The relative value of the states in the 2024 US presidential election

Below is a map I created depicting the relative value of the states in the 2024 US presidential election. This is a guide that can be used by the campaign of any candidate, because any given state is equally important for any candidate.

Upon request, I can provide the data for the states that are not labeled in this graphic. The most valuable state that is not labeled in the map above is New Jersey, with a value of 0.61%; all remaining states are even lower.

You might think that when a campaign decides where to spend its scarce resources of time and money, that the only consideration is the number of electoral votes that state holds. That is not so, however. California has the most electoral votes in the nation. In 2020, it voted by a 29% margin for Biden over Trump. Thus, Trump would face a Herculean task of converting at least 15% of Biden voters to Trump voters, not losing any of his old voters, and ensuring that he gets at least half of all new voters. That is not realistic. Given the age of the candidates and the enormous margins, trying to win California or New York is a waste of time. Cutting into Biden’s margin in those states for bragging rights isn’t worth it.

My metric computes a value for each state by starting with its electoral votes, but then dividing by the margin of victory for either candidate in 2020. This margin is updated with the recent margins within swing states for the Real Clear Politics average of polls.

As you can see, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania deserve heavy attention, at 26% and 23% respectively of the campaign’s resources. Michigan is next at 9%, followed by Florida at 6%, Texas at 5%, Georgia at 5%, Arizona at 4%, North Carolina at 3%, and Nevada at 3%. (Ohio is next at 1.5%.)

I find it intriguing that this list of the 9 most valuable states includes what are usually considered the 7 swing states, plus two others that are commonly considered to be part of a conservative wall: Florida and Texas. But the results from 2020 warn conservatives not to be over-confident. They were closer than we might like to think. Since 2020, two things have happened in those states, the first good and the second bad: 1) in-migration of conservatives from other states and out-migration of leftists in those states; 2) Biden’s deliberate release of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into those states. It is easy to imagine that leftist activists and bleeding-heart liberals will attempt to commit voter fraud using the illegal aliens.