CHRIS CRUCIAL: The *Next* Swing States 🇺🇸

PLUS: Florida's next Senator....

In 63 days, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. I will be here bringing you everything you need to know between now and then — and over his four years as president.

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1. The 2028 map

One of the reasons I love politics is that it never stands still. The two parties — and the country they seek to represent — are always evolving and changing.

And nothing better captures that change than how states grow more (and less) politically competitive over and between presidential election cycles.

It might seem — at the moment — that we have been talking about the same swing states forever. But, a look back even a decade or two shows just how much the electoral map has changed — and suggests that the only thing we can be sure of going forward is that the swing states of 2024 won’t all be swing states forever (or maybe even in 2028).

Before I do a bit of a historical deep dive into the map, let’s define a swing state as a state where, in the previous election, the margin between two candidates was less than 3 percentage points. That’s not a perfect measure but it will do for what we are after here.

By that definition, here’s what the swing states looked like after the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore:

The seven swing states were (from west to east): Oregon, New Mexico, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Florida and New Hampshire.

Fast forward to 2008 — when John McCain and Barack Obama fought for the presidency. Here’s the states decided by 3 points or less in that election:

Again, going from west to east we had: Montana, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina and Florida.

Finally, let’s look at the states decided by 3 or less points in the 2016 race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump:

Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Hampshire and Maine made the cut as swing states in that election.

Between 2000 and 2016, Wisconsin and Minnesota are the only two states that were within three points in BOTH elections.

Many of the states that were very competitive in 2000 aren’t even states we consider as long-shot battlegrounds now. Take Oregon — where in 2024 Kamala Harris won by 15 points. Or Missouri, which Donald Trump won by 19 points earlier this month. Heck, Florida was a swing state in 2016 — but by 2024 Trump won it by 13 points!

My point, ahem, here is that the map is always changing. Which is not to say that a bunch of the swing states of 2024 won’t be competitive again. But it is to say that not all of the 2024 swing states are likely to be as competitive in four years time. And chances are that a new state (or even two) sneak onto our battleground map.

Which states will they be?

If I had to choose a single 2024 swing state that might not be a swing state in 2028, I think I would go with Arizona. That state always felt out of reach for Democrats — whether Joe Biden or Kamala Harris was the nominee — in this election and it played out that way on election day.

Trump won Arizona by 5 points — a margin of just under 200,000 votes. While the win by Sen.-elect Ruben Gallego might be cited as evidence that the state is still very competitive for Democrats, I think the Senate race was more about how much people didn’t like Kari Lake than anything else.

Nevada, another longtime Democratic stronghold, might be headed the Republicans’ way in 2028 too. Trump won there by 4 after both Clinton and Biden had prevailed by 2 points in 2016 and 2020, respectively.

Trump’s ability to be competitive among Latino voters — if it can be extended to other Republican candidates — is critical to those two states moving more toward the GOP.

The list of states that might jump onto the competitive map in 2028 is skewed toward Republican opportunities due to the fact that Trump over-performed his 2016 and 2020 showings almost everywhere in 2024 — including many states he lost.

Minnesota was a four-point win for Harris on November 5 after Biden won it by 7 points four years ago. Trump came within a point of winning Minnesota in 2016 (people forget about that!) and given the overall competitiveness we have seen in the Upper Midwest it would make sense if Minnesota returned to swing state status in 2028.

I’d also keep an eye on New Mexico. In 2020, Biden won it by 10. In 2024, Harris won it by just six. And the same strength Trump showed among Latinos in Arizona and Nevada is mirrored in New Mexico, which is a majority-Latino state.

And then there is New Jersey. This, to me, was the single most stunning result — in a non-swing state — of the 2024 election. Trump lost it by 6 points after Biden had cruised to a 14-point victory there in 2020.

Is New Jersey actually moving toward competitiveness? It would be a MAJOR shift —since the last Republican presidential nominee to carry the Garden State was George H.W. Bush in 1988!

We’ll have answers sooner rather than later in New Jersey because it’s one of two states (Virginia is the other) that hold a governor’s race in 2025. If Republicans can win that race, then we might be adding the state to our competitive list come 2028.

The point is this: The electoral map will change before 2028. That we know. The only question is how — and which party it benefits.

2. Ron Speaks! 🗣️

The likely confirmation of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as Donald Trump’s Secretary of State — 93% chance on Kalshi right now — means that the Sunshine State will need a new senator.

And that choice will be made by one man: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has been very quiet about who he might pick but broke that silence Monday via X.

Here’s what Ron said:

We have already received strong interest from several possible candidates, and we continue to gather names of additional candidates and conduct preliminary vetting. More extensive vetting and candidate interviews will be conducted over the next few weeks, with a selection likely made by the beginning of January.

Florida deserves a Senator who will help President Trump deliver on his election mandate, be strong on immigration and border security, take on the entrenched bureaucracy and administrative state, reverse the nation’s fiscal decline, be animated by conservative principles, and has a proven record of results.

The news there is that DeSantis will make the pick by the beginning of January. Which gives us some sense of his timeline.

The jockeying for the job has already begun in earnest. Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee and the wife of Eric Trump, appears to be actively campaigning for the role.

“I was so humbled and honored to be even be considered for this. I know my name is being thrown out there a lot and I would say that my experience at the RNC has really shown me, you know, serving the American people,” Lara Trump said in an interview on Fox Business late last week. “And if I were tapped for this, serving my home state of Florida, it’s a great honor and a great responsibility, obviously.”

(Note: Lara Trump was born in Wilmington, North Carolina — and considered running for the Tarheel State’s Senate seat in 2022.)

She’s got an ally in Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who tweeted this:

And, on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr., her brother-in-law, weighed in with his support: “I think it’d be great. I think she understands our base; she understands the movement.”

It’s unclear to me whether DeSantis, not exactly a Trump fan following their bruising primary battle in 2024, will be in the mood to do the president-elect a solid by choosing his daughter-in-law for the opening.

Other names mentioned as possible appointees: Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, Attorney General Ashley Moody, former Florida House Speaker Jose Oliva and DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier.

Whoever DeSantis chooses will serve the two years remaining on Rubio’s term and then run in 2026 for a full six-year term.

3. The 7 Senate Republicans to Watch 👀

Republicans are very likely to control 53 seats in the Senate when the calendar turns to 2025. Which means that that Donald Trump can only lose three GOP votes if he wants his Cabinet nominees to be confirmed.

Who might be the Republican renegades? I went through the 7 likeliest suspects to rebel from Trump in a video on my YouTube channel today. Check it out. And SUBSCRIBE!

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“UFC at MSG was epic!” — Speaker Mike Johnson, after attending a mixed martial event at Madison Square Garden

ONE GOOD CHART

How did Donald Trump win the election? Here’s one way: He crushed it among people who pay no attention to political news.

SONG OF THE DAY

My favorite rap group ever is De La Soul. My favorite single rapper though? MF Doom aka Zev Love X. Doom died in 2020 under questionable circumstances but left a massive treasure trove of music behind. The 20th anniversary edition of his classic album “MM..Food” was just released. It’s just as good (if not better) today than the day it came out. This is “Rapp Snitch Knishes.”

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