State Of The States

 By Sniffles

The whiz kids over at FiveThirtyEight have outdone themselves. They've rolled out a very nifty website with their 2020 forecast. It has lots of graphics, fun stuff to click on, and tons of polling info, nearly all of which falls under the category of "What's Not To Like?" Take a few minutes to visit it and play with the bells and whistles — but here's a quick summary of the current situation:

Joe Biden has a 71% chance of winning the Presidential election, with 323 electoral votes to Benedict Donald's 215, and 53 percent of the popular vote (compared to 46% for Trump). Check back for updates over the next 83 days.

If you do, you'll immediately want to check the status of the battlegrounds that everybody always talks about. But interestingly, there are plenty of states that were 2016 Trump wins but which, according to FiveThirtyEight's current ratings, could flip to the Democrats this year. In Tier One, for example, you have North Carolina and Ohio, of course. But you also have Georgia (yes, really) and Maine's 2nd Congressional District (hey, every electoral vote counts). Tier Two is — don't laugh — Iowa, Texas, South Carolina and Alaska. Tier Three is Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Kansas, Indiana, Arkansas and Nebraska-01. (Okay, we might be getting greedy with Tier Three, but if you have a blue tsunami, anything could happen.)

Here's what caught our eye about those states: With Kamala Harris on the Presidential ticket, there's an expectation that she could drive one or two points to Democratic candidates, up and down the ballot. Three of the four Tier One states — North Carolina, Georgia and Maine — have hotly contested Senate races. In Tier Two, all four states do. In Tier Three, three do (Mississippi, Montana and Kansas).

So, Team Biden should run hard not just in the classic six battleground states — Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — but also in Georgia and Maine. They should run almost as hard in Iowa, Texas, South Carolina, Alaska, Montana, Kansas and Mississippi.

Or they could just take the billions of dollars they've raised since Kamala joined the ticket and run hard everywhere. Fifty-state strategy, ya'll! We cats PURR.