A handful of key states will decide the US presidential election
The United States is a nation of well over 300 million people. A tiny fraction of them will ultimately decide who becomes the president.
Righto, the time has come. The American presidential election is imminent. As is our quadrennial tradition, we must explain the country’s convoluted electoral system, and give you a breakdown of the key states that will decide the victor.
It’s Christmas-time for political nerds. Join us. Delve into the curiosities and eccentricities of the world’s most needlessly dramatic and cinematic political system. Then maybe, as a result, the madness of election day will make more sense.
How the system works
First thing to note: the popular vote doesn’t matter. Hillary Clinton earned three million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016, and lost the election. Joe Biden outperformed him by about seven million votes, and barely scraped across the line.
We tend to think of the American presidential election as one big vote. It is, in fact, 50 separate votes across each of the country’s states. Win the popular vote in a specific state and you earn all of its electoral votes (with a couple of annoying exceptions).
How are those electoral votes allocated, you may wonder? Each state gets two, to begin with, representing its two senators. Then it gets an extra electoral vote for each of its congressional districts. An example: one of the most populous states, Florida, has 28 congressional districts. Add the two votes representing its senators, and you end up with 30 electoral votes.
To win the election, a candidate merely needs to reach a threshold of 270 electoral votes. So, hypothetically, Kamala Harris could lose the popular vote to Mr Trump by two million, or five million, or any figure really, and still become president. It’s about distributing your support efficiently in the key swing states.
That last election, in 2020, looks like a landslide if you solely examine the popular vote (Mr Biden got about 81 million votes, compared to Mr Trump’s 74 million). But in reality it was nerve-shreddingly close. Flip just a few tens of thousands of votes in the decisive states, and you end up with the opposite result.
The key states this time
When considering the key states for this election, we might arrange them in a series of concentric circles (I warned you this would be nerdy). The innermost circle contains the most important, competitive states, which will have the greatest influence on the result, and we move outwards from there.
Remember, most US states are not even remotely competitive; either Mr Trump or Ms Harris will win them easily. That is why so many campaign resources, and so much media coverage, are relentlessly focused on the small handful which could genuinely go either way.
At a stretch, we can come up with 13 states that fall into the competitive bucket, and even a couple of those are monumental longshots.
We shall run through them in descending order of importance. I’ll chuck them into these four somewhat arbitrary categories: election deciders, still important, interesting if they surprise us, and landslide indicators.
If we don’t mention a state below, you can pretty much ignore it on election day, because barring the most egregious polling screw-up in history, its result is a foregone conclusion.
PENNSYLVANIA: 19 electoral votes, election decider
The last remaining state from the big three which dominated US politics for a couple of decades. Florida and Ohio, once the swingiest of swing states, are now solidly Republican. So the path to victory now lies, largely, in the so-called “Rust Belt” – a trio of states across America’s northern border, with more blue collar voters than your average electorate.
Pennsylvania is the most valuable of these Rust Belt states; in the entire country, only California, Texas, Florida and New York offer more electoral votes.
It’s also a fairly reliable bellwether, having voted for the winning candidate in eight of the past 10 elections. The only exceptions were in 2000 and 2004, when Republican George W. Bush won the presidency, but Pennsylvania supported Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry.
Mr Trump won the state by 0.7 per cent in 2016, and lost it to Mr Biden by 1.2 per cent in 2020. Regardless of who claims it this time, do not expect a blowout.
And therein lies a potential problem, You will recall that in 2020, without providing any credible evidence, Mr Trump claimed he had been robbed of victory in Pennsylvania (and other states) due to widespread voter fraud.
That was partly because of how Pennsylvania counts its votes, with the results from Republican-leaning rural areas tending to come in first, followed by the overwhelmingly Democratic votes from the cities, chiefly Philadelphia.
Expect something similar again, with Mr Trump building an early lead, and perhaps claiming victory prematurely. The question is whether Ms Harris can win by enough in Philadelphia to gradually reel in that lead, and ultimately take the state.
MICHIGAN: 15 electoral votes, election decider
You will detect some common factors in all the Rust Belt states: a history of voting for the Democrats, and an illusory early lead for Mr Trump, as described above.
Michigan is best known for its car industry, and Mr Trump won it in 2016, in no small part, by promising to revive manufacturing in the state. That was the only time a Republican had won Michigan since 1988.
But hooo boy it was close; Mr Trump won it over Ms Clinton by just 0.2 per cent. The margin four years later, 2.8 per cent, was much more comfortable for Mr Biden.
Michigan has trended towards the Democrats lately. The state’s Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has been spoken of as a potential future president. But polling shows it is on a knife-edge.
WISCONSIN: 10 electoral votes, election decider
Another state that voted for Mr Trump in 2016, bucking a long-term trend. Wisconsin has otherwise gone for the Democrats every time since Ronald Reagan won re-election all the way back in 1984.
Like Michigan, the polls signal a close race. Mr Trump’s margin in 2016 was 0.7 per cent, and Mr Biden’s in 2020 was the same – a mere 20,000 votes.
The basic calculus is this: if Ms Harris wins all three Rust Belt states, she almost certainly becomes president. If she drops any of them, she has to pick up electoral votes elsewhere, in places that appear to be less favourable to her.
Think of it as an NFL quarterback going through his progressions. First up is Pennsylvania, then Michigan, then Wisconsin. If the defence covers all three, you have to start considering Plan D or E. Which usually means you’re in trouble.
GEORGIA: 16 electoral votes, election decider
Speaking of which: Georgia. Ohhhhh Georgia. The epicentre of so many legal challenges, from Mr Trump, in the wake of his defeat in 2020. And ohhh so much drama. A criminal case against him is still pending, in the state, focused around his infamous phone call with election officials, during which he demanded they “find” enough votes to reverse his loss to Mr Biden.
You probably shouldn’t expect this time to be much smoother, whichever candidate Georgia votes for, because we have a parallel to Philadelphia on our hands. The state’s capital, Atlanta, is its main population centre, and is heavily Democratic, but will take time to count its votes.
Time that can be used to foment distrust and uncertainty. Not a problem, of course, if Mr Trump builds up enough of a lead from the rural areas to make a comeback impossible.
ARIZONA: 11 electoral votes, election decider
Arizona’s an interesting one. It’s a naturally Republican-leaning state whose politics have been up-ended, somewhat, by the double-edged sword of Mr Trump’s whole ... vibe.
(Aren’t all swords technically double-edged? Ignore that question, it’s rhetorical. I’m not a damn blacksmith.)
For many years the dominant political figure in Arizona was the Republican senator John McCain, who died in 2018, having been his party’s presidential nominee in 2008.
Mr McCain and Mr Trump were not exactly fans of one another. The antipathy rather famously tracked its genesis to Mr Trump’s remarks during his 2016 campaign, in which he suggested Mr McCain was only considered a war hero “because he was captured”.
“I like people who weren’t captured,” he said.
Mr McCain, a pilot, was shot down and captured during the Vietnam War. He declined the offer of an early release, refusing to leave his POW camp before his fellow soldiers, and was subsequently tortured.
The feud between he and Mr Trump continues to cast a shadow over Republican politics in the state, as does the continuing prominence of Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist Kari Lake, who previously ran for the governorship. She is now trying to become a senator.
It’s a weird state, then. Nominally Republican, but where the party has repeatedly shot itself in the foot. Mr Biden won it narrowly in 2020.
NORTH CAROLINA: 16 electoral votes, important
We are moving from the key states to the maybe-influential-in-the-right-scenario states now, so we’ll breeze through them more swiftly.
North Carolina has gone to the Democrats only once since 1976, as part of Barack Obama’s landslide in 2008. It voted for Mr Trump, last time, by more than a percentage point – hardly a comfortable result, but not too close either.
It’s in play, this time, largely thanks to the inadvisable selection of Mark Robinson, the current Lieutenant Governor, to be the Republican gubernatorial candidate.
Mr Robinson denies the allegation that he described himself as a “black Nazi”, which tells you pretty much all you need to know about the state of his campaign. The question here is whether he will detract from Mr Trump’s vote at the presidential level.
This should be a Republican state. If Ms Harris edges it, that will be a firm indicator that Mr Trump is in trouble.
NEVADA: 6 electoral votes, important
At the risk of showing one’s age: there is an episode of The West Wing in which Nevada, the last state to be called, decides a presidential election.
That is less preposterous than you’d think. While it has a relatively small number of electoral votes, a mere half-dozen, Nevada’s position near the US west coast means its polls close well after most other states’. So if we’re in a super-close scenario, it may determine the result.
Nevada voted twice for Mr Bush but has otherwise gone to the Democrats since the 1990s.
MINNESOTA: 10 electoral votes, important
The home state of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.
Think of Minnesota as a sort of fourth wheel to the Rust Belt. While geographically similar, it leans more towards the Democrats than the aforementioned three, so if Ms Harris finds herself losing here, there’s a decent chance the election is already gone for her.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: 4 electoral votes, only interesting if it flips
New Hampshire doesn’t have a huge population, but it used to be a genuine swing state. And in the event of an extremely close election, its four electoral votes could prove crucial.
It hasn’t voted for a Republican since Mr Bush in 2000, and Mr Biden’s 7 per cent margin in 2020 might trick you into thinking it’s solidly Democratic.
Don’t be so sure. Ms Clinton only won it by 0.3 per cent in 2016. New Hampshire’s voters are a little more eccentric than those of your average state, and therefore less predictable.
VIRGINIA: 13 electoral votes, only interesting if it flips
There’s an interesting mix of demographics in Virginia, which encompasses both the outer suburbs of Washington D.C. and an unusually large population of military personnel. From the former you can expect an overwhelmingly Democratic result, and from the latter a favourable environment for Republicans.
But the situation here is simpler than those morsels of information make it sound. The Democratic candidate has won Virginia quite comfortably for four consecutive elections; Mr Biden had a margin of a touch over 10 per cent.
It’s technically a swing state. But if you see Ms Harris struggling in Virginia early in the vote count, it’s a sign that her chances more broadly are fading.
FLORIDA: 30 electoral votes, only interesting if it flips
Once upon a time Florida was one of the key swing states. Indeed in 2000, albeit quite controversially, it determined the winner.
Not so anymore. Florida is now a state that belongs in the Republican column.
Its Governor, Ron DeSantis, won re-election with a whopping margin of about 20 per cent in 2022, outperforming other Republicans across the country.
Mr Trump cannot afford to lose this state. Doing so would all but doom his chances of winning the election.
Note that, in Florida, we will likely see the reverse of the phenomenon I’ve previously described from the Rust Belt: expect the Democrats to overperform in early returns, and the Republicans to surge back later, driven by late-reporting districts in the Panhandle.
That’s really a lesson for the election more generally. Do not draw confident, premature conclusions. The full picture will not be clear, in many states, until a significant proportion of the votes have been counted.
OHIO: 17 electoral votes, longshot landslide indicator
Here we have another state which, 20 years ago, would have been a bellwether. Now it, too, lies firmly in the Republican column.
Ohio has gone for Mr Trump twice, and for Mr Obama twice before that. And for Mr Bush twice before that. And for Bill Clinton twice before that. That record is rather hard to parse.
The margins, though, are easier to read. Mr Trump won this state by 8 per cent in both 2016 and 2020. None of the polls suggest anything different will happen this time.
If Ohio is even remotely close, here, it suggests the public polls were catastrophically wrong, and a Harris landslide is looming. Not a likely outcome. But something to consider.
TEXAS: 40 electoral votes, longshot landslide indicator
And here we have the proverbial white whale of Democratic politics: Texas. The single biggest contributor of electoral votes to the Republicans. A state of 30 million people, with a growing Hispanic population, which relentlessly teases and tantalises Ms Harris’s party with the prospect of a paradigm-shifting flip, and always disappoints.
If Texas were to change sides, the election would be done, then and there. Ms Harris has certainly tried to give it a nudge, campaigning on the state’s especially restrictive abortion laws. But this is a Republican state to its core.
If Texas goes to the Democrats – and I cannot stress enough how unlikely that is – chances are we will already know the result of the election beforehand. But hey, the margin of victory does matter. In this scenario, we’re talking about Kamala Harris running up the score.
Twitter: @SamClench
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