Election 2024 updates: With Arizona, Trump sweeps all 7 swing states

Over the last six years, a wave of upstart progressives slowly chipped away at the old guard of the Democratic Party, toppling establishment-aligned incumbents and pushing the party as a whole further to the left. These skirmishes have been one of the defining stories of Democratic primaries since 2018. But newly energized challenges from pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee transformed much of the intraparty divide this year, forcing major progressive organizations to rethink their approach to primary season.

Each cycle since 2018, 538 has tracked congressional and gubernatorial candidates backed by progressive groups and leaders. This year marked a dramatic change in the progressive movement's strategy, as the threat of outside spending against progressive incumbents was so strong that it sucked progressive organizations' resources away from backing challengers to incumbents or in open races.

Even more so than in 2022, progressives faced well-funded opposition, particularly from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel — which also spent huge sums to help defeat incumbent "Squad" members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, the only two incumbent Democrats in Congress who lost in the 2024 primary cycle. As a result, many of these groups barely endorsed at all in open primaries.

But overall, more than half of the progressive candidates in open races that we tracked this cycle still won their primaries, similar to 2022. Most of their victories came in uncontested or less competitive races. While these races may not have generated as much attention as the blockbuster Squad battles, each one is worth the same prize: a seat in Congress.

Notably, none of those progressive wins came at the expense of candidates backed by the party establishment. Open-seat clashes between progressives and DCCC-backed picks caused lots of drama in 2018 and 2020, but were effectively nonexistent in 2024. The two wings of the party even endorsed the same candidate in three swing districts currently held by Republicans (New Jersey's 7th, New York's 17th and New York's 19th Districts), signaling a unified front when it comes to targeting key pickup opportunities.

Tonight, we'll be watching to see if the progressive candidates who did make it through their primaries can also win in a general election, particularly those that have the backing of the party establishment, too.

Since Obama won the state in 2008, North Carolina has been a perennial tease to Democrats. They have repeatedly come within a few percentage points of carrying it again but have yet to get over the hump. Even in 2020, when now-President Joe Biden's decisive popular-vote win carried him to victory in most other swing states, North Carolina still voted for Trump by 1 percentage point.

But the state is slowly trending in the right direction for Democrats. In the 2000 election, it was 13 points redder than the nation as a whole; in 2008, it was only 7 points redder. And in 2020, it was just 6 points redder. If that trend continues, it could just be a matter of time until Democrats carry the state once again.

That time could be now. In 538's final polling average of North Carolina, Trump led Harris by just 0.9 points — well within the margin of error.

North Carolina has become a competitive state thanks to two main demographic factors. First, it has a lot of Black voters: Its citizen voting-age population is 21% Black, while the nation as a whole is just 12% Black. Second, its suburbs are growing fast and could be getting bluer. According to the 2020 exit polls, only 39% of suburban voters in North Carolina opted for Biden — significantly lower than the 50% who did so nationally. But according to an average of polls in September, suburban voters in North Carolina were supporting Harris at about the same rate (51%) as they were nationally (50%).

But Republicans still have one trump card in the Tar Heel State: its significant rural population. According to 2020 exit polls, 27% of North Carolina voters lived in rural areas, higher than in all six of the other main swing states. And rural areas in North Carolina have gotten significantly redder since Obama's win in 2008.

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How North Carolina became a swing state in the 2024 presidential election

A look at North Carolina’s election history as one of the seven swing states with 16 electoral votes up for grabs.


ABCNews.com

What would a second Trump presidency look like? Political observers — including us — have suggested that it wouldn't much resemble the first one, perhaps because the kinds of figures who checked Trump within Congress and his administration largely won't be present. Another important factor is that, even with those guardrails in place, the American presidency is incredibly powerful. Presidents make policy through their personnel selections, not only appointing roles that face Senate confirmation but also choosing a range of other advisors within the White House who will weigh in on major decisions and shape priorities. Trump's first term provides some guidance here — he often selected unconventional figures for these roles who had little relevant experience, or even any seeming commitment to the regulatory missions of the agencies they were tasked to lead.

Another other major factor is the way that Trump has talked about using the executive branch for personal and political purposes. Policymaking is always political, of course, but Trump has suggested that he might use the power of his office to punish critics and political opponents or enrich his allies. This would be different from his first term, but some signs were there, for example, in his efforts to weaponize the justice system during his presidency and undermine its legitimacy afterwards. And there were plenty of complaints about Trump using his office for business gain, such as having government officials, including foreign leaders, stay at Trump properties between 2017 and 2021.

Trump's first term also offers some clues about the direction he might take on immigration policy, as he's promised unprecedented crackdowns on both undocumented immigrants and legal immigration policies. Here, too, personnel is crucial for understanding policy: Stephen Miller, whose nativist views are well-known, was one of the key figures shaping immigration policy during Trump's presidency, and reports suggest Miller would once again play a large role in shaping policy in this area, and in helping install like-minded individuals in a second Trump term.

In the closing weeks of the campaign, members of Trump's first-term cabinet have come forward to warn voters about his anti-democratic beliefs and potential for authoritarianism should he be re-elected. John Kelly, a former chief of staff and retired four-star general, recently said Trump "falls into the general definition of fascist." Per reporting by The Atlantic, two unnamed members of his administration recalled the former president saying he "needed compared some of the rhetoric used at recent Trump rallies to historic efforts to justify authoritarian action or potential coups in the face of threats. Harris has also focused on this threat in a "closing argument" to voters, given from the same location as Trump's speech on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

In May, 538 partnered with the nonpartisan research firm PerryUndem to speak to voters about the topic of democracy, and found that many undecided voters who were leaning toward Biden (the Democratic nominee at the time) were doing so because they worried about a second Trump term, the threat he might pose to democracy, and a repeat of Jan. 6. One voter in that focus group said they felt "democracy as we know it is dead" if Trump wins, while others called him a "demagogue." Those fears have likely only become more widespread as the campaign, and Trump's bombastic rhetoric have continued: Half of American said Trump is a fascist in an October ABC News/Ipsos poll.

Republican-leaning voters in our focus groups, on the other hand, were more worried about election integrity, with many repeating conspiracy theories pushed by Trump and other Republicans about the election or the events of Jan. 6. Lies and conspiracies about elections have continued to erode confidence in elections since then, especially as the Trump campaign has continued its false claims that noncitizens vote in the U.S.

Our focus groups underscored a theme of this election — deep partisan divides underlying similar fears about the fate of democracy. According to an October YouGov/The Economist poll on political violence and extremism, 55% of Americans think the U.S. is much more politically divided than it was 5 years ago and 25% think it was somewhat more divided. In the same poll, majorities of voters were concerned about various types of political extremism in the U.S., including 63% who were at least somewhat concerned about white-supremacist extremism, 57% concerned about right-wing extremism and an equal 57% concerned about left-wing extremism. Even more dire, 35% of Americans said they think it's at least somewhat likely there will be a civil war between Democrats and Republicans, while more than 20% said the U.S. may become a "communist dictatorship" and more than 25% it may become a "fascist dictatorship" in that same time span.