State of Play – Presidential Battlegrounds Part II: The Blue Wall States

This is Part II of an ongoing series, readers can find Part I here.

In Part I, we discussed the 2024 presidential election’s state of play in the Sun Belt battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina.

While winning in all or most of the Sun Belt states is crucial for Republican nominee Donald Trump’s chances of returning to the White House, merely sweeping the region would only bring him to a total of 268 Electoral Votes – two short of the 270 needed to win.

Therefore, in order for the 45th president to also become the 47th, he must – barring a shocking upset in a Democratic-leaning state – win at least one of the battleground states in the Rust Belt: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Conversely, if Democratic nominee Kamala Harris fails to win all three of these states, her path to 270 gets a lot harder. In this event, she would have to make up ground in the Sun Belt, which according to polling has been significantly more Trump-friendly as of late.

Given that the three Rust Belt states had for over two decades consistently voted for the Democratic nominee – before Trump won them all by less than one point each in 2016 – they are considered part of the Democrats’ “Blue Wall.”

As this name implies, Harris is playing defense there. The Biden-Harris ticket narrowly won all of the Blue Wall battlegrounds in 2020. 

With Election Day less than a week away, the race in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin remains neck and neck.

Will November 5 be a repeat of 2020 in which the Blue Wall holds strong? Or, will it instead be a repeat of 2016 in which Trump’s populist appeal wins over enough traditionally Democratic voters in the region sending the Blue Wall tumbling down?

Michigan (15 electoral votes)

Of the seven swing states in the 2024 cycle, Michigan is the one Harris has the best odds of winning, according to the leading prediction website Polymarket. 

Despite this, the site shows both candidates as having roughly a 50/50 shot of capturing Michigan and its 15 electoral votes.

As of Wednesday evening, Polymarket gave Harris a 51% chance of winning, and Trump a 49% chance of winning Michigan. 

The state remains the only of the seven in which Polymarket gives an edge, albeit a very small one, to the vice president.

Demographics

Of the three hotly-contested Blue Wall states, Michigan has the lowest percentage of Catholic residents. 

The 2020 U.S. Religion Census (USRC) found the Midwestern state to be 14.81% Catholic, which ranks it fifth of the seven battlegrounds, higher than only the “Bible Belt” states of North Carolina and Georgia.

A 2023 U.S. Census estimate, found Michigan’s population to be 73.7% non-Hispanic white, 14.1% black, and 6.0% Hispanic or Latino. 

For reference, North Carolina – the whitest of the four Sun Belt swing states – is 60.7% non-Hispanic white.

While Michigan is whiter than all four of the states outlined in Part I, it is still the most racially and ethnically diverse of the three Blue Wall battlegrounds. 

As CatholicVote previously reported, Trump seems poised to post the best performance among black and Hispanic voters of any Republican nominee in recent decades.

The Arab and Muslim community

In addition to having the largest percentage of black residents of the competitive Rust Belt states, Michigan has a significant Arab and Muslim community, mainly in the suburbs of Detroit. 

Michigan is the state with the highest percentage of its population to be Arab-American (2.1%). 

Furthermore, a 2019 survey found Michigan to have an Arab-American population over 220,000 – the second to only California, a state with nearly four times the total population. According to the New York Post, this number has grown to around 400,000 by 2024.

Arabs and Muslims used to be a reliably Democratic voting block. The Post noted that in “2008, Muslims supported Democrats more than any group except black Americans” as “86% of Muslims voted for Barack Obama” that year.

However, this year both Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs seem to be trending dramatically to the right – and this can prove instrumental to Trump carrying Michigan for the second time in three elections.

In late September, Democratic Hamtramck, Michigan Mayor Amer Ghalib crossed party lines to endorse Trump for president. Ghalib, a Muslim and Yemeni immigrant, called Trump a “man of principles” and “right choice for this critical time.”

An inner-ring Detroit suburb, Hamtramck is the first, and to this date only, Muslim-majority city in the country. As mayor, the socially conservative Ghalib supported city legislation to ban pro-LGBTQ flags from flying on city property.

On Saturday, several leaders in Michigan’s Muslim community spoke at a Trump rally, announcing their endorsement of the former president. 

FOX News reported that the group of elected officials and imams “cited Trump’s commitment to ending wars and ensuring global peace as a primary reason for their support, describing him as a leader who ‘promises peace, not war.’”

Unionized workers

Michigan is also known for its significant population of unionized workers, and in particular, members of Detroit-based United Auto Workers (UAW).

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023, 12.8% of the state’s employed workers were union members – the second-highest percentage of any swing state and slightly behind Pennsylvania.

Unionized workers are yet another demographic group that has historically voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates – but this year is becoming up for grabs.

Polling from late September found that Harris is on track to perform the worst among union households of any Democratic nominee of the past several election cycles.

Earlier this year, Brian Pannebecker, a UAW member from Michigan, told FOX News why he and many other auto workers in the state are turning out for Trump.

Pannebecker outlined that all Biden-Harris “policies have basically hurt auto workers,” and specifically pointed to the administration’s crackdown on gas vehicles which many critics have dubbed an electric vehicle (EV) “mandate.”

To make a living, many UAW members rely on assembling engines, which Pannebecker pointed out EVs do not need. 

Voting history 

Michigan is a state that very few expected Trump would carry in 2016. He ended up winning it by just over 10,000 votes, a measly 0.23% of all the votes cast there.

However, four years later, Michigan returned to its usual Democratic form when the Biden-Harris ticket carried it by 150,000 votes, or just shy of three percentage points.

In the six presidential elections between 1992 and 2012 inclusive, Michigan voted for the Democratic nominee every time.

State of play

Michigan is a prime case study of to what extent Trump’s polling success with groups that have traditionally voted for Democrats can translate into electoral votes.

If the Republican carries the state, his success there will certainly be attributed in a large part to his inroads with both the growing Arab and Muslim community, and unionized workers.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s Wednesday polling aggregate, Harris had a slim one-point lead in the state.

However, two recent polls – an AtlasIntel poll and an Emerson College poll – instead showed Trump one point ahead of his Democratic opponent in Michigan. 

A CNN/SSRS poll showed Harris up by five points while a Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research poll sponsored by FOX News indicated that the two candidates were tied.

Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes)

A chorus of observers consider Pennsylvania to be the single most important battleground state in the 2024 election cycle – and for good reason. 

Of the Blue Wall states, it is the only one where Trump is currently performing the best in most polls. 

Reflecting this, Polymarket as of Wednesday gave the former president a 62% chance of winning the state’s 19 electoral votes. While this is Trump’s best odds in the Rust Belt states, it is still lower than his chances of carrying any four of the states in the Sun Belt.

As established earlier, even if Trump sweeps the Sun Belt, he still would still need two additional electoral votes to defeat Harris. Given both the polls and the betting odds, Pennsylvania is his most likely source of these electoral votes.

Therefore, Pennsylvania is, fitting its state nickname, the keystone to the race. According to FiveThirtyEight, it is the most likely tipping point state – the state whose electors put the winning candidate over the 270 electoral vote threshold. 

In short, the candidate who wins Pennsylvania, be it Trump or Harris, would in all probability, win the election.

Demographics

According to USRC’s 2020 report, Pennsylvania is 21.89% Catholic – the most of all the Blue Wall states and the second most of all the battlegrounds, after only Nevada.

In a mid-October op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, former White House Director of Speechwriting Bill McGurn argued that Harris has a “Pennsylvania Catholic problem.” McGurn highlighted the Democrat’s history of hostility toward American Catholics.

Days after McGurn’s op-ed, The New York Times national religion correspondent Elizabeth Dias noted that the policy positions of Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-OH, “resonate with many white conservative Catholics.”

Vance converted to the Catholic faith in 2019. Particularly, he is known for long championing child tax credits, a pro-family policy popular among many faithful Catholic Americans.

A 2023 Census estimate found Pennsylvania’s population to be 74.1% non-Hispanic white, 12.3% black, and 8.9% Hispanic or Latino.

In addition, Pennsylvania had, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023, the highest percentage of its workers to be members of unions (12.9%) of the swing states – 0.1 percentage point higher than Michigan.

To frack or not to frack

The sheer importance of Pennsylvania has rocketed the debate over hydraulic fracturing – commonly known as “fracking” – to the forefront of the 2024 campaign.

This method for obtaining oil and natural gas for energy is particularly vital to the economy of the Keystone State and the livelihood of many of its residents. Pennsylvania consistently ranks toward the top of states with the largest fracking industries.

Over the past few years, Harris has changed her stance on fracking numerous times – something which many news outlets have characterized as “flip-flopping.”

In 2019, when she was running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, then-Sen. Harris told a climate activist at a town hall hosted by CNN, “There’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking.”

Harris has since backtracked and in August claimed, “As president I will not ban fracking.”

However in late October, the climate-engagement director for Harris’ campaign told POLITICO that the candidate is “not promoting expansion” and “has championed” combating climate change.

Voting history

President Joe Biden, who was born in Pennsylvania, edged out Trump in the state by just over one percentage point in 2020. 

For years earlier, Trump had stunned Hillary Clinton there by 0.72% – his second smallest margin of victory in any state, just after Michigan. Clinton’s husband had won Pennsylvania by a comfortable nine points in both 1992 and 1996.

In fact, before 2016, the most recent Republican to carry Pennsylvania was then-incumbent President Ronald Reagan in 1984, when he swept his way to a stunning 49-state reelection victory.

Pennsylvania had even voted for 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, who had lost his race in a landslide to Reagan’s vice president George H.W. Bush. Pennsylvania and the fellow blue wall state of Wisconsin were one of only 10 states Dukakis carried in that election.

State of play

In short while not all roads to a Trump win run through Pennsylvania, most do. The same could be said for Harris. 

On July 13, the former president came just inches away from losing his life as a would-be-assassin’s bullet grazed his ear drawing blood, during a rally in Butler, in the western part of the state.

Observers agree that the iconic photograph of Trump extending his fist and mouthing the word “fight” – captured just seconds after the gunfire – will be memorialized in the history books for generations to come.

Less than three months later, he triumphantly returned to the exact spot where he was almost assassinated.

If Pennsylvania happens to be the deciding state that sends Trump back to the White House, it would be nothing short of poetic – and all indications show this may very well happen.

FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregate has Trump up over Harris by 0.4% in the state. 

A slew of recent polls show Trump in the driver’s seat in the state. An AtlasIntel poll has him up by three points and a poll from Quinnipiac University has him leading by two.

A Monmouth University poll and a Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research poll sponsored by FOX News shows Trump with a one-point lead in Pennsylvania, while in a CNN/SSRS poll, he and Harris are tied.

Wisconsin (10 electoral votes)

According to Polymarket, Trump, as of Wednesday evening, had a 56% chance of winning Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes compared to Harris’ 44% chance. 

This represents a nearly ten point jump in Trump’s win probability percentage from October 8, when the site gave Harris a 53% shot of carrying the Badger State.

Demographics

USRC’s 2020 report determined that Wisconsin’s population was 20.99% Catholic, ranking it fourth – squarely in the middle – among the seven battleground states, ahead of Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia, but behind Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.

Wisconsin is also the whitest of the seven battleground states.

Per the Census’ 2023 estimate, 79.5% of the state’s population was non-Hispanic white, 6.6% black, and 8.1% Hispanic or Latino.

In particular, Wisconsin is known for its large German-American population. It is estimated that around one out of every four German-Americans are Catholic.

According to a 2024 World Population Review estimate, 36.57% of Wisconsin residents were found to be of German descent. This is the highest percentage of any state in the country and slightly ahead of both Dakotas.

Voting history

“What if Hillary Clinton had gone to Wisconsin?” has become a common question asked by political analysts – as the failed 2016 Democratic nominee’s decision to take the state’s history of voting for her party and not make a campaign visit there allowed Trump to win it that cycle.

The 0.77% margin by which Trump carried Wisconsin eight years ago was by a hair, his best margin in the states considered to be part of the Blue Wall.

Also, of these states, Wisconsin was the one Trump came the closest to carrying in 2020. Then, he had only lost the state by just over 20,000 votes – a razor-thin 0.63% margin.

Like Pennsylvania, before 2016, Wisconsin had last voted for a Republican in a presidential race during Reagan’s 49-state landslide in 1984. 

State of play

This time around Trump’s Democratic opponent has at least partly learned from Clinton’s colossal blunder and has made several campaign stops in Wisconsin.

However, the former president is still in a relatively strong position to repeat his 2016 success there.

FiveThirtyEight’s Wednesday polling aggregate found Harris just 0.8% ahead of Trump in the state.

A recent AtlasIntel poll showed Trump leading Harris by one point in Wisconsin, as did a Suffolk University poll sponsored by USA Today. 

Another poll from Milwaukee-based Marquette University instead found Harris leading, again by a single point.

A CNN/SSRS poll did find Harris up by six points in the state – although this poll seems to be the outlier.

This article is a part of CatholicVote’s pre-election “State of Play” series. Readers can find other entries in the series below:

Presidential Battlegrounds Part I: The Sun Belt