Election News

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Drew Savicki, who is taking over The Road to 270 beginning this week. Drew kicks things off with Connecticut, his state of birth.  Special thanks to Seth Moskowitz for his work bringing this series to life; we wish him well as he moves on to a new career opportunity.  

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The Road to 270 is a weekly column leading up to the presidential election. Each installment is dedicated to understanding one state’s political landscape and how that might influence which party will win its electoral votes in 2020. We’ll do these roughly in order of expected competitiveness, moving toward the most intensely contested battlegrounds as election day nears. 

The Road to 270 is a weekly column leading up to the presidential election. Each installment is dedicated to understanding one state’s political landscape and how that might influence which party will win its electoral votes in 2020. We’ll do these roughly in order of expected competitiveness, moving toward the most intensely contested battlegrounds as election day nears. 

The Road to 270 will be published every Monday. The column is written by Seth Moskowitz, a 270toWin elections and politics contributor. Contact Seth at s.k.moskowitz@gmail.com or on Twitter @skmoskowitz.

Illinois

Illinois was once America’s political bellwether. From 1896 to 1996 the state regularly swung between the parties and voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election except for two. But since 1992, it has voted Democratic in every presidential election. Why is the state that is most demographically similar to the nation overall no longer a swing state? In short, Democrats traded voters in shrinking rural Illinois for voters in Chicago and the suburbs. The longer story starts before Illinois was a state.

Updated April 19 with results.

Joe Biden won Wyoming's Democratic caucuses with 72.2% of the vote; Bernie Sanders received 27.8%.

The state's presidential nominating contest was originally to be in-person caucuses on April 4. Due to the coronavirus, the party transitioned to running the event entirely by mail.  Ballots needed to be received by Friday, April 17.

On April 7, Wisconsin went ahead with its scheduled presidential primary, along with a few other races, the most notable of which is the general election for a 10-year term on the State's Supreme Court. Following two court rulings, the absentee ballot deadline - for ballots postmarked by April 7 - was extended until Monday, April 13 at 4:00 local time (5:00 PM Eastern). 

Results will appear below - as they become available - after 5:00 PM Eastern Time. 

Democratic Primary

Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign on April 8, making Joe Biden the party's presumptive nominee. Since this was after both the in-person voting as well as the deadline for absentee ballots to be postmarked, the move won't have influenced the outcome of this race.  

The state has 84 pledged delegates. Note that with Sanders withdrawal, he can no longer earn statewide delegates, per Democratic National Committee rules. We saw the impact of that in this past weekend's Alaska primary results.  What would have likely been an 8-7 Biden delegate advantage ended up as 11-4 in favor of the former vice president.  In Wisconsin, 29 of the delegates are statewide, so it is the remaining 55 - split across the state's 8 congressional districts - that will be allocated proportionately based on the results in each district. 

Earlier Monday, Sanders endorsed Biden.

The Road to 270 is a weekly column leading up to the presidential election. Each installment is dedicated to understanding one state’s political landscape and how that might influence which party will win its electoral votes in 2020. We’ll do these roughly in order of expected competitiveness, moving toward the most intensely contested battlegrounds as election day nears. 

The Road to 270 will be published every Monday. The column is written by Seth Moskowitz, a 270toWin elections and politics contributor. Contact Seth at s.k.moskowitz@gmail.com or on Twitter @skmoskowitz.

Louisiana

From the Democratic Party’s founding in 1828 through 1944, Louisiana voted for its nominee in all but three of the elections in which it participated. Since 2000, however, the state has been safely Republican and getting more so. The once dominant Protestant-Catholic divide has given way to a Urban-Rural one, a gap seemingly too large for Democratic candidates to overcome. But in 2019, a Democrat did just that by winning the state’s gubernatorial election. This victory does not make Louisiana a realistic Democratic pickup in this November’s presidential election. To understand why, we’ll trace Louisiana’s history from pre-statehood though 2020.

Pre-statehood to Civil War

Originally scheduled for April 4, the Alaska Democratic primary was shifted to a mail-in contest with ballots due by April 10. The state is expected to release results on Saturday, April 11. The state has 15 pledged delegates. 

The results, whatever they are, will be anticlimactic, with Joe Biden now the presumptive nominee after Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign earlier in the week.  It is worth noting that in 2016, Sanders won Alaska with nearly 82% of the vote.  The contest that year was a caucus.

The race for the Democratic nomination is effectively over; attention now turns to the general election on November 3.  To that end, we've added a few pages to track the polls featuring President Trump vs. former Vice President Biden. 

Most Recent Polls:  A running list of polls, updated as new ones are released. There's an option to filter for the most current poll in each state.

Polling Averages by State:  The calculated average nationally, as well as for each state. Options to sort by state, competitiveness (margin between Trump and Biden), Biden % or Trump % (these last two from highest to lowest). Note that an average is only calculated if there are two or more polls within the last 30 days. If not - and that is going to be the case for a while in many states - we list the most recent one. If there are no polls yet for 2020, the state is not listed.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders ended his presidential campaign Wednesday.  Sanders was facing an uphill challenge both in the delegate count and in a race all but frozen in place by the coronavirus pandemic.

The decision leaves former Vice President Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee.  

After several days of back-and-forth involving all three branches of government, Wisconsin's presidential primary will proceed Tuesday. However, per a court ruling currently in effect, no results are expected until 5:00 PM ET next Monday, April 13.  Should that change, and results are reported after the 9:00 PM ET poll closing time Tuesday, you'll be able to see those numbers on this page.  We're also following a general election on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Democratic Primary

Joe Biden has opened up a 300 delegate advantage on Bernie Sanders.  That lead is expected to grow once the state's 84 pledged delegates are allocated. Polling has been almost non-existent in recent weeks, but an April 1 release by the well-regarded Marquette Law School showed Biden leading 62% to 34%. 

The Road to 270 is a weekly column leading up to the presidential election. Each installment is dedicated to understanding one state’s political landscape and how that might influence which party will win its electoral votes in 2020. We’ll do these roughly in order of expected competitiveness, moving toward the most intensely contested battlegrounds as election day nears. 

The Road to 270 will be published every Monday. The column is written by Seth Moskowitz, a 270toWin elections and politics contributor. Contact Seth at s.k.moskowitz@gmail.com or on Twitter @skmoskowitz.

Utah

From 2012 to 2016, the state that saw the biggest swing towards the Democratic presidential nominee was not deep blue California or Hawaii. Instead, it was staunchly Republican Utah. The state that gave Mitt Romney a 48% margin over Barack Obama (his largest in the nation) shifted 30% towards Democrats and gave Donald Trump a far smaller 18% victory over Hillary Clinton. Utah's history, perhaps more than any other state's, is key to understanding these contemporary trends. We’ll start with its journey to statehood.  

Pre-Statehood