This far out from the election, factoring in both recent trends, recent winning margins as well as "swinginess", it seems like Iowa, Alaska, Ohio, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nebraska's 2nd district, Maine's 2nd district and Minnesota are all in play. Those states make up for a population of roughly 136 million, so this notion that presidential voting is meaningless unless you live in a tiny number of states seems misguided to me.
Morever, the popular vote does make some practical difference. A strong margin in the popular vote allows the president to claim a mandate from the voters for his agenda, think of FDR and his New Deal policies or Reagan and his reaganomics. As a negative example for the same principle, Trump's agenda was obviously hampered by the lack of a clear public mandate.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 5 2023 01:15pm