minutes before Trump got knocked off balance, and she didn’t really do a great job of explaining policy on her more controversial issues or directly addressing the flip flopping allegations(which could have been a problem, but by that point Trump was ticked off and lashed out emotionally instead of going in for the kill). Trump lost, but both the moderates and the betting markets suggest it’s not a Biden June level loss. The market loss was 4 points instead of 5 and it’s recovering quicker, there isn’t the same mass panic you saw after that on the Republican side, it’s more subdued panic.

Trump lost, but not campaign endingly so. Harris won, but she didn’t do the best job of explaining her policies which is the number 1 concern of swing voters. But also Trump didn’t capitalize on this, Harris knocked him off his game early and got him panicking so he couldn’t counter attack on those points when they came up.

I have my doubts Trump is going to go again, Harris knows how to push his buttons and get him off course before any of her more constroversial opinions come up. Trump can’t afford another debate loss. Harris probably wants to avoid dealing with Vance directly though, I think he could bite his tongue long enough to go at it more directly. Leave him to Walz, Walz doesn’t have that baggage.

Also it’ll shore up polling a bit, added to by the Swift thing. Probably a good idea for them as the Honeymoon period(which a lot of people were starting to write off as non-existent or a conservative lie or something to that extent) did seemingly end in the week leading up to the debate. Harris slumped and her lead shrunk.

It’s sort of a game of chicken at this point. Harris doesn’t have time to fully pace a slow burn campaign or bury policy flips deep enough back in the past to commit to a classical strategy. Trump’s been in the campaign longer and COULD sit out and try to let Harris slump. but her higher baseline and long honeymoon made that too risky. Harris won last night, she knocked Trump off his game before he had to chance to sink his teeth into the flipflopping. Does Trump risk a second run and hope he can hold his cool until she exposes herself or dodges a question or does he sit it out again and wait for this polling spike to fade by October? A loss in an October debate could be disasterous as it’s right before the election and there’s no time for a bump to cool down. A minor Trump win could shore up numbers at the last second. Sitting it out depends on what Harris does, which has been a mixed bag, but it puts the ball fully in her court to go on the offensive.

Harris would absolutely win in a full length campaign season, but there’s too little time for that and that creates weak spots. Weak spots Trump can exploit, but due to his own weak spots going for it is risky and last night Harris won that gamble.

I think Trump’s gains with young men are the main area patching him back up and are what’s mostly being missed when people ask how it’s this close.

While it’s true that Younger Generations are getting more Liberal, that trend is only extremely strong among women. It’s a weak trend among men(and it really only works if you compare them directly to like, Boomers). Gen X males have been gradually shifting right compared to the Obama years, and Gen Z is just broadly more right wing than Millennials. Gender may legitimately be the biggest divider right now, only rivaled by Urban Rural.

Rural Male Gen Z isn’t as left as many people would think.

These gains(plus slow steady gains among Latino blocs, mostly Cubans and old blood Tejano types) are making up for the losses in women voters he suffered in 2022 and 2016 and the loss in black voters thanks to Harris.

That and the right wing is slowly clawing back control of portions of the media. In the Aftermath of Gamergate most of the mainstream internet platforms swung hard to the left and several became fully controlled like Twitter and Tumblr. Thanks in part to several tech bro defections and bot operations places like Facebook slipped in 2020 and now Twitter and CNN follow. That was keeping most of the bitter young men who weren’t involved in GG or Republicans prior in line with the democrats. With that control erroding they’re starting to slip. We’ve seen this playout in South Korea before, who’s gender political divide is among the nastiest worldwide among democracies.

My final prediction is that between the Arlington Cemetery thing, Cornel West not getting on the ballot there, and no smaller third parties getting in, Virginia’ll stay Blue. Though it’ll be closer than many expect.

Had a perfect hat trick happened 3rd party wise (Which came close: no Randall Terry, RFK got off the ballot, weakened late Libertarian presense. They just needed Cornel West. Plus ideally some random smaller third party, like how NJ got the two small Socialist parties on), plus no Arlington debacle costing suburban votes in the North near Richmond, I might have been willing to consider the possibility of it going red, maybe(about as likely as Michigan, still strong lean blue, but in swing state territory), but not now.

In the timeline where Cornel gets on the ballot, some smaller socialist parties do, and the Arlington Cemetary thing goes perfectly(low key visit, no physical altercation, maybe Trump takes one picture with families and posts it instead of a spectacle) I’d be saying Virginia is a swing state this time.

And the cemetery debacle is the big one. Even if Cornel wins his lawsuit and gets on that incident tips the balance too much in a state where everything would need to go perfectly for Trump to win.

My final prediction is that between the Arlington Cemetery thing, Cornel West not getting on the ballot there, and no smaller third parties getting in, Virginia’ll stay Blue. Though it’ll be closer than many expect.

Had a perfect hat trick happened 3rd party wise (Which came close: no Randall Terry, RFK got off the ballot, weakened late Libertarian presense. They just needed Cornel West. Plus ideally some random smaller third party, like how NJ got the two small Socialist parties on), plus no Arlington debacle costing suburban votes in the North near Richmond, I might have been willing to consider the possibility of it going red, maybe(about as likely as Michigan, still strong lean blue, but in swing state territory), but not now.

You could argue this isn’t a super fair metric as the reason the national average pulls left is that the Large Blue States (New York and California) are solidly blue, while the Large Red States (Texas and Florida) are two of the pinkest ‘safe red’ states alongside Ohio and Iowa. Blue States tend to be more solidly blue than Red States, especially in the big ones. A reverse Canada situation. It also doesn’t account for third parties (which hurt Trump more in 2016 than in 2020, costing him 5 or 6 states in 2016 instead of only 2 or so in 2020).

But the former is unlikely to change this election(I don’t see Florida or Texas tipping, the former is considered a money sink that’s too risky this close to the election to fight for and the latter has very harsh voter laws. Even if they trended left again and Harris got Biden level margins they’d stay red by the skin of their teeth and that’s unlikely) and the latter factor is actually trending in Trump’s favor this time thanks mostly to a weakened and divided Libertarian base. So keep that in mind.

Biden winning by Hillary level popular vote margins in 2020 loses the election, carrying Michigan with Nevada too close to call. A 50/50 popular vote in 2020 flips the other two swing states and puts Nebraska 2 and Minnesota under high pressure.

There was a slight left ward trend overall even accounting for the national swing of 2.4 votes bluer than 201, but it wasn’t by a lot. Adjusting for the nationals and comparing with that, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania trended slightly right, a point and a little over half a point respectively. Nevada swung so right it was bluer in 2016 even without adjusting for anything, with adjusting it’s a 2 and a half point swing right. Arizona and Georgia both swung solidly to the left even accounting for Biden doing better, a point and a half and 3 points respectively. Michigan had a very slight left wing turn adjusted too. North Carolina is the closest, trending on parr with the nation, maybe a few hundred votes more Republican.

Effectively, assuming a tighter election with a smaller popular vote gap than 2020, Nevada is almost certainly going red (it’s at least as red as Georgia or North Carolina if not redder thanks to Harris bumping the black vote). Georgia’s trend is good and so is Harris being bumped to top ticket, but it’s been a Republican spending ground for years and downballots don’t help Harris as well as they did in 2020. Not to mention a potentially nasty third party line up if the judge gets overturned. North Carolina’s tilt is more recent(a lot of the same factors as Georgia, but without the same counterbalance as it wasn’t seen as in need of immediate GOP pushing), but it also was redder to start with by a few points and didn’t swing as hard last time. In a best case Harris scenario where she gets Biden margins these could go blue(Biden was worse with black voters and better with whites, and here this helps), but it’s unlikely as Georgia had it’s momentum aggressively fought and NC is too late.

Neither Biden or Harris are doing fantastic with Hispanics, but they aren’t really doing any worse than 2020. The state leans blue, but it’s a very unstable blue that could be vulnerable to a shock event. (Trump would have won this state in 2020 without third parties). I also think there’s a hard cap on how blue it can go, the rural whites are dug in.

Michigan is trending a bit blue, was already blue-est, very safe for Harris even accounting for a bit worse white performance.

Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are the wildcards as it comes down heavily to how the VP picks help. Tim Walz is probably helping Wisconsin quite a bit, and MAYBE Pennsylvania to a lesser degree? Wisconsin is trending redder in the broad strokes demographic factors, but it’s also got more specific 2024 factors helping it (namely Tim Walz). Pennsylvania gets higher spending and is more diverse, but Walz isn’t as helpful there and Vance isn’t really hated in rural PA compared to national standards.

Things could absolutely change and there are historic things to note (Nevada specifically tends to overpoll Red, Wisconsin specifically tends to overpoll blue, those two have been unusually bad these last two elections), and a few breakthroughs in the South could end this quickly in Harris’s favor if she can court the black vote hard enough. Harris definitely has more fringe ‘best case scenario’ options thanks to that and if the unlikely ones happen that’s that, see 2020 repeat. BUT this is probably going to be a tight one if the safe states and obvious trenders play out as expected(Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada Red, Michigan blue). Probably going to come down to Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

In the specific config I came up with, Pennsylvania since in this configuration that’s the winning state for either party and the other two don’t matter. Shift something however and that changes. Republicans lose North Carolina? Now they need Pennsylvania AND either Arizona or Wisconsin to win. Lose NC and Maine State 2? Now it has to be Arizona and Wisconsin is a tie(which favors R, but messy).

Or the inverse, Republicans take Arizona alongside the 3 likely ones. They just need 1 rust belt state and they’re clean regardless of Maine, Dem’s need to sweep the belt. Or, if Maine-2 stayed Red AND Nebraska-Omaha lost it’s status and the state went winner take all(which it might), they could tie it up and thus score a House win without a single rust belt state period.

Also any race only decided by one or two electoral votes is vulnerable to faithless electors, the volatile Maine-2 race, and whether or not Nebraska changes it’s EC laws to be WTA. If it comes down to a single nailbiter state with margins of a thousand or less expect Brooks Brothers style favoring of whichever party controls the state(slight edge to Republicans if the state is split).

Reminder: Every swing state in 2020 voted Red of the National Average. And it’s a pretty sharp jump. (Michigan favored Biden by 2.8%, next state down was Minnesota was 7.11%. Nationally it was 4.5%). Meanwhile in 2016 only two states did, New Hampshire and Minnesota.(Meaning if Trump had flat won the popular vote in 2016 he’d only get those two states, albeit cutting Gary Johnson would move others).

If it’s a Hillary level margin or closer, the historic data says Trump wins the electoral college. Biden level margin she wins. Hillary got 2.1% lead, Biden got 4.5% lead. 3% - 3.5% is the tipping point for the bulk states.

I should also note the evidence suggests the specific state margins may shift in order. Arizona is trending left, Nevada is trending right. Wisconsin is holding steady, Michigan is trending left, Pennsylvania slightly left(though recent events have masked it to a degree).

The good news is Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania is a knock out safe win. Tie proof. (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin isn’t as if Nebraska switches it’s law it would be a tie). Bad news is Wisconsin is the whitest of all the swing states(period), least educated of the 3 rust belt states, and aging. Biden(pre-debate) was doing better here than Harris is.

It also basically guarantees that if Harris doesn’t break into the South we’re in for a drag out election. Michigan is the bluest swing state, Georgia is the reddest, let’s say North Carolina holds., but Arizona trends blue again. At that point Nevada literally does not matter, it’s down to capturing Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Dems need both, Reps only need PA unless they lose Maine-2 and don’t get Nebraska law. This sucks because Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are the two states who haven’t tweaked their mail in laws, meaning it’ll still be a multi day count.

The other dragout scenario is the Rep’s breakthrough Arizona and get Nebraska law, but lose Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Then it’s all down to Nevada and if the reds get it it’s a tie vote. Nevada infamously counts slowly just in general.

Harris weakens the rust belt(Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) at the exchange of strengthening Arizona and getting a shot of taking the Southern states. We’ll see how it pays off

also can’t believe i forgot to mention this, but perceived flip flopping

538 did really good in 2016, I think an off 2022 prediction hurt their numbers a bit

This Election is giving me a lot of 2004 vibes for various reasons. Excluding the two Trump elections, it’s probably the one closest overall.

There are a lot of reasons for this, and I don’t just mean the Swiftboating ‘and yes it’s true I won it thrice’ thing.

First off, just as a whole, the VP options Tim Walz and JD Vance give very similar vibes to Bush and Kerry in a lot of ways and are making a lot of the same arguments. (Some of JD’s positions that are super fringe now were a bit less fringe in 2003-2004 and many Republicans then supported them. This was the peak of the family values Anti-Gay Marriage or civil unions period) Tim Walz is a nice white guy, but he isn’t exactly a super charismatic. JD Vance is being made fun of for being a weird idiot, even to the degree of a bit of fabrication(Bush wasn’t illiterate, JD Vance never fucked a couch).

Second of all the previous election was close and we’re in an era of weak incumbents. Some degree of reversal here(Red’s won in 2000, blue’s in 2020), but due to Biden dropping out the red’s actually have the incumbent candidate of sorts,

And also thirdly the Democrats are somewhat on the back foot candidate wise despite being the incumbent party. They’re handling it better than 2004, but also had a better starting position so you be the judge. Both times there was a bit of a scramble for the nominee without the best pool or timing. (Al Gore had lost in 2000, running him again had been Plan A, but that wasn’t viable. Hillary was a known upcoming blue candidate option, but she had just gotten her senator job and wasn’t ready yet. JFK Jr. was also being courted to go after Al Gore when he was ready, but he died in 1999 in a plane crash. And Obama was only just getting into major politics.).

Sure you could also draw comparisons to the 1968 scramble (Where the incumbent dropped out, the obvious successor got murdered at the last minute, and they had to settle for Hubert), but there’s also some 2004 vibes. A bit of both actually. Kamala is better known nationally than John Kerry and there wasn’t an assassination on that side, but she also wasn’t really seen as viable for the position due to being relatively far left and also not being personally super popular (that combination isn’t super ideal, you can work one or the other, see Bernie and Biden, but both is harder). But due to timing there wasn’t really a better option.

Also in terms of how close the election is and how long it takes to call I’m expecting 2004 margins. 2004 was electorally margin wise closer than 2016 or 2020, and the winner won the popular vote. 2004 was called around 10-11 AM the next day(depending on time zone), compared to 2 AM in 2016, before midnight basically every other year (11 PM for 2012), and 3 or 4 days later in 2020. A lot of pollsters, most of them actually as of late, are saying to expect a closer election than either of the previous two, and that there’s a pretty high chance of the Electoral College and Popular Vote agreeing. Still quite a bit higher than the pre-2016 world where it supposed to be like a 1 in 30 event (Now it’s 1 in 3 and it was even higher the previous two), but still. If it doesn’t come down to a tight race in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin we’ll probably know the results early the day after, as a ton of other states changed their mail in counting laws to prevent another 2020. (Although it almost certainly will. The Democrats would have to sweep everything that isn’t Georgia and Trump would have to sweep the non-Rust belt and get the Nebraska law passed for those two states to not matter and both outcomes are super unlikely.) If Harris wins she’ll probably win the popular vote, and if Trump wins he still very well could mostly because Solid Blue State turnout is almost certainly going to drop off a bit for many reasons, not to mention there isn’t a strong Libertarian this time.

Also, while the democrats are the incumbent Party, Trump is moreso the incumbent candidate which comes with advantages and disadvantages(though the fact Covid only broke out during the last 6 months before the election is interesting timing. Trump was there when it started and Democrats love to use that, but more people died after the election than before and more Pandemic time total happened under Biden).

Heck, if you buy the 13 keys, while they do predict a Harris win, this specific combination is extremely volatile. 5 False, 8 True is a rare rare Combo, it’s only happened 4 times…including both 1888 and 2000. Whoops. Also as I noted the Incumbency Key really just, does not handle this sort of thing well. Rematches are rare(hey Aldi Stevenson), a rematch between two former presidents one term each (which we almost had) is unheard of. Now we’ve got the Incumbent Party on one side and an Incumbent Candidate on the other, a knowable party platform and a knowable person platform .If the keys fail, it’ll either be because of that unique situation, or because they have a rough track record with minor third parties in tight races (1996 and 1948 had third parties, big enough to flip the key false, but that was required to get it to 5 keys, they weren’t already there. Truman was holding his own fine even with that, and Clinton arguably moreso. Meanwhile 1888 and 2000 didn’t flip the key, but notably the third party roster those years leaned against the eventual loser, so there’s evidence in a close race third parties can sway things even if none of them crack the 5% margins).

There’s a lot of elements of prior elections here. Trump is not in office and is running against a middling historic popularity woman who isn’t in office, just like in 2016. Trump has a lot of baggage, but also some good times to point at, just like in 2020. A ton of specific elements being argued about, aspects of the line up, and the general rushed and imperfect Democrat pick vibes all fit 2004. And of course, the nominee violence, DNC protests in Chicago, and general issues with last minute changes fits 1968. We shall see.

probably the governor election if we’re being honest.

Of course THQ relaunched RIGHT after i post this and got all their data updated, of course.

Raw map still holds for polling averages, but their main page betting odds swap Nevada and North Carolina. (Which is slightly better for Trump)

Mostly what I’ve heard, though 538 tends to scew slightly blue overall (a half a point off in 2018, obviously off in 2016 and 2020. Favored them in 2022 though), RCP the opposite, and The Hill RRQ is one of the most neutral options. (Albeit they don’t update as often as I wish they did so they aren’t as good moment to moment).

Georgia is the only state they all agree going red so yeah. The Hill and RCP have straight up never put it blue, 538 did for one day about a week and a half ago by 0.2 and then undid it the next day (just poll drop timing).

I do find it interesting that despite the usual narrative and older polls, North Carolina is very widely being put to the left of Georgia in many recent polls. I also find it interesting that according to this, it might be less red than somewhere like Nevada(which is very odd indeed as North Carolina went red both times for Trump and Nevada went blue both times).

I finally figured it out. Fucking genius.

It was never about taking blue votes, or at least that wasn’t Plan A(Might have pivoted to that when Biden slumped, but I’ve found the pattern).

It was about wiping out the small right wing parties. The ones who nominated guys like Rocky De Le Fuente or Roseanne, usually get 4th or 5th place among third parties. They all rallied around RFK Jr, and now it’s too late for them to get on the ballots or pick new candidates. It wipes the slate clean and leaves just the small leftist parties.

And then the other move came into play. The Trump backed Mises Caucus seized the Libertarian Party and turned him hard right Paleo-Hoppean, but then they lost control of the leadership at the last second leading to a Leftist Libertarian taking over. Half the party left in protest and joined Trump. The right wing Libertarians have been secured.

And the centrist Libertarians? The ones who didn’t like the Mises Caucus, but thought Chase was too progressive? They all went to RFK Jr…they’ve just been double filtered. Now they’ll all get a second chance to defect to Trump(shoring up the margins a bit, an extra few hundred votes here and there), and even if they don’t being in RFK Jrs sphere that long kills any shot of them voting Harris, so at worst they stick with Chase or don’t vote. Oh and all that chaos further weakened the Libertarians. Between that and RFK and West they weren’t even polling Top 5.

So just two actions(Promoting RFK enough that he got all the small right wing parties and drew in some Biden voters: then backing the Mises Caucus enough for a takeover, but not enough to stop the counter-takeover and then encouraging an exodus to Trump) wiped out almost all the right wing third party support and double funneled many of them (once through the Mises exodus, once through RFK Jr’s endorsement) to Trump. That basically just leaves the Constitution Party, who are busy having a party civil war and are at their weakest in decades.

Ok I read up again.

From what I can tell, Virginia’s redness peaked in 2001(let’s say around 9/11 during the brief spike). It stayed red in the 1990s even against Dixiecrat Bill Clinton. (Though it was relatively stagnant politically from 1998-2001, sort of a plateau)

From that point on it gradually slipped blue. Blue Govna in 2001, midterm losses, more midterm losses, eventually going Blue for Obama. It went from just over 7 points redder than the rest of the country in 2000, to under 6 points redder in 2004, to less than a point and a half redder in 2008, to basically dead even with national in 2012. (IE: Had Romney won a tight victory in 2012 he’d likely carry Virginia by extremely tight margins, after that it was out of play). This trend continued with it being 4 points bluer than the nation in 2016 and 6 points bluer in 2020.

However the increase from 2016-2020(while it looked big on paper, 5 point jump) isn’t actually as big when you look full picture. Namely accounting for third party and Biden’s better national performance and regional performance, 2020 was closer to a 1 point increase. (And in these elections with high third party 2016 and mail in 2020 it’s important to note). I’d actually argue 2018 is around the peak of the trend as they saw solid blue gains that basically finished off hopes of it being a swing state. This is our reverse 9/11 inflection point. 2020 may have been a bit stronger even with everything factored in then 2016 was, but we likely peaked this hill in 2018. Trump was also just generally a point behind generic R there.

2021 showed this with a Republican Governor upset. Sure, he was a popular R without super strong Trump ties and his opponent wasn’t the most well liked, but it shows the trend altering. 2022, Virginia went red seat wise, R gains. 2023, blues barely hold a district and no gains. Now it’s polling comparably if not slightly redder than Michigan.

If we’re comparing 2017-2018 when it was declared solid blue to 2001-2002 ‘sea of red era’ we’re in late 2007-early 2008 territory right now comparison wise. Obama flipped Virginia blue back then. Trump isn’t Obama(as I said, it was still redder than the national average in 2008 and about the same in 2012, a winning Republican wins those years, albeit any winning democrat wins it in 2012 and 2008 they needed to just be an above average democrat which Obama was). So even by that trend it would seemingly be safe blue this time and 2028 would be the danger zone.

BUT, the third party situation comes up again. Namely it’s utterly changed massively, Bush 04, the Obama years, and Trump 2016 saw third party compositions that heavily favored democrats by mostly taking from Republicans. That’s changed this year for the first time since 2000. (mostly due to RFK wiping out the small right coalition and the Libertarians having a internal conflict). Account for that in the math and it’s more like reversed 2010-2012 numbers. It favors blue, but not by much. We’re in Michigan level territory which isn’t quite safe.

I doubt it, but there is evidence the blue tilt hit somewhat of a wall. Most of the other Cyan states either held firm since 2020 (Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine), or gone bluer(Colorado slightly, and New Mexico significantly) New Mexico especially went from being arguably the reddest of the lot in 2016(Governor Gary Johnson made it look bluer than it was, he doesn’t run and it’s razor thin or possibly a Trump win) to one of the bluest outside of Colorado.

Virginia saw a red governor in 2021, no red losses or blue gains since 2018, and 2 red pickups in 2022. Biden did do proportionally better in 2020 than Hillary did, but the Republicans also mostly gave up fighting hard for the state in 2020 compared to 2016 where it was a heavily campaigned swing state(and one of two ‘traditional’ swing states they lost alongside Nevada). The blue tilt there seemingly peaked in 2018-2019 and has slowly reversed.

New Jersey is a bit of a wild card as it’s under polled and unlike these others ones didn’t have a red streak or close calls in the Bush Era or 2016. It’s a usually solid blue state which was a bit weaker than normal in 2020. (While it technically did a point better blue in 2020, adjusting for national performance it actually dropped 2 and a bit points for the democrats). It didn’t elect a Red Governor, but it DID come far closer than anyone expected with Jack Ciattarelli outpreforming polls by 4 or 5 points. It didn’t shift in 2020, but Staten Island did go red(and that’s former NJ land that’s culturally more NJ than NYC or NY) and in 2022 a seat flipped red with no blue gains.

And during the worst week of the Biden Post-Debate fiasco, these two(along with Minnesota) were the only ones with Trump winning polls outnumbering Biden winning polls(Albeit Minnesota was dead even and New Jersey had exactly one poll during this time which is a terrible sample size).

Proportionally speaking I think it’s turning red faster than any other given where it started, but Virginia is still redder, probably Minnesota too. If Virginia went red I’d expect NJ to go the election after, though.

I will say I feel Virginia is redder than Michigan at the moment(which is the blue-est of the swing states by a decent bit)