Why Biden’s fate may be settled in the Rust Belt not the Sun Belt

CNN —

Democrats are looking at a 2024 Electoral College map very few of them expected.

President Joe Biden’s breakthrough 2020 wins in Arizona and Georgia seemed to confirm that the party’s future was increasingly reliant on Sun Belt states rapidly growing more racially diverse.

But seven months before his rematch with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, Biden’s most promising path may run directly through the three Rust Belt states that he recaptured in 2020 after Trump dislodged them from the “blue wall” in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That’s the conclusion of a broad array of Democratic strategists.

The shift in expectations reflects the upside-down racial dynamics of the 2024 race, with most national and state polls showing Biden largely holding his 2020 support among White voters, while facing, at this point, unprecedented erosion among Black and Latino voters. Biden, as I wrote last year, is likewise maintaining his 2020 support better among older than younger voters. These surprising patterns have made the relatively older and Whiter three industrial blue wall states appear a better bet for Biden. That’s largely because his fate in them is less dependent on minority voters than in the younger and more diverse Sun Belt states that top his target list – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

“It’s hard for me to fathom, but that is the trend line I see looking through a lot of the data,” said Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin, who served as the lead pollster in Sen. Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns. “We are now in this bizarre situation where we are doing relatively better in states with less diverse population.”

If Biden defends his 2020 victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania