Will Regional Battleground States Cluster as a Bloc in 2024?

A historical look at this cycle’s Magnificent 7

As the two presidential campaigns focus their time and resources on just over a handful of states, exhaustive reviews on the finite pathways each can get to 270 Electoral College votes continue to be conducted and reassessed.

The seven most competitive battleground states form three semi-loose geographic clusters: Arizona and Nevada in the Southwest, Georgia and North Carolina in the South, and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the so-called Rust Belt.

For starters, it should be noted that it is unlikely each of these seven states will be carried by a single candidate – a feat that has only occurred three times since 1912 (the first election after Arizona achieved statehood).

But each of those three cycles were massive landslide victories in which the winning candidate carried at least 44 states: Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, Richard Nixon in 1972, and Ronald Reagan in 1984. There will be no such blowout in 2024.

It has been 20 years since each of the states within these three respective clusters have voted for the same presidential nominee. In 2004, John Kerry carried Michigan/Pennsylvania/Wisconsin and George W. Bush won Arizona/Nevada and Georgia/North Carolina.

The cluster of battlegrounds that has been most consistently voting as one voice in recent cycles has been the three Rust Belt states.

While the trio have hosted several extremely competitive races over the last few decades, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have ended up in the same party’s column for eight consecutive cycles since 1992 (all for the Democrats except for 2016) and for 10 of the last 11 cycles since 1980.

Following Wisconsin statehood in 1848, these three states have voted in unison in 31 of 44 cycles, or 70.5 percent of the time. Twenty-one of these cycles went to the Republican nominee and 10 cycles for the Democrat.

In the Southwest, the neighboring states of Arizona and Nevada have voted more in sync overall, backing the same presidential nominee in 22 of 28 cycles since 1912 (78.6 percent).

However, three of these cycles in which the two states diverged have occurred during the last four, with Nevada turning bluish at a faster rate than Arizona (2008, 2012, and 2016 when Nevada voted Democratic and Arizona Republican).

The only other cycles in which the two states did not line up were in 1960, 1964, and 1992 – Arizonans voted for the GOP nominee and Nevadans backed the Democrat in each of these.

As for the two southern states, Georgia and North Carolina have similarly voted as a bloc in 37 of 48 cycles since 1828 (77.1 percent) – backing Democrats in 26, Republicans in eight, and the same third party candidate in three.

That track record has been a little spottier since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, with the two states aligned in just nine of 15 cycles (60 percent).

While there is not likely to be a sweep across these seven states in 2024, it has also been fairly rare until the last generation for this grouping of states to be divided 4-3 in either direction.

This result has occurred in just five of 26 cycles since 1920, but three times already during the 21st Century: in 1968 (a 3-3-1 split), 1976, 2000, 2004, and 2012.

Resources are of course being spent in many states beyond these three clusters (e.g. Minnesota, Texas), but there is approaching unanimity of thought that if those states happen to flip from 2020, probably all of the aforementioned seven states will vote in the same direction.

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