Last dump of 2% was super close. 27422 new votes for Gall, 27487 new votes for Kari. 65 vote gap. Kari is gaining, but it's by like 0.1% margins per vote dump which state wide is basically nothing.
ThatOneKrazyKaptain
~~They'll never accept the Italians/Irish, they're still blue, they're still blue!~~ ~~They'll never win the Dixiecrats, they're still blue, they're still blue~~ The Latino Men will ALWAYS vote blue this time we swear
Swing State is 5 point margin or less. Virginia is like 5.1 right now so it's arguably stretching the definition, but still.
Also as I pointed out, that argument doesn't hold up nearly as well in New Hampshire or Minnesota. Trump basically ignored NH despite giving Virginia and New Mexico plenty of attention. NJ got more attention. Hell, NY and Cali got more attention. He visited it with Vance once at the literal last minute because of how hard the polls tightened in the last week(see 538). Not to mention the third party spread there was horrible for him, RFK Jr and Chase Oliver both there(and New Hampshire Republicans are very libertarian), and just Jill Stein on the left, no Cornel or Claudia or one of the fringe Socialists.
Take out RFK Jr, add in Claudia or Cornel, get Trump to give them the same level of attention he gave Virginia or New Mexico, maybe make a speech with those clips of Democrats calling to end New Hampshire and Iowas Primary lead spot vowing to protect their first primary role. I genuinely think it would have flipped Red in that scenario.
The other two no, but Minnesota had their Golden Boy as the VP and only held by less than 4 points. Without him? With more Trump visits? Ehhhh. New Mexico was mostly fine, I'm pretty much entirely citing 1.1% of the vote going to RFK Jr. Probably past the Swing State margin without that. Also there's a new Liberal Party there made from moderate Libertarians.
(If you were to include Arizona, you'd also have to include New Mexico and New Jersey, both of which were closer than Arizona. Maine is also only slightly less close than Arizona)
2020 was a massive outlier and trying to frame 2024 as a low turnout election is dishonest. 2024 is the second highest turnout of any election in decades and the third highest since 1900(only behind 2020 and 1960). The gap you see floating around is days outdated, even in this comment section people are saying Trump got less votes than last time which isn't true anymore.
Also how do you know some of those people didn't defect? Trump is beating his 2020 numbers despite losing twice as many supporters to COVID, where did the new guys come from? (Especially that latter point, between old age and COVID Trump probably had another 2 million voters in 2020 who are dead now if not more)
74,366,055 is higher than 74,223,975 and there's still 4% of the vote to be counted. And the US Population is basically the same as in 2020 due to COVID offsetting and birth and immigration decline related to it.
Virginia and to a lesser extent NJ you could argue were redder then they really are due to factors like Youngkin, an extremely left leaning third party spread(Virginia the worst in the nation for the democrats), and Trump's local popularity in NJ.
But if you make that argument New Mexico and Minnesota and New Hampshire are the opposite, local factors and third parties were against Trump and he still did really well. If you want my honest 2024 swing state map prediction swap out Virginia for New Mexico
The meme is not only did they not turn 'weak' red states like Texas or Ohio or Iowa or Florida into swing states, but 3 safe blue states instead ended up becoming Swing States and Arizona is now a red state.
It's 11% of what it was in late July if that helps
11% of what it was the day he dropped out
"Where's Joe? Kamawho? Doh I guess I'll just vote for Trump, I liked cheaper gas"
Florida has had the fastest counting in the country for years in response to what happened in 2000