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 | | By Charlie Mahtesian |
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 Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena on August 9 in Glendale, Arizona. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images |
HEAD START
— It’s largely escaped notice, but Democrats start three electoral votes in the hole on Election Day. In 2020, Joe Biden won the Electoral College 306 to 232 votes. But if Kamala Harris were to win the same exact map next month, she’d have just 303 electoral votes to Donald Trump’s 235. It’s a function of the 2020 Census apportionment of congressional seats among the states, an exercise that reflects population changes across the country over the previous decade. That apportionment of House seats, in turn, determines the
allocation of electoral votes by state. In the latest round after the 2020 Census, when all the population gains and losses were added up, Republican states ended up with a net gain of three seats — thus the 3-vote head start this year compared to 2020.
There are several plausible scenarios where this could come back to bite the vice president. If Harris were to replicate Biden’s 2020 map but lose Georgia and Pennsylvania, for example, she’d lose the presidency because she would finish with 268 electoral votes — two shy of the 270 necessary to win. Likewise, if she lost Michigan and Pennsylvania, it would leave her at 269 — a tie with Donald Trump, which would throw the election to the House.
Those precise outcomes aren’t really serious concerns for the Harris campaign. The likelihood of either combination is low — it would be highly unusual for Harris to lose only those states, yet win the other 5 battlegrounds. But it does point to a more significant problem on the horizon, two presidential elections away. After the 2030 Census and the round of apportionment that follows, the electoral map will take a turn for the worse for Democrats.
Solidly blue California, the cornerstone of the Democratic electoral coalition since the 1990s, is projected to lose four electoral votes
if current population trends continue. It’s a stunning development given the state’s history. California’s blistering growth for much of the 20th century elevated the state from casting 13 electoral votes in the 1928 presidential election to casting 55 in 2020. But that was California’s high point. Its now-slowing pace of growth led to the loss of an electoral vote after the most recent Census, giving the state just 54 electoral votes in 2024 and 2028 and the prospect of even heavier losses after the 2030 Census.
But that’s not all. New York, the Democratic Party’s other pillar, is slated to lose three electoral votes by the 2032 presidential election. A handful of additional blue-state stalwarts are also on a course to hemorrhage votes, including Illinois, which could lose two.
At the same time, the two fast-growing red states that anchor the Republican coalition, Texas and Florida, are projected to gain as many as seven or eight electoral votes between them, while a handful of other solidly red states — including Idaho, Tennessee and Utah — might also each pick up another vote. When the dust settles, the 2032 Democratic nominee could bleed somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen electoral votes from the map Biden won in 2020, not including the three lost already for 2024.
In some ways, it’s a familiar story — political power has been shifting to the South and the West for decades. What’s new is the velocity of the electoral shift and the imbalance that could be caused by California’s contraction. The Democratic Party’s overreliance on the slow-growing Northeast and Midwest and its weakness in the rapidly-growing South could become a serious impediment to winning the White House.
The electoral map, of course, isn’t static. Population projections aren’t certainties. Texas might flip blue by 2032, destabilizing the GOP’s coalition and reshaping the entire landscape. Critical battleground states in one election sometimes vanish from the list of competitive states within a few presidential election cycles. Consider Virginia and Colorado, which were red states for decades until they suddenly broke in the other direction in 2008. Or Ohio and Florida, which were pivotal to Barack Obama’s success, but are now viewed as out of reach for Democratic nominees.
What’s certain is that the shrinking base of Democratic electoral votes now places a premium on expansion. The best way for the party to accomplish that is to establish and build out a beachhead in the high-growth Sun Belt and Southeastern states where the party is suddenly competitive — such as Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. That makes them more than just 2024 battlegrounds. They might be the keys to the party’s future.
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie.
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— Commerce Department blacklists dozens of groups over weapons-related violations: The United States is adding dozens of new entities to its trade restrictions list
in its ongoing bid to disrupt weapons programs aiding Washington’s rivals including China, Russia and Iran. The addition of these groups to the Commerce Department’s entity list, including companies from China, the UAE, Egypt and Pakistan, sheds light on the complex web of global supply chains that Moscow and Tehran are using to circumvent Western sanctions and export restrictions in their race to bulk up their militaries.
— Trump says he supports Congress returning early for hurricane relief: Donald Trump said at a media appearance in western North Carolina that he supports Congress returning early to pass additional aid for Hurricane Helene victims
. “I would be in favor of it,” Trump said when asked by a reporter whether he agrees with some Republicans, including North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, that Congress should return early to pass more funds. After a weekend of headlines about his more entertainment-focused campaigning, the appearance in a town outside of Asheville that was hit hard by Hurricane Helene was a much more somber affair.
— Supreme Court won’t take up Michael Cohen’s suit over alleged retaliation for anti-Trump book: The Supreme Court will not revive Michael Cohen’s lawsuit
against former President Donald Trump for allegedly having Cohen jailed for refusing to call off plans for a book harshly critical of his former boss. The justices’ rejection of Cohen’s petition was included in a routine list of orders released today. No explanation for the denial was released and no justice noted any dissent from the decision.
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HURRICANE POLITICS — Hundreds of thousands of voters in the mountains of western North Carolina are still reeling after Hurricane Helene destroyed homes and communities, obliterated roads and water systems and left at least 95 people dead in the critical swing state. But the presidential race here is now very much back on
. As early voting has begun in North Carolina — drawing record-setting statewide turnout on Thursday — and the process of restoring water, electricity, road access and mail service is underway, both parties have resumed some of their campaign activities in the affected areas. Democrats last week held an early-voting kickoff event in Asheville and are holding both get-out-the-vote and relief events. Trump today will make his first visit back to western North Carolina since the hurricane last month, while his allies on the ground are making arrangements to bring isolated voters down blocked country roads on ATVs, if needed, to ensure his rural supporters can get to the polls.
Early GOP concerns that depressed turnout in the red-leaning region could cost Trump in the southern battleground have largely been replaced by resolve to mobilize his supporters to the polls, according to interviews with more than a dozen Republican campaign officials, operatives and county party chairs working in the state. WHY CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS — Billionaire Mark Cuban told CNBC today that
he offered to arrange a live X interview between Kamala Harris and fellow billionaire Elon Musk, but was told no by Harris’ campaign. “Not Kamala specifically but her team … didn’t trust the fact that he [Musk] wouldn’t go on X and just say something to distort the purpose of the meeting,” Cuban, a surrogate for Harris’ campaign, told Andrew Ross Sorkin, after the CNBC “Squawk Box” host said he would want to see Harris go on X and talk to Musk.
Musk said on X in response to a clip of the interview that there would be no “distortion” if it was a live interview, adding that an interview with Harris “would be so awesome.” UNION WOES — Tim Walz raised eyebrows today for publicly venting rare frustration with some union leaders
, following a pair of high-profile union non-endorsements that hit Kamala Harris’ campaign as she struggles to win over working-class male voters in the final campaign sprint. BLACK BOX — Nevada’s diverse, working-class and highly transient electorate — difficult to model and even harder to poll — has long confounded Washington’s political class. This year, campaign operatives on the ground here are
fumbling in the dark, too. And as they work to model the electorate, it’s a significant problem for Republican and Democratic strategists who are, with three weeks until Election Day, eyeing how this smallest of battleground states could be decisive to either a Donald Trump or Kamala Harris victory. “Anybody that says they’re certain about where Nevada is going in this election is making it up,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who has long worked in the state. “Uncertainty reigns.”
MARK WHO? — With early voting underway and two weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump is still trying to keep distance
between himself and North Carolina’s embattled Republican nominee for governor. Asked by POLITICO at a campaign stop today whether he would urge voters here to still support Mark Robinson, Trump declined to say either way. “I’m not familiar with the state of the race right now,” Trump said as he prepared to step into the black SUV that would whisk him back to his private plane. “I haven’t seen it.”
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People vote in the presidential elections and a referendum on joining the European Union at a polling station in Moldova. | Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images | CAN WE JOIN
— Moldova voted in favor of joining the European Union by a narrow margin, in a referendum that came down to just a few thousand votes amid accusations of Russian interference. A razor-thin victory for pro-EU forces was virtually certain with 99.9 percent of votes counted as of late this morning. 50.4 percent of Moldovan voters backed changing the constitution to include EU membership, with 49.6 percent opposing the move.
During a long and nerve-wracking night for officials and activists in the Eastern European nation, the “no” campaign maintained a lead until near the end. Moldovans inside the country voted against the pro-EU campaign, but ballots cast by people living abroad swung the result at the climax. UNANNOUNCED VISIT — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Kyiv today i
n an unannounced visit for likely the last time as defense secretary, and delivered a speech that seemed tailored to answering criticisms by Republicans who are skeptical of more Ukraine aid. Austin’s visit to Kyiv, which included the announcement of $400 million in new U.S. military aid, comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government is under enormous pressure from his country’s continued loss of territory at the front and a lukewarm reception in Europe over his plan for victory.
In his speech, Austin framed the current battle as a fight between the West against Russia, North Korea and Iran, calling it “a hinge in history.” He also pointed out that Europe is sharing much of the load and specifically laid the groundwork to respond to Republican challenges to U.S. aid.
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| $1 million per day The amount that
Elon Musk says he will give away in total to voters for signing his political action committee’s petition backing the Constitution. The giveaway is raising alarm among some election experts who say it is a violation of the law to link a cash handout to signing a petition that also requires a person to be registered to vote. |
| | | MATTERS OF THE MEDIA
— “Can the media survive?” It’s the question that’s animating New York Magazine’s latest cover story, in which reporter Charlotte Klein
asked that question and many others to a scattered number of media elite from Graydon Carter to Alison Roman to Ben Shapiro to Bill Simmons. In the lengthy feature, Klein’s reporting (which includes interviews with POLITICO’s Global Editor-in-Chief John Harris and Axel Springer’s CEO Mathias Döpfner) gets into minute questions such as who might pay for a website like cnn.com, and broader ones, such as what is the future of local news. Read the entire package here.
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 On this date in 1959: New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, a Frank Lloyd Wright creation, opens to the public. | Harry Harris/AP |
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Since Athletic Brewing became a Walmart supplier in 2021, they’ve opened a 150,000 square foot brewery and hired over 200 people in Milford, CT. When local businesses work with Walmart, their business can grow. By the numbers:
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By working with Walmart, local businesses like Athletic Brewing in Milford, CT are able to grow, hire more employees, and support their communities.
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