Would you be shocked to learn that voting in the 2024 presidential and down-ballot elections has already begun?  As Ana Faguy and Ione Wells report in “First in-person votes cast in US presidential election” at bbc.com: “The first in-person votes have been cast in the US presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, a milestone moment that comes six weeks before election day on 5 November….Virginia became the first state in the country to allow in-person voting on Friday, and early polling sites will remain open there until 2 November. Some long queues were seen as voters cast ballots on national, state and local levels….The situation in two other states, Minnesota and South Dakota, is different as voters there can only hand in absentee ballots in person instead of mailing them….Some 69% of votes cast during the 2020 election were done through early in-person voting or through mail-in ballots, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab found….Virginia has been a reliably Democratic state in the last few elections, but some Republicans have been bullish about trying to flip it in November. Voters there will also be casting votes for the state’s eleven members of congress and one of its two senators….Early and mail-in voting has been a hot-button issue since the 2020 election, with just 37% of Republicans saying people should have the option to vote early, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. That sharply contrasts with 82% support from Democrats.” Ponder the strategic implications for campaigns for a minute: Prep time is pretty much over or will soon be in the days and weeks ahead. Beginning with the “Mother of Presidents” (8 of them), Virginia, the swing states are in motion. It’s on.

From “Why these three states are the most consistent tipping point in American politics“. by Ronald Brownstein at CNN Politics: “Whether measured by campaign advertising, candidate visits, organizational effort or nervous obsessing over poll results, Michigan, Wisconsin and above all Pennsylvania have moved to the top of the priority list for both Vice President Kamala Harrisand former President Donald Trump – just as they have in seemingly every recent presidential election….,Trump won the presidency in 2016 by stunning Democrat Hillary Clinton to win all three states by a combined margin of about 80,000 votes. President Joe Biden won back the White House in 2020 by recapturing all three states by a combined margin of around 260,000 votes….Since Harris took over at the top of Democratic candidate in July, the candidates have spent more money in advertising in Pennsylvania than anywhere else, with Michigan ranking second and Wisconsin fourth, according to data provided to CNN by AdImpact, an advertising tracking service. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin rank first, second and fourth as well in the amount of advertising the campaigns have reserved through November (with only Georgia intruding as number three on both lists.)….Bob Shrum, the long-time Democratic strategist who now serves as the director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, said the three Rust Belt battlegrounds have remained pivotal in presidential elections for so long because they encapsulate so many of the entrenched divisions that now define American politics – between, for instance, urban and rural areas and white-collar and blue-collar voters. “They reflect the polarization,” Shrum said….In a clear statement of their priorities, the campaigns have spent nearly $120 million more on ads in the three big Rust Belt battlegrounds than they have in the four Sunbelt states they are contesting (Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada). After camping out in Pennsylvania for her debate preparation, Harris is appearing in all three of the big Rust Belt battlegrounds again this week. Trump is holding a town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday…..Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are not carbon copies. But they do share enough common characteristics that the long-time Democratic strategist Tad Devine argues they should be thought of effectively a single state – what he calls “Mi-Pa-Wi.” Each of them is less racially diverse than the nation overall, according to data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Whites account for about three-fourths of the population in Michigan and Pennsylvania and roughly four-fifths in Wisconsin. Although their Latino communities are growing, Blacks remain the largest minority group in each of them. The three states are also slightly older than the nation overall, with seniors accounting for about one-fifth of the population in each. None have many immigrants, with residents born abroad accounting for only about 7% of the population in Michigan and Pennsylvania and just 5% in Wisconsin. All three have seen minimal population growth in recent years.”

“At a time when education has become an increasingly powerful predictor of political allegiance,” Brownstein adds, ” the three converge, with about one-third of their adults holding at least a four-year college degree – just slightly below the share in the nation overall, the Census found. The median income just slightly lags the national average in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and trails by a larger margin (about 10%) in Michigan. All three are big manufacturing states that have seen substantial job loss in that sector since 2000, but have also seen employment in it increase by about 20,000-30,000 jobs since Biden took office, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data….In their religious orientation, they are very similar too: White Christians, who generally lean Republican, comprise about 55% of adults in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and just over half in Michigan, according to newly released findings from the Public Religion Research Institute. Meanwhile, voters with no religious affiliation, who have become a staunchly Democratic group, represent about one-fourth of the population in all three, PRRI found….While the big three Rust Belt states look similar on all these measures, in some other respects Wisconsin, on paper, should be the most difficult state of the three for Harris this year. Not only is the minority share of the population smaller in Wisconsin than the other two, but Whites without a college degree (the core of the modern GOP coalition, especially in the Trump era) cast about three-fifths of the votes there compared to about half in Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to calculations from Census data by William Frey, a demographer at the non-partisan Brookings Metro think tank….Heavily White and blue-collar small town and rural areas, which have moved toward the GOP almost everywhere, also constitute a much bigger share of the vote in Wisconsin than in the other two. In a six-category geographic measuring system, devised by the non-partisan Center for Rural Strategies, small metros and non-metros cast nearly 50% of Wisconsin’s votes in both 2016 and 2020, compared to about 30% in Michigan and 20% in Pennsylvania each time, according to results provided to CNN by Tim Marema, the center’s vice president and editor of its Daily Yonder website….Conversely, Democrats don’t have as strong an asset in Wisconsin’s largest metro area as in the other two states. The county centered on Milwaukee is only about half as big as the counties that encompass Philadelphia and Detroit, and doesn’t provide Democrats nearly as large a vote advantage, particularly with turnout there lagging in recent years; simultaneously, while Democrats have steadily gained ground in the suburban so-called WOW counties outside Milwaukee, Republicans still win those three big counties (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington), by bigger margins than almost any other major suburbs north of the Mason-Dixon line….One last factor makes Wisconsin on paper less attractive to Democrats: unions only represent about half as much of the private sector workforce in Wisconsin as they do in the other two states, according to federal figures.”

Brownstein takes a deep dive into the demographics of Wisconsin and Michigan, then writes of Pennsylvania, “That leaves Pennsylvania as the consensus toughest of the three states for Harris. It’s also the state analysts generally consider the most likely to provide the 270th Electoral College vote for the winner in November. (Wisconsin played that role in both 2016 and 2020.) “To me, the tipping point is Pennsylvania,” said Giangreco. “If we win Pennsylvania, [Harris] is going to be president. It’s really, really hard to see where you win Pennsylvania and you lose Michigan or Wisconsin. It’s not going to happen.”….The same broad trends reshaping the political landscapes in Wisconsin and Michigan are evident in Pennsylvania. As in the other states, Democrats are gaining in white-collar suburbs, especially in the Trump era: Biden in 2020 won the four big suburban counties outside Philadelphia by nearly 300,000 votes – over 100,000 more than even Clinton did four years earlier….But, as in other states, Democrats have been concerned about the risk of depressed turnout and some gains for Trump among Black voters in Philadelphia. And Republicans have built an imposing and enduring advantage among the state’s large population of non-college educated White voters….“Pennsylvania has just become a much better state” for Republicans, said Ulm, noting how the Democrats’ lead in Pennsylvania voter registration has shrunk since 2020. “Places that used to be Democratic bastions aren’t anymore.”….Dante Chinni is founder and director of the American Communities Project, which has developed another well-respected classification system to sort the nation’s political geography. Chinni says that in Pennsylvania (as well as the other two states) many of the places where Trump runs best are what the project calls “Middle Suburbs” – middle-income places outside urban centers predominantly filled with White working-class voters, like the blue-collar counties around Pittsburgh….“These were union strongholds…and in the past that’s meant they were Democratic,” Chinni said. “But they’ve shifted. They’ve become Trump-y. Usually he runs up vote in tiny places. But these are Trump’s most reliable concentration of dense votes.”….Democrats, however, see the possibility of Harris amassing huge margins in the Philadelphia suburbs with voters who support abortion rights and reversing some of the turnout decline that Biden suffered among Black voters in the city itself.”