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Why is there so much focus on seven “battleground” or “swing” states and what makes them so important? The shortest answer for the rematch between Biden and Trump is that they are the states where the winning margins in 2020 were razor thin – measured in tenths of one percent in three of them (Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin), and less than 3 percent in the other four (Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania) – and where the 2024 election will almost assuredly be decided.
And what do such tiny margins mean? They mean that -
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In Wisconsin, if 20,683 voters – six tenths of one percent of the votes cast for the two candidates - had stayed home or did not cast a vote for President on their ballot, Biden would have lost by one vote.
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In Arizona, if 10,458 voters – three tenths of one percent of the votes cast for the two candidates – had stayed home or did not cast a vote for President on their ballot, Biden would have lost by one vote.
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In the only swing state that Trump won – North Carolina – if 37,242 voters – seven tenths of one percent - had voted Biden instead of Trump, Biden would have won by one vote.
This is where the grassroots get-out-the-vote (GOTV) groups come in. While the election is still nine months away, they are going full bore now, building relationships with voters through multiple personal contacts, often using canvassers from the community whom they pay and train; holding voter registration events at locations where under-represented and infrequent voters go; sending texts and placing social media ads.
Scale and timing are critical. Sure, it helps in the last few weeks before the election to have volunteers knocking on doors and making phone calls to people who don’t know them. But data shows that the more effective get-out-the-vote strategy is for the grassroots groups to work now through election day, do it big, and do it at ground level in communities. They don’t just knock on doors at election time. This is how the groups P4D supports do it.
There used to be a TV sports show about “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”. What an agony of defeat it will be if Biden is on the wrong side of a tiny margin in a swing state, where the outcome might have been different if there had been more resources for voter contacts – face-to-face conversations, telephone calls, texts, postcards from individuals; a few more events; a few more ads. Al Gore was behind by 537 votes, a margin of .0009 percent, in Florida when the recount was stopped, making Bush the winner. Any of these swing states could be decided by a tiny margin in 2024.
Here is a P4D chart that tells the story from 2020:
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