Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign scrambled the electoral map, as he won several states that some considered reliably, even irrevocably, blue. This week’s midterms, blue wave or not, reversed some of those unexpected gains. While Republican candidates held the line in Ohio and apparently squeaked out narrow victories in Florida, voters turned leftward in three key states in the Upper Midwest. Some political observers now see a map that’s favorable to Democrats as they seek to topple Trump in two years.



“If Trump has lost the benefit of the doubt from voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, he may not have so much of an Electoral College advantage in 2020,” election guru Nate Silver wrote on Thursday. New York magazine’s Gabriel Debenedetti pointed to resounding Democratic victories in some former purple states as a positive sign for Democrats: “It’s now hard to see how Virginia or Colorado, traditional swing states, begin 2020 anywhere but in the blue column, with Nevada leaning that way, too.”

What’s striking about both analyses, each written by sharp and well-informed observers, is the absence of discussion about the potential impact of voter suppression. While Americans will decide which presidential candidate to support based on the economy, immigration, and other issues, it’s increasingly clear that state election laws and rules will govern whether they can translate those decisions into actual votes. From Ohio to Georgia, Republicans have sought to constrain the electorate to their benefit. If they do so in several key states over the next two years, it may well decide the 2020 election.

Trump loves to talk about his Electoral College landslide, partly because it obscures his shellacking in the national popular vote and partly because it was a genuinely impressive victory. His path to the White House effectively ran through five states—Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—though he did not need to win them all. Pennsylvania, Florida, and just one more would have sufficed. Clinton, meanwhile, could have lost Florida and still won, narrowly, by taking Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Instead, Trump won all five states and sailed into the White House with 306 electoral votes. Can he do it again in 2020? Trump has defied the odds before, but running the board in the Great Lakes region will be even harder the second time around. In 2016, Trump won by extraordinary close margins in three of the five key states: 10,704 votes in Michigan, 44,292 votes in Pennsylvania, and 22,748 votes in Wisconsin. Thanks to America’s peculiar system, a presidential election in which 138 million people cast their ballots came down to fewer than 78,000 voters in three states.