Pendulum reveals Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’ different paths to victory

This pendulum reveals a theory on how Donald Trump and Kamala Harris can seal their path to victory after polls open in the US.

The Mackerras Pendulum is an Australian idea. It shows each seat in any Australian lower house by ranking from the safest for Labor to the safest for the Coalition.

Since the Americans have a two-party system, therefore, the idea can be Americanised which is what is represented here. The US Democratic Party is the equivalent of our Labor Party, while the Republicans are the equivalent of our Liberal Party.

But there is an important difference. Here we are not discussing single-member electorates. We are discussing the electoral college, the institution that elects the President.

The electoral college numbers are determined by relative populations, and their total is 538. The least populous states (Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming, as well as the District of Columbia) have only three electors – and each of them is safe for either the Democrats or the Republicans.

Looking at the biggest states, California (54 electoral college voters) is safe for Vice President Kamala Harris, while Texas (40 electoral college votes) is safe for former president Donald Trump. You can see them high up the left-hand side and in the lower middle on the right-hand side, respectively.

Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she walks off the stage during a rally at Muhlenberg College Memorial Hall in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Picture: Getty

Then there are the so-called “swing states” which can be seen at the bottom of the pendulum, with what I call their “buffer statistics”. Pennsylvania has 19 electoral college votes, North Carolina and Georgia both have 16, Michigan has 15, Arizona has 11, Wisconsin has 10 and Nevada has six.

On the Republican side of the pendulum, the states are ranked beginning with Wyoming, and its three votes. After that, West Virginia has four, North Dakota has three and Oklahoma has seven. So, if Trump won only those states (a very unlikely outcome) he would win only 17 votes in the electoral college.

Anyway, cumulatively down to North Carolina – the Republican state held by the lowest margin – there are 235 electors for Trump.

The tipping point state on the pendulum is Wisconsin, which was the third weakest of the states won by Joe Biden in 2020.

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump takes the stage during a campaign rally at the Santander Arena in Reading, Pennsylvania. Picture: AFP

There are two further details that should be mentioned. The first is that the cumulative Trump total stated above (Wyoming through to North Carolina) is 235 votes but Trump actually won 232 votes in 2020 (see the top right-hand side).

The reason for the difference is that Trump states have grown more rapidly in population over the past decade, than the states won by Biden, and this is reflected in how many electoral college votes they have in 2024.

Thus, Biden won the 2020 election with 306 votes, but Harris starts with a notional 303 in 2024.

For the second detail, note that on the left-hand side above Michigan is “Nebraska District”. The explanation is that Nebraska is peculiar. Whereas states normally give their entire vote to the winning candidate, Nebraska gives two votes for the state as a whole and one for each district in the House of Representatives. So, Trump received four votes in 2020 and Biden just a single vote, for the city of Omaha which is the second district. The first and third districts were won big by Trump.

If one lives in Omaha, one gets a valuable vote. If you live in any other part of Nebraska, you are in very safe Trump territory – and your vote is taken for granted.