In 2020, Joe Biden won the national popular vote for president by 4.5 percentage points, a seemingly safe margin that should have easily put him in the White House.
But under the hood, the presidential race was extremely close. In fact, if just 42,000 votes in three battleground states — Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — had gone differently, Biden would have lost his electoral vote majority.
Instead, Biden not only won the popular vote but also 306 votes in the electoral college, a convergence that has not always happened over the past 24 years in the U.S. political system.
And given what we’re seeing this year in the data and in The Washington Post’s election model, it may not only happen again in 2024 — but be easier for Democrats to clinch the electoral college and win the White House with a smaller popular-vote margin than in recent years…..
Because of this recent history, we’ve come to assume that Republicans have a baked-in electoral college advantage. We think Democrats need to win the popular vote with some buffer, maybe two or three percentage points, to win the presidential election.
But in 2024, things may be changing. That’s because Democrats are performing less well in populous, blue states while simultaneously not losing any ground in the close states that decide the election….