'Can’t take any of them for granted': Meet the key voters who could decide if Trump's reelected

Show Caption Hide Caption Difference between caucus and primary, explained The 2020 election is nearing and with that, comes the caucuses and primary elections. But what’s the difference?

WASHINGTON – In 2016, Donald Trump demolished the Democrats’ vaunted blue wall in the Midwest by winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by the slimmest of margins. And he flipped Florida red again after it had gone for Barack Obama in both of his runs for the White House.

Then came 2018.

In last year’s midterm elections, key blocs of voters swarmed precincts in unheard-of numbers compared to recent non-presidential elections, with Democrats — especially women — scoring big victories across the country, including in the Upper Midwest. That flipped control of the U.S. House of Representatives back to Democrats for the first time since 2011.

Now the 2020 election looms large. Democrats believe the president is eminently beatable based on the 2018 gains and his poor job approval ratings. But that may discount just how strong the president’s support is, especially among rural and working-class white voters and retirees.

Just like 2016 and 2018, next year’s election is likely to come down not just to the proverbial swing states themselves but the voting blocs that define them and — importantly — whether they show up at the polls.

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Those include working class voters outside Detroit and Pittsburgh. Suburban women outside Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Rural voters in northern Florida, or Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Hispanic and black voters in South Florida and southeastern Michigan. They all played pivotal roles in the last two elections, one way or another.

And they will do so again in 2020.

“It would be very hard for Trump to win reelection if he loses two of those states,” said J. Miles Coleman, associated editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, a political handicapping and analysis website at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “You can’t take any of them for granted.”

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As in every election, both Democrats and Republicans say they will not only compete in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, but will look to “expand the map.” For Democrats, that means trying to take on Trump in states he won, like Arizona and North Carolina. For Republicans, it means going after small Democratic margins in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Nevada.

In the Rust Belt bellwethers and Florida, the swingiest of big states in presidential years, the eventual outcome there may come down to how the candidates do with a handful of groups in each.

Three swing voting groups that could greatly impact the 2020 election Pollster Terry Madonna breaks down three voting groups that could greatly impact the 2020 presidential election.

Who are these voters? What drives them? And what do Democrats and Republicans need to do to win them over in 2020? Reporters from around the USA TODAY Network took a look at what are considered the key voting blocs in each of the four key swing states and how they could affect next year’s election. Here’s what we learned.

Swing voters in Michigan

Trump won Michigan’s 16 electoral votes by less than 11,000 votes out of nearly 4.8 million cast, or about two-tenths of 1 percent. Heading into 2020, the consensus among political handicappers is that Trump faces a tough reelection campaign there. Last year, the state elected a Democratic governor, attorney general and secretary of state, while flipping two previously Republican congressional seats blue. Polls show Trump trailing most of the top Democratic candidates.

But nothing’s a given, as both sides know well after 2016. Already Democrats are training dozens of organizers and reaching out to voters in older industrial areas like Livonia, outside Detroit. Trump and his Republican allies, meanwhile, are expected to stage rallies — like one last March in Grand Rapids — as he tries to hold onto the state. Here are some of the key blocs of voters who will have a say in what happens in 2020.

The missing (suburban) voters from 2016

One of the biggest surprises in 2016 was how many voters declined to even cast a ballot for president: More than 75,000 Michiganders who went to the polls didn’t vote for president at all — more than double the number in 2008.

“That’s an amazing number,” said Susy Heintz Avery, a former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman and co-director of the Michigan Political Leadership Program at Michigan State University.

Of those, nearly half — more than 35,000 voters — were from counties won by Hillary Clinton. The state hadn’t backed a Republican nominee since 1988.

Voter apathy may explain part of it, with people turned off by either Trump or Clinton, who did little outreach in the state. Democratic consultant Joe DiSano also said, “It was a question of people thinking it was a foregone conclusion (that Clinton would win). They thought it was taken care of … There’s no question she should have done more on the ground (to get out the vote).”

In 2020, expect both sides to take nothing for granted, regardless of what the polls say.

“The get-out-the-vote effort is going to be huge in 2020 … Bigger than we’ve seen in a long time,” said Heintz Avery. The question is how many of those missing voters are ready to support the Democratic nominee against the president, or if, in the end, they decide to sit it out again.

African American voters in Detroit (and elsewhere)

Clinton did almost as well in Detroit as President Barack Obama did in 2012, winning 95% of the vote in the majority black city. But Clinton got about 47,000 fewer votes in the city than Obama did.

“Obviously African American votes in the cities … were a key loss for Clinton,” said Matt Grossmann, director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

Amid criticism that Clinton took those predominantly Democratic votes for granted, party officials say that’s unlikely to happen again.

Democrats have more than a dozen organizers on the ground in Detroit and are training even more, pointing out that health care protections remain as uncertain as ever and that Trump has tried to gut programs that help pay for development efforts in urban centers. The Trump campaign, meanwhile, is running ads in newspapers and on radio in Detroit touting the administration's record and launching “Black Voices for Trump.” The campaign says Trump's presidency has greatly helped minority voters by lowering the unemployment rate and notes the president has also enacted criminal justice reforms,

In the 2018 midterm elections, Detroit’s turnout was up 10 points from the previous midterm, a trend that could greatly help Democrats if it holds. But Grossman says the party needs to motivate black voters, not simply expect them to turn out.

“Hillary Clinton managed to convince white voters she cared a lot about racial minorities and their concerns, but it was not enough to mobilize African American voters,” he noted.

Macomb County, the Thumb and the I-75 corridor

John Yob, a Republican campaign consultant, says the real task for Trump in Michigan is to build on increased turnout across the state’s rural counties — including those north along the I-75 corridor, in Michigan’s Thumb and in the Upper Peninsula — to overcome marginal increases in the Detroit suburbs.

But it’s hard to set aside the role that Macomb County, just north of Detroit, played in 2016 when it swung more than 30,000 votes from Obama in 2012 toward Trump.

While Macomb is historically known as a working class area, it has become a somewhat more suburban county, with growing diversity and affluence. Famously independent, with several municipalities like Sterling Heights and Clinton Township serving as swing areas, it retains its reputation for colorful politics and a cache of union-centric voters. It remains a bellwether for Michigan, much as it did when Ronald Reagan was turning elections there.

In 2018, it backed Democrat Gretchen Whitmer for governor, becoming one of several Trump-won counties — including Kent, a traditionally Republican stronghold in west Michigan — to do so and help her get elected.

Now the question for some who voted for Trump in 2016 — like Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor — is whether the president can still count on their support or whether a Democrat could attract those votes. “There’s no amount of prosperity I would use to condone his behavior,” Taylor said earlier this year. Are there others like him in his community? “I know they’re out there,” he said.

If the eventual Democratic nominee can appeal to those voters in Macomb County, it’s possible he or she can use that to woo working class voters all over Michigan.

“It’s won or lost in north Oakland (county), western Wayne, Downriver, Macomb. … It’s won or lost by those families deciding who will make their lives better,” said former state Democratic Party Chairman Lon Johnson.

The route for Trump to win Pennsylvania again in 2020 Pollster Terry Madonna talks about the types of voters President Trump will need to carry Pennsylvania in the 2020 election.

Swing voters in Pennsylvania

Trump won Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes by about 44,000 votes — or about seven-tenths of a percentage point, marking the first time since 1988 that a Republican presidential nominee won there. Some handicappers consider the state a toss up in 2020, though his viability there may be in question after Democrats saw key gains in last year’s midterms. Still the state is close enough that few are ready to suggest the president can’t do it again.

“It will be a tough slog for him,” said Terry Madonna, a pollster and political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. “But I’m not ready to say he can’t win.”

Here are three voting blocs which could make the difference in Pennsylvania in 2020.

First-time voters

In 2016, Trump won over thousands of new voters as Republican registration efforts showed huge gains while Democratic numbers dipped slightly. The Republican Party added about 240,000 voters in Pennsylvania from January to October 2016, according to state registration records. And nearly 100,000 Pennsylvania Democrats switched to Republican in that time frame, while nearly 40,000 Republicans switched to Democrats, according to state records.

Whether those voters will remain with Trump is a key question, said Madonna.

While little research is available specifically on those new voters, a poll conducted by Franklin & Marshall in October indicated that just 37% of registered voters statewide believe Trump should be reelected. Of the 59% who want a change, four out of five say they’ll vote for whoever runs against him.

And some of those new voters from 2016 are among those considering changing horses.

Barbara Boucher, a 42-year-old Republican from Lawrence County, who registered in 2016, didn’t care for Clinton and voted for Trump. In 2020, she’s open to supporting someone else.

“I’m waiting to see who the Democratic nominee is,” she said.

Rural and blue-collar voters in Steelers Country (and elsewhere)

In 2016, Trump generally trounced Clinton among rural voters and blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania. That was especially true in Steelers Country — areas in and around Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania, where, over the course of decades, manufacturing jobs and once vibrant industrial cities have shrunk or been virtually abandoned. But socially conservative working-class voters remain.

Madonna says many of those voters have begun to feel “left behind … economically and culturally.” In 2016, Trump beat Clinton by about 12,000 votes across the region. In 2012, Obama beat Mitt Romney there by about 26,000 votes.

It wasn’t just there. Take Erie County in the northwestern part of the state, a former working-class Democratic stronghold that went for Trump. The same was true in some older industrial areas in the center and eastern parts of the state.

There were some signs of shifting back, however, in the 2018 midterms. And manufacturing jobs have shown some small losses this year, despite tax cuts for corporations made in 2017.

“Trump’s probably going to live or die politically on the economy. He will have to make the argument to blue collar workers that he’s made things better,” Madonna said.

College-educated women in the suburbs

Clinton easily won the Philadelphia suburbs in 2016 — beating Trump by about 190,000 votes in the counties that ring the city — thanks in large part to college-educated women, including some Republicans who rejected Trump.

They were also a big reason (along with court-ordered new district lines) that Democrats were able to flip two congressional districts in the region — both won by women — in 2018, says Madonna.

He expects the trend to continue in 2020. But to be decisive for Democrats, they may have to turn out in even larger numbers to offset Republican strength elsewhere.

Trump, meanwhile, will be asking voters to reelect him based on the strength of an economy that continues to show low unemployment and stock market gains instead of the controversies that have enveloped his administration.

A poll this month by the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion indicated that Trump is deeply out of favor with women in the state, with 62% disapproving of his job performance, compared to 50% of men. Among college graduates of both genders, his disapproval rate is 67%.

Still, Chris Borick, director at the institute, says all voting blocs are important to watch in 2020. “When you’re talking about a razor-thin election in 2016 with 40,000-some votes separating the candidates, everything matters.”

Swing voters in Wisconsin

Trump’s win in Wisconsin in 2016 came as a surprise — the state hadn’t gone for a Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1984 — but some handicappers say it’s likely to favor him again in 2020, said Coleman, from the University of Virginia. He said some of its key suburban counties have been more resistant to Democratic efforts to turn them, and rural voters have remained energized on Trump’s behalf.

The state, which has 10 electoral votes, elected a Democratic governor last year and re-elected its Democratic U.S. senator. But a poll in November by the Marquette University Law School showed that despite Trump’s job approval numbers hovering below 50%, he had a slim lead in head-to-head matchups against three of the top Democratic candidates, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Democrats, meanwhile, are accelerating their organizing efforts and — perhaps most importantly — holding their 2020 nominating convention in Milwaukee with an eye toward retaking the state.

Here are some key voting blocs which could make the difference:

The small-town vote

The Trump wave in Wisconsin three years ago was first and foremost a rural, small-town phenomenon. And no region of the state epitomized that as much as the state’s Seventh Congressional District, which sprawls across Wisconsin’s northern tier.

Trump won the district by 20 percentage points in 2016, compared to just three points for Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012.

A key to 2020 is whether Trump can match or exceed his 2016 outcome in the rural parts of the state. If he’s going to win, he’ll need big margins there to overcome his problem attracting votes from urban areas, especially in Milwaukee and Dane counties.

Democratic pollster Paul Maslin says electoral shifts in northern Wisconsin are a byproduct not just of turnout trends but of voters actually switching between the parties, despite reservations about Trump, “because they liked Hillary Clinton less.”

Many of those same voters still have mixed feelings about Trump but remain skeptical of national Democrats, said Maslin.

Women, college educated voters in the southeastern suburbs

For decades, the most Republican parts of Wisconsin were the suburban counties outside Milwaukee. But in 2016, Trump underperformed there.

For example, the Fifth Congressional District, where Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner has served for more than 40 years, is the only GOP-controlled district in the state where Trump did worse than Romney.

That’s not to say Trump won’t carry most of these communities — he likely will. The question is by how much and whether it’s enough to overcome Democratic strength elsewhere.

Key to that calculus will be how he performs with women and college-educated voters in places such as Waukesha and Ozaukee counties. They may be up for grabs, depending on whether the eventual Democratic nominee is acceptable to voters who may consider themselves moderate or conservatives.

“Our coalitions are changing everywhere,” said GOP pollster Gene Ulm. “I think it’s amazing as someone who works on the Republican side that we’ve grown up our whole lives thinking, ‘These are our people.’ The thing is, though, they’re really not anymore.”

African Americans in Milwaukee

After generating massive turnouts for Obama, Wisconsin’s biggest and most urban city — Milwaukee — couldn’t deliver the state and its 10 electoral votes for Clinton.

Part of the reason was a drop in African American turnout in a state Clinton failed to visit at all during the fall campaign and appeared to take for granted.

In 2020, Democrats are promising a much stronger effort to win over what is considered a key voting bloc in the state. The Democratic National Committee says it and the state party are training dozens of new staffers and already have organizers working in both north and south Milwaukee.

“I was there in 2016 watching the tumbleweeds roll down the street. There was no activity,” U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, said recently to an audience in the nation’s capital. “We’re not going to ignore those people that are the foundation for the party.”

Swing voters in Florida

Political observers are predicting another tight race in 2020, though the president may be in a good position to win Florida and its 29 electoral votes again next year. Current polling has Trump in a close race with all the leading Democratic challengers. As for his approval rating remaining below 50%, Aubrey Jewett, associate professor of political science at the University of Central Florida, says Trump “doesn’t have to be real popular. He just has to be a little more popular than the person he’s running against.”

And there is evidence Florida is leaning Republican. While Democrats made gains in other parts of the country in last year’s midterms, Florida Republicans elected a governor and flipped a U.S. Senate seat. But there are question marks, namely a growing Hispanic population, a swelling number of voters with no listed party affiliations and a new constitutional amendment which could allow some 1.4 million felons who have served their sentences to vote. Neither party is sure which might benefit.

Here’s a look at some key voter blocs:

Tampa, its suburbs and the I-4 corridor

It’s almost a cliché that Florida’s elections are determined by a simple formula: Democrats win big in the south, Republicans win big in the north, and it all gets decided by the counties separating the two along Interstate 4, running northeast from Tampa to Daytona Beach.

In 2016, it didn’t really hold up, though.

Hillary Clinton took more votes out of the six main I-4 counties than Obama did in 2012 and still lost the state. But a closer look at Tampa and its surrounding counties shows a different story: In those six counties — Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Manatee — Clinton also did better than Obama, by about 10,000 votes.

Trump, however, increased Romney’s totals by a staggering 128,000 votes (and that after Romney held his nominating convention in Tampa) and won the region handily.

After a 2018 midterm election that saw Republican Ron DeSantis win the governorship and former Republican governor Rick Scott upend Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson, the region still looks as swingy as ever: A recent New York Times/Siena College poll shows Trump leading all the top Democrats, though within or near the margin of error.

Hispanic and African American voters, especially in south Florida

Democratic hopes of flipping Florida in 2020 also revolve around finding ever larger support in the state’s Hispanic and African American communities, especially in south Florida.

Hispanic people made up about 20% of the eligible voters in 2018’s midterm elections in the state, according to the Pew Research Center. But in Florida, Hispanic voters seldom vote as a monolithic bloc, since a large share of Cuban Americans have tended to swing toward Republicans.

In last year’s governor and Senate races, 54% of Hispanic voters backed the Democrat — somewhat less than the 62% exit polls showed Clinton getting in 2016.

If anything, Democrats are counting on increasing turnout in those communities, looking toward an influx of 30,000 to 50,000 Puerto Ricans who have come to the state since Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. Trump has opposed statehood for Puerto Rico, which may push some Puerto Rican voters toward the Democratic nominee.

Meanwhile, Francesca Menes, a Haitian American woman who resigned as treasurer for the Florida Democratic Party because she was unhappy with the state of Caribbean American voter outreach, warned that Democrats can’t take black immigrant communities from Haiti, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Nigeria for granted.

“One of my frustrations with the party is that they see black voters as monolithic,” she said. “It’s always the narrative that black voters will always turn out, so we don’t need to work for them.”

Retirees and rural voters, across the state

Trump’s biggest strengths in Florida rest with retirees and white, rural voters.

Exit polls in Florida showed white voters made up nearly two-thirds of the electorate in 2016, and he won them with 64% of the vote. Voters over the age of 50 made up half of the electorate, and he won them by greater than 55% of the vote.

But some of those voters may be up for grabs in 2002. While polls like the New York Times/Siena College poll show Trump with double-digit leads over Biden, Warren and Sanders in north Florida and among white voters overall, he is in a dead heat with Biden among voters over age 65 — a big voting bloc in Florida.

That explains not only Republican efforts to sign up voters but Democratic efforts at places like The Villages, a massive retirement community in central Florida.

“Will they turn out in the same levels and will they ardently support Trump like they did last time?” asked Jewett. “If they do, Democrats are in trouble and Trump’s looking a little better in Florida.”