Four years ago, Trump won the presidency on the margin of three states—Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—by a combined 77,744 votes. It was, to use poker terminology, an “inside straight,” the sort of hand that seemingly comes together more by luck than by skill.
The story isn’t that Trump’s luck appears to have run out. The story is that Biden is poised to beat him with the same exact hand.
In 2016, the president carried the WOW counties by yawning margins. Washington was decided by 40 points, Waukesha by 27 and Ozaukee by 19 points. (The Ozaukee result was particularly interesting: It was the tightest race in generations, and yet, no Democrat had broken 40 percent of the vote there in a half-century.)
Four years later, Biden closed the gap in all three. Trump won Washington by 38 points, Waukesha by 21 points and Ozaukee by 12 points. Biden’s vote share in Ozaukee? You guessed it: 43 percent.
In a vacuum, those totals might not seem noteworthy. But taken together—as a picture of suburban Milwaukee and as a wider snapshot of wealthy white suburbs across the Midwest—they are the difference between a President Trump and a President Biden.
Margins matter in tight races. The story of 2020, in the Midwest and elsewhere, was Biden whittling down the president’s margins in the conservative suburbs where Trump’s team thought he might be safe.
To win the presidency, Biden never needed Obama-era levels of turnout and support from Black voters. He just needed significant improvement on the performance of Clinton in 2016.
He has gotten exactly that—and with it, more than likely, a four-year term as president.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...midwest-434114