THE BIG THREE — If you were following the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, you probably noticed a familiar cadence: Philadelphia. Detroit. Atlanta. Miami. Phoenix. Those were the places that Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Mike Pence traveled to over and over in the frantic 10 days before Election Day. The Detroit and Philadelphia media markets led the way — between them, they received 15 campaign stops in total. That travel pattern made perfect political sense at the time: they were the biggest metropolitan areas in the biggest and most critical battleground states. Win one by a large enough margin, and you win the state. Win enough swing states, and you win the White House. There are still 157 days to go until Election Day, but it’s already clear that the final stretch of the 2024 campaign will look similar — with one probable exception. Florida’s lurch to the right likely means Miami isn’t going to command nearly as much attention. So what will replace it? Milwaukee. The reason is simple. Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia are shaping up to be Biden’s axis of victory this fall, the three big cities upon which Democratic fortunes will rise or fall. Given his struggles in the Sun Belt, Biden’s reelection path of least resistance is to shore up the Democratic Blue Wall and win Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — the Rust Belt giants he won back from Trump in 2020. With victories in those three states, he can afford to lose Arizona, Georgia and even Nevada, all of which he captured in 2020. But to run the table in the trio of essential industrial swing states, it’s going to require sweeping victories in their largest cities — Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia — all of them historically Democratic strongholds whose margins have traditionally powered statewide Democratic victories. Biden will need robust turnout and the typical landslide margins out of those cities to counter the big margins Trump is expected to run up in the rural counties in those states. In all three cities, there are troubling trend lines for Biden. Each has seen declining voter turnout across recent election cycles. In Philadelphia, city turnout dropped to 43 percent in the 2022 midterm elections, down from 49 percent in 2018. In this year’s Democratic presidential primary, turnout was down 17 percent over 2020 (in both elections, Biden had essentially locked up the nomination by the time the state voted). Over the past decade In Milwaukee, writes Marquette University’s John Johnson, who studies city voting trends, turnout has dropped sharply in the city’s majority Black neighborhoods from its high levels during the Obama years. Detroit has likewise experienced weak turnout: In 2022, Detroit turnout ran more than 20 percentage points behind the rest of the state. Those trends, along with the general lack of enthusiasm for Biden among many Black voters and Trump’s gains among non-white voters, is why Biden and Harris have been paying such close attention to the three cities. There’s no risk that Trump could win any of them, or that he will get even close. But that’s not the problem. All three states have been so close in the past two presidential elections that even a small drop-off in turnout can make a huge difference. Wisconsin, for example, was decided by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020 (Madison can’t do it alone). The margin of victory in Michigan in 2016 was fewer than 11,000 votes. That’s why earlier this week, Biden and Harris together visited Philadelphia, where they highlighted the campaign’s pivot to the Black vote. The rally represented the president’s fifth trip to the Philadelphia area this year and his seventh to Pennsylvania in 2024 alone, write Myah Ward and Brakkton Booker. Biden can point to the lowest Black unemployment rate on record and policy achievements in areas like student debt relief and funding for historic Black colleges, among other things. But so far, it hasn’t moved the dial far enough. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll reported that Biden is winning just 49 percent among Black voters in six of the most competitive swing states. In Wisconsin, that number is 40 percent. Those are stunning numbers when compared to 2020, when Biden won nine out of every 10 Black votes. And in the case of big cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee, Biden’s softness comes in spite of Trump’s frequent depiction of them as post-apocalyptic hellscapes. There’s still time to correct course. But that will require acknowledging the three cities are the campaign’s most urgent task at the moment. If Biden’s standing in them doesn't improve, there’s a good chance there is no second term. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie.
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