These five states may send a powerful message about 2024. But will Republicans hear it?

CNN — This November, the states that decided the last presidential race may send a powerful signal about the next one. If the Trump candidates can’t win in these states “in a midterm that should be a good year for you, when normally the out party can be expected to perform better than it did in the previous presidential election,” asks Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz, “why would you expect better results in the presidential year” for Trump himself? “His faction is seen as having taken over and there are a lot of voters who don’t understand why Republicans have allowed this to happen but also feel like you have to stop them now.” Both Biden and Trump enter the campaign’s final stretch in relatively weak positions across the big five states. David Bergstein, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, says that, particularly in the big suburban areas around cities such as Philadelphia, Atlanta and Phoenix that cemented Trump’s 2020 defeat, voters “have lost none of their disdain for Trump and for MAGA-ism and for them seeing a candidate wearing a red hat is a symbol of something they had put behind them and don’t particularly want to relive.” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg similarly says that the party’s improvement in many races this summer is not so much “a swing away” from Republicans as “a return to the 2018 or 2020 norm.” Earlier in Biden’s presidency, she says, “you saw independents shift away, and you saw diminishing enthusiasm among Democrats.” But now, she says, with the US Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion “and the kind of dominance of Trump, I’ve seen a shift among independents, younger people, college-educated women, all going back to where they were and exceeding it.” Democratic wins across these battleground states are far from assured. In Arizona, for instance, Democratic operative Tony Cani says he “can’t imagine anybody winning any” of the big statewide races, “by more than 2 ½ or 3 points.” Yet, however close the final outcomes, GOP strategist John Thomas says that if most of the Trump-backed candidates lose in a year that started off so promising for Republicans, “I think it’s the bat signal” for Florida Gov.