We speak of the national presidential election coming next year. That's the wrong way to look at it. In fact, there will be five concurrent state elections held on Nov. 5, 2024, to determine whether Joe Biden stays in the White House or whether the GOP candidate, most likely Donald Trump, evicts him.

As you probably remember from high school, each state gets assigned a number of electoral votes equal to the sum of its representatives on Capitol Hill — two senators plus the number of representatives in the House. (The District of Columbia is also allocated three electoral votes.) The total number of electoral votes is 538. A majority is required to win the presidency — that's 270.

In 2016, Republican nominee Trump won the presidency with 304 electoral votes over the Democrat, Hillary Clinton. In 2020, he lost it to Joe Biden, reaching a total of only 232 electoral votes. What changed? Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin moved from the GOP column to the Dems.

Not only does it look as though Trump and Biden will square off again, but it also looks as though the same five states will determine the winner of the presidency again. Despite the recent flood of indictments brought against the former president, national polls over the past three weeks show these two frontrunners essentially tied among American voters. But what matters is what's going on not across the country, but in those five most critical states.

The trend in those states is no friend to Trump or whoever else the GOP nominee might be. In 2016, four of the states had Republican governors. In 2020, three had Republicans in the statehouse. Going into 2024, only Georgia will.

Michigan in particular looks to be turning blue. In 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won re-election by over 10%, and the Dems won majorities in both houses of the state legislature for the first time in almost four decades. The authoritative Cook Political Report moved Michigan to leaning Democratic. Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are left as the only states rated "toss-ups."

That leaves a steep path for the GOP to regain control of the White House. No one would be surprised if they won Georgia and Arizona, but without Michigan, Republicans would have a political Mount Everest to climb. They would almost certainly have to win Pennsylvania. A summer poll in that state shows that 57% of Pennsylvanians approve of the job Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is doing, with only 23% disapproving.

I'd like to do away with the electoral college so the president is the candidate who wins the most votes from all Americans, not the one who can score in the five states teetering in the middle. Then GOP and Democratic nominees would be vying for my vote in California. Even though Trump lost the Golden State by 29% in 2020, he won more votes there than in any other state.

When asked why he robbed banks, notorious bank robber Willie Sutton replied, "Because that's where the money is." I would love to see presidential candidates campaigning where the popular votes are, not the electoral swing votes. That's probably a dream. At least I can take some consolation in missing the nonstop political ads that will inundate voters this fall in Phoenix, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Milwaukee.

In Keith Raffel's checkered past, he has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started an award-winning internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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