In the aftermath of the 2020 quasi-election, six states emerged in a coalition of what I have continuously referred to as the six contested states, or those over which the bulk of election fraud related lawsuits were filed over. They are, from east to west, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada.
In 2020, these states were worth 79 electoral votes. For this current decade, thanks to census adjustments, they are now worth 77, with Michigan and Pennsylvania dropping a vote each as their populations shrink relative to the rest of the union. My estimates for the 2020 election, deducting the likely amount of fraud, reveal that President Trump should have carried all six with ease, with Pennsylvania being the closest with a margin of roughly 6.4% (over 400,000 votes).
I have reviewed the electoral college pathways to victory for 2024, considering a two-man race between President Trump and any Democrat. The calculus may change slightly, favoring Trump, if any Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., considerations are involved. I consider just two states from President Trump’s certified wins in 2020 – Texas and North Carolina – in danger of being ripped off in 2024 thanks to artificial leftward trending and intense targeting. They must be held, and thanks to significant minority rightward shifting and North Carolina’s newly upheld Voter ID law, which should be stronger than it is, I suspect they will indeed stay in the GOP column, even though they will need to be won over substantial mischief.
Here is my outlook on how things are shaping up in the six contested states of 2020 with just one year to go (less than that if we consider mail ballot season begins in September in many locations.
Georgia
Likely 2020 Result: Trump +7.5%
Georgia is listed first because I struggle to see a pathway to 270 electoral votes without it going “red.” I consider it priority numero uno once the beachheads of North Carolina and Texas are secured. All the other contested states are fundamentally more difficult for Republican victories considering the past few decades of political trending and party engagement.
Pros
1) In news that may destabilize the national reliance on electronic elections systems, a Democrat-appointed federal judge has issued a ruling favoring hand-marked paper ballots in the state, marking a huge win for transparency activists. J. Alex Halderman’s report on Georgia’s electronic elections infrastructure also dealt crippling long-term damage to those who still insist tens of millions of Americans should be voting on black box systems that are neither auditable, secure, nor transparent.
2) The Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021 (Senate Bill 202) made modest reforms that may act as a slight speed bump toward those hellbent on commandeering the state’s 16 electoral votes.
3) There is a strong shift among Latinos and black males toward the Republican Party, even in all-black precincts, that will potentially outpace any ability to invent enough suburban phantom votes to blot out the effects of coalition shifting.
Cons
1) Brad Raffensperger is still Secretary of State – the same guy who went on The Today Show the morning after Election Day 2020 and told the hosts he had “4.7 million” voters – right before the state certified almost an even 5.0 million votes. The 300,000-vote oversight encompasses more votes than were cast in total in Wyoming.
2) Georgia operates Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) – President Trump lost 18 of 20 states, 243 electoral votes to 9, that operated AVR at the time of the 2020 election.
3) Georgia has no-excuse absentee balloting, which is exploited by using a steadily increasing pool of available registrations spawned by AVR, with no shortage of concrete-dwelling ballot harvesters to scoop up loose ballots for weeks on end.
Pennsylvania
Likely 2020 Result: Trump +6.4%
Pennsylvania comes second, because Trump holding onto his “Core 235” from 2020 (three more electoral votes in value thanks to census changes) and bringing Georgia and Pennsylvania back to the fold represents the shortest path to 270 electoral votes (Core 235 + GA + PA = 270 exactly). Fundamentally, as proven by party registration trends over decades, Pennsylvania looks like a double-digit Trump state if not heavily manipulated.
Pros
1) Pennsylvania’s Democrat party registration advantage is down to just 5%, down from 7.5% at the time of the 2020 election, 10.5% at the time of the 2016 election, and 13.3% at the time of the 2012 election. The direction of the state’s registration advantage always corresponds with the state’s trend in presidential margin – except for in the safest and most secure election of all time, 2020, of course. Nearly 90% of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties continue to show a Republican registration trend, suggesting steadily increasing margins for the party, especially Trump, whose core voter base lives all throughout the heart of the Keystone State. It is highly likely the Democrats will hold an advantage of just a few points one year from now.
2) Like mentioned in my points regarding Georgia, black men are readily identifying as more Republican than at any point in more than a half century, and they were already voting for Trump at higher rates than their southern counterparts in 2020. This could substantially cripple Democrat margins in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties that they need to override the rest of an otherwise very red state.
Cons
1) State corruption is impressive – if you’re a Stalinist. These are the folks who got John Fetterman elected to the U.S. Senate, although he ran against a limp dishrag of an opponent incapable of garnering the loyalty of the Trump base.
2) Act 77, the GOP-backed bill responsible for the plethora of mail ballots flying across the state, is still in place, and the state has now rushed to enact AVR in a last ditch effort to stop the inevitable Trumpian victory that should take place there.
3) The state’s registration trends are well-known to the Democrats, who are said to be in disarray in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the GOP in Pennsylvania is extremely weak, and they’ve refused to step up and back even non-Trump candidates who have had their elections ripped off.
Arizona
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