Swing State Solver is in no way associated with the Biden Campaign. The views and analysis expressed here are our own.
One vote in the right location can do more than hundreds of thousands elsewhere.
Imagine that Biden got the majority of votes in 2024. However, they were concentrated in some states (perhaps New York and California). In many states, he didn't win. Because of this, he could still lose the presidency to Trump.
For Biden to win reelection, he needs 270 electoral votes. These votes mostly come from states, often by being the leading candidate in that state's vote. It is a bit of a complicated system, but this is the world we have.
To win, Biden doesn't need the most votes overall. He needs votes in the right locations so that he can win states that provide over 270 electoral votes. He needs voters in certain states. To get that, his supporters need to laser-focus their efforts on those states.
But, which states should Biden's supporters focus on? Focusing on all swing states is too broad, potentially halving the resources available for the few decisive states. Biden only needs enough to get 270 electoral votes. Going over that doesn't let him keep the presidency more.
We simulated the election millions of times. It is like exploring the election multiverse. We do this every day and find the easiest path to Biden's reelection with present polling.
This allows supporters like you and I to focus our effort.
Don't get overconfident,
and gamble for a larger victory.
Focus your effort to get a more likely victory.
Sure, we want that landslide victory, where state after state chooses Biden. But, politics offers a more painful choice. Do we focus our work and get a more likely victory, or spread out our efforts and get a lottery ticket for a landslide win.
We should pass on the lottery and get to work.
We can divide political effort into two categories:
Structural effort can be hard to redirect. Sometimes these are focused in a particular state or town and can't be moved. This includes campaign offices, local voter knowledge, in-person volunteer networks.
Tactical effort can be easy to shift. It's easy to move online ads from targeting voters in Georgia to voters in Pennsylvania, or change the phone numbers volunteers call.
Because the easy path shifts, we want to be ready for it and have some structural effort in all the swing states.
However, tactical effort can be focused where it is needed at that moment. When needs change, we can change the focus.
Here is how to divide the tactical effort budget. This allocates more effort to the areas where Biden needs to convince more voters.
As our efforts work, it should be reflected in updated polling. Then this budgeting system will slowly move the effort to other areas needed to win the election.
We only win the election by winning the whole group of states. So we need to make sure we are balancing our efforts across them.
The amount of tactical effort in an area should match the size of the task.
As every time traveler learns, when you take action based on what the future will be, you change that future.
As we act, Biden's chance of winning each state shifts. So the easiest path to victory shifts too.
We redo our analysis every day to find the presently easiest path.
The plot below shows how it has changed recently.
Each color is a different combination of states, its line shows how its rank changes as new polling data becomes available. For example, Winning PA, MI, WI, MN, WA, ME, NE-D2; is the easiest path now. It has a rank of 1. That group of states has been the easiest for a little while; its line stays in first and goes across the top of the plot.
Luckily, supporters like us plan to adjust our efforts as the world changes.
To help us budget our Structural Effort, we want to know where we should be prepared to spend tactical effort if needed. In other words, which states are likely to be in future easiest paths.
To estimate this, let's look at two things:
We want to build structural systems in states where we get the biggest boost to our chances for the least amount of effort.
The States and Districts at the top of the plot below lift the chances of winning the most for the number of voters we convince there.
This is the probability Biden will win reelection, if he wins that state.
How important a state is depends on how many electoral votes it has, but also what alternative states Trump and Biden are likely to win.
The effort expressed here is related to how many voters are needed to swing the state.
Some states don't have many voters and are close to going to Biden, so it would take less effort to win those states. Other states are big and lean towards Republicans. Winning there would require scores of recently convinced voters.