A growing number of hot-button ballot measures — covering everything from pot to guns — are rippling across the battleground state landscape, raising the prospect that several of them could tip the presidential election in a handful of the most closely contested races.

Hillary Clinton and her third-party rivals Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are expected to benefit the most in Arizona, Maine and Nevada from initiatives that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Donald Trump and Republicans are counting on the National Rifle Association’s heavy spending to defeat ballot measures that seek mandatory background checks for gun purchases this fall in two of those states — Nevada and Maine.


While presidential elections are only rarely influenced by bottom-of-the-ballot measures, one of the most notable recent examples came in 2004, when conservatives in 11 states, including the battleground of Ohio, voted to ban same-sex marriage and simultaneously pumped up President George W. Bush’s re-election tallies.

Some marijuana advocates also argue that young people in Colorado were far more energized in 2012 about voting compared with their peers in other states; they came out in waves to support a ballot initiative to legalize pot and stuck around to punch the ticket for a second Barack Obama term.

This cycle, millions of dollars are being spent by corporations, lobbying groups, wealthy individuals and other interest groups to influence the outcome for several dozen ballot measures across the country. Yet it’s the initiatives in battleground and bubble states that have a unique opportunity to affect the Clinton versus Trump matchup — especially in mobilizing a specific issue’s core supporters both to register to vote and turn out come Election Day.

Both Democratic and GOP campaign strategists say they’re calibrating their general election game plans to take into account how the top-tier ballot measures — namely on marijuana, background checks on gun sales and efforts to increase the minimum wage in Arizona, Colorado and Maine — could affect subsets of the electorate who would otherwise be turned off by the notion of having to vote for one of the two very unpopular major party presidential candidates.

Trump and Clinton have learned firsthand of the need to be briefed on the different ballot measures. They’ve already faced questions during the primary debates and in interviews with local media about some very parochial but still hot-button issues, including Nevada’s upcoming vote to make pot legal.

And both Clinton and Trump were recently asked during visits to Denver to weigh in on another high-profile pair of initiatives — two anti-fracking questions concerning where oil and gas drillers can explore for energy and also whether local communities in Colorado can ban the fracking practice. The two presidential candidates have already essentially taken the same position backing local control over the issue. “I have long been in favor of states and cities within states making up their own minds whether or not they want to permit fracking,” Clinton told the local NBC affiliate, while Trump told the same network that “if a municipality or a state wants to ban fracking, I can understand that.”

State officials have until early September to determine whether environmentalists even notched enough signatures to get the measures before Colorado voters. But if the initiatives get on the ballot, energy industry officials are primed to spend millions of dollars on the fight and some greens in the state have told POLITICO they’re concerned the ultimate benefactor could be Trump.

Matt Schlapp, the former White House political director for President George W. Bush, said Clinton faces the trickier predicament dealing with many of the ballot initiative questions because the issues are far more populist in nature and could galvanize Bernie Sanders’ reluctant supporters into her corner, or lose them to the Green or Libertarian tickets.

Donald Trump and Republicans are counting on the National Rifle Association’s heavy spending to defeat ballot measures that seek mandatory background checks for gun purchases this fall in Nevada and Maine. | Getty

“She’s going to have to say something about each and every one of them,” Schlapp said. “If you avoid any press in the state and don’t make a comment that’ll upset these left wing supporters even more.”

On marijuana, Clinton and Trump have given similar answers, deferring to states on legalization both for recreational use and medical purposes, a separate question that is on the ballot in several states this cycle, including the battleground of Florida.

While there isn’t much distance between Clinton and Trump on the issue, Democrats are the ones most excited about a projected turnout surge of as much as two percentage points from the recreational pot measures in Arizona, which was certified Thursday to be on the November ballot, and in Nevada and Maine, a state that allocates its Electoral College votes by congressional district. Tick Segerblom, a Nevada state senator who has helped spearhead the state’s medical marijuana law and has his own strain of pot named after him, said in an email that Democrats should benefit the most from the additional voters “although the libertarian candidate will make a strong argument they should be for him.”

Marijuana advocates said their issue would help out Democrats rather than the GOP because of the party’s very specific outreach efforts, including urging out-of-state college students to register to vote on their campuses and thereby play a role in changing the nation’s drug laws.

“Democrats get the benefit due to turnout from marijuana. We get the benefits to a very big GOTV effort on the part of the party,” said Mason Tvert, communications director at the Marijuana Policy Project.

The minimum wage question is another that’s primed to affect the vote totals in Arizona, Colorado and Maine. Tyler Sandberg, campaign manager for the Colorado effort to block the increase, argued the ballot measure would boost turnout “among fiscal conservatives who are otherwise concerned about the election because of the embarrassment that is Donald Trump.”

The minimum wage measure’s proponents argue it will excite younger people and low-income earners who are among the least likely to vote in an election but showed great enthusiasm for Sanders, whose call for higher wages was a core issue for his campaign.

“We believe there are a lot of voters who aren’t thrilled about Hillary but will pull the lever for her, and [this measure is] going to turn those people out,” said Patty Kupfer, the campaign manager for the Colorado campaign to gradually raise the state minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020.

On guns, partisan strategists and outside observers believe Trump will gain a turnout advantage in Nevada and Maine — which Trump has insisted he will compete for — thanks to the NRA’s plans to fight a pair of Michael Bloomberg-backed initiatives requiring background checks before gun sales or transfers between people who are not licensed firearm dealers.

“It’s a net positive for Trump,” Schlapp said.

The NRA, which has already endorsed Trump and to date has spent about $6 million this cycle attacking Clinton, opened a campaign field office this month in Las Vegas to fight the Nevada measure. Its affiliates in Maine are also working to stop the background check initiative there and in turn help Trump to win a potentially crucial single Electoral College vote from the state’s more rural and conservative 2nd congressional district.

Political strategists are also keeping an eye on several other swing and bubble state ballot measures that have the potential to drive turnout. They include a constitutional amendment in Virginia codifying the state’s existing “right-to-work” law that makes it illegal for employers to require labor union membership; an initiative in Maine that would create a 3 percent tax on household income over $200,000 to pay for education programs; and a Colorado measure opposed by the healthcare industry and prominent state Democrats that would create a single-payer healthcare plan.

Schlapp, now the head of the American Conservative Union advocacy group, said it’s the more populist measures up for votes this November that he welcomes seeing added to the ballot. The more these questions get posed to voters, the more he sees progressives leaving the Clinton ticket and backing the likes of Johnson and Stein.

“As a GOP strategist, I hope the liberals put more and more of these drug liberalization, single-payer, minimum-wage referendums on the ballot,” he said. “I think it would be good for us.”

Elana Schor contributed to this report.