2024; A Five State Presidential Election

Barring a landslide election like the near 50 state sweeps of 1972 and 1984 the 2024 election will simply be a matter of who wins a combination of enough Electoral College votes from five states to get to 270, or in the GOP's case to 269 and above. 

There are 8* possible combinations of the five states on the GOP side any one of which added to Trump's 232 from 2020 would be enough for a win.

With the country completely polarized apart from the five states of Pennsylvania (63K), Michigan (146K), Wisconsin (21K), Georgia (15K)  and Arizona (10K) whose Biden winning margin, at of this writing is indicated in parenthesis, campaigning in any other states would be a waste of effort and resources.

Redoing the 2016 Democratic meme, but with the shoe on the other foot Biden's 306 Electoral College votes were won (barring any successful challenges) by 255k across just 5 states. This is of course easily reversible in the next election.

The results of the 2020 election show that the once marginal states of Ohio Iowa and Florida are now solidly Republican and likely to stay so, substantially in the case of Ohio and Iowa, and growing more so over time in Florida as the new Hispanic Republican movement grows further.

On the other side there can be no question, but that Virginia is rock solid blue as is New Hampshire, the latter having gone for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1992 except for the Nader anomaly. 

It appears also that the "2's" the special case Nebraska and Maine Congressional districts with their one Electoral Vote each are now blue and red, respectively.

It may be that 2020 was the last hurrah for Republican chances in Arizona. 

Election and demographic history has seen the once Republican states of Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado safely ensconced in the blue column and the narrow Biden win in Arizona may well become a much larger Dem win for whoever is their 2024 nominee.

If Arizona is going to join the blue states 2028 would see the election reduced to just four states and who knows what the fate of Georgia will be by then-but even that need not be a cause of Republican despair as the combination of the remaining three states PA/MI/WI would still be enough to get the GOP's nominee over the 270 mark.

 

*232 2020 GOP Electoral College votes plus any three state combo's of  (PA/AZ/WI)  ( PA/AZ/MI) (MI/WI/AZ)  (PA/GA/MI)   (GA/MI/WI)    (PA/GA/AZ)   (GA/MI/AZ)    (GA/AZ/WI)