While more than 240 million Americans are eligible to vote in 2024, a relatively small number will actually decide the election. Voters in just seven swing states are likely to determine whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump will be the next occupant of the White House. But several factors are making these battlegrounds too close to call.
Just a few thousand votes in key swing states will determine whether Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump wins the White House. While many states are reliably “red” (Republican) or “blue” (Democrat), some switch loyalties from year to year. The seven states won by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2020 are also likely to be close this November 5: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The state of Pennsylvania is attracting much of the attention, given that it is one of the states that make up the Trump “firewall”: if he wins Pennsylvania along with Georgia and North Carolina, he likely wins the White House.
But Pennsylvania once counted among the reliable Democratic “blue wall” states. If Harris were to lose Pennsylvania, she faces an uphill battle: She must then win either Georgia or North Carolina (to destroy Trump’s firewall) and either Arizona or Nevada – as well as both Michigan and Wisconsin.
An indirect vote
The United States uses an indirect voting process known as the Electoral College, which allocates a number of votes to states in accordance with their representation in Congress (which in turn is based on population). Each state has two senators and thus starts with two votes; additional electoral votes are based on how many legislators a state has in the US House of Representatives. For example, Massachusetts has 11 Electoral College votes: two for its senators and one each for its nine representatives in the US House.
There are 538 electoral votes nationwide – thus 270 are needed to win the presidency. Broken down, the Electoral College is made up of 100 votes (for the total number of senators) plus 435 votes (for all the members of the House of Representatives) plus three for those representing Washington, DC (which is not technically a state but a district).
Winner takes all
The Electoral College system is often criticised for diluting the will of the voters through its “winner-take-all” structure – while a candidate might only win 51 percent of the votes cast in a state, he or she takes home 100 percent of its Electoral College votes (in all states but two). This allows for significant distortions of the popular will: The candidates who won the most votes in 2000 (Al Gore) and 2016 (Hillary Clinton) did not go on to win the White House.
Other critics have argued that smaller states are over-represented, given that each starts out with two senators no matter its size. Wyoming, the least populous US state with just over 580,000 residents, has the same number of senators as California, the most populous with almost 39 million people – a population larger than any EU nation except for France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Arizona
Arizona voted for Biden by a narrow 0.3-point margin, giving its 11 electoral votes to a Democratic candidate for the first time since 1996.
Looming large in this election is the issue of abortion rights, after Arizona’s highest court ruled in April to uphold an 1864 law banning all abortions “except those necessary to save a woman’s life”. The 160-year-old law was eventually repealed by the state legislature. On November 5, Arizona will also be voting on an amendment to the state constitution that would guarantee abortion access up to 24 weeks.
Immigration is also a key issue for the state, which shares a 600-kilometre (370-mile) border with Mexico. Early this year, the remote hamlet of Sasabe became a hotspot for border crossings, but since then the number of migrants entering Arizona has dropped to its lowest point in three years.
About a quarter of the state’s voters are Latino, a demographic that went for Biden by 3 to 1 in the last presidential election. But recent polls suggest Latino support for Harris remains lower than the levels Biden enjoyed when he faced off against Trump in 2020.
Still, Democrats in the state are hopeful, saying Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket has injected new energy into the race that they hope will translate into votes.
Georgia
When Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020 he was the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since former president Bill Clinton in 1992. Biden won by 0.2 percent, his smallest margin of victory in any state.
Trump took the loss hard, and Georgia soon became a focal point of his attempt to overturn the vote results. It was Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who received the now-infamous call from Trump asking him to “find 11,780 votes” and insisting he had won the state. Trump was indicted last year along with 18 others on charges relating to election interference. He still faces eight felony counts but the case is on pause until December, pending appeals over whether District Attorney Fani Willis can remain on the case despite misconduct allegations.
Trump narrowly leads Harris among all likely voters in Georgia while Harris enjoys the support of more than three-quarters of Black voters; about a third of Georgia’s electorate is African-American, and this demographic was thought to be key to Biden winning the state. Trump has been gaining support among Black voters since July but the Democrats are hoping to reverse this trend, including with a Harris-Walz bus tour in late August.
Michigan
Formerly one of the “blue wall” states Democrats could rely on along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Michigan has picked the winning presidential candidate in the last two elections, backing Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
Working-class voters are a key demographic in a state long known for its auto industry, with union membership nearing 13 percent (almost 3 percent higher than the national average).
Michigan is the US state with the highest percentage of Arab-Americans, who are now a majority in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. During the Democratic primary, a movement to vote “uncommitted” rather than Democrat was intended as a warning over US support for Israel.
Both the Republican and Democratic presidential tickets have made repeated trips to the state this year, underscoring that both sides see Michigan as key to a victory.
Nevada
Nevada has been won by very tight margins in five of the last eight presidential elections, making it one of the swingiest of the swing states.
Although the Democratic candidate has won the past two presidential races, Trump was leading Biden substantially in polls earlier this year before Harris took over at the top of the ticket; she has since won back much of this support and now holds a slight edge.
As it is across the United States, the economy is top of mind for many voters in Nevada, where unemployment is the highest in the nation at 5.4 percent. In Las Vegas it is even higher, at 6.7 percent. While Republican candidates often score higher with voters on the economy, Harris has been closing this gap, with some polls even indicating voters trust her more on economic issues.
Nevada is among the most diverse of US states, which could also bode well for Democrats. Some 40 percent of the electorate is Latino, Black or Asian-American, all groups that support Harris in higher percentages than they do Trump.
North Carolina
North Carolina has gone to the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1976 except one – when Barack Obama won the state in 2008 by less than 1 percentage point.
But while Trump may have won the state in 2020, he did so by his closest margin of victory that year, just 1.3 percentage points. And recent polling has shown the 2024 contest is a statistical tie, placing North Carolina firmly among the “purple” battleground states.
The mystery deepens when one considers the Tar Heel State has more unaffiliated voters – at 36 percent – than are registered to either political party, making predictions even more elusive. (Some 33 percent are registered Democrats while 30 percent are registered Republicans.)
But the Democrats are not going to let the state go without a fight, with Harris visiting the state at least 10 times just this year, including travelling to flood-hit areas in the wake of Hurricane Helene. The party may be hoping that high turnout among the state’s Black population, estimated at 20 percent, could help flip it blue just as it did in 2008.
Trump, for his part, visited the state five times in 2024, stumping at rallies in Charlotte, Asheville and Asheboro over the summer.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes make it the largest single prize of any swing state. While it voted reliably Democrat from 1992 until 2016, Trump’s populist message resonated with voters that year and the state remains a toss-up.
Pennsylvania is the final state – along with Georgia and North Carolina – to make up Trump’s electoral “firewall”: if he wins these three states, he likely wins the election.
Both parties view Pennsylvania as essential to a win, and it has proven a tricky state to lock down. While Biden ostensibly had the home-team advantage – he grew up in Scranton and his wife is also from Pennsylvania – he only carried the state by 81,000 votes (or about 1.2 percent).
But Harris may benefit from a particularly wide gender gap in the Keystone State, where she leads Trump by almost 20 percent among female voters.
Abortion rights, an issue that tends to benefit Democrats, is high on the minds of Pennsylvania voters, who rank it third in importance behind the economy and immigration.
Wisconsin
Once one of the reliable “blue wall” states along with Michigan and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin voted Democrat in every election since 1988 except 2016, when the state flipped to Trump.
Somewhat disconcertingly, not one poll conducted before Election Day predicted a Trump win in the state.
Biden took Wisconsin back for the Democrats in 2020 but the race was very close, won by only about three votes per voting ward (district).
The GOP has since made the state a priority of its campaign. The Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee, and Trump himself has said, “[I]f we win Wisconsin, we win the whole thing.”
For once Harris seems to agree with the former president.
“The path to the White House goes through Wisconsin,” she told a rally in July.
Other states to watch
Two more states are being closely watched for the possibly that they might buck past trends to come into play in 2024, although they remain long shots for the Democrats.
Florida has been won by very tight margins in five of the last eight presidential elections. While the Sunshine State has been fairly reliably Republican since 1980, it went to Obama in both 2008 and 2012.
And there are some new signs the state might be leaning blue. Most polls still put Trump in the lead, but several barely within the margin of error – and some surmise that Harris's commanding lead with voters of colour and women could put her over the top. The GOP's focus on curtailing abortion rights are also turning off some voters, and not just women. Florida implemented a six-week abortion ban earlier this year, one of the nation's strictest.
The deep-red state of Texas is another that is generating rumours that change might be afoot. For the first time in decades, some pollsters are saying a flip is within the realm of possibility – despite the fact that Texas has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976.
Biden lost the state in 2020 by about 5 percentage points, the best showing by a Democratic presidential candidate in more than two decades. And the social and demographic shifts that have turned other states in the region from red to purple or even blue – a rising Latino population, an influx of new inhabitants and a GOP that is embracing more extreme ideologies – are also present in Texas, the second-most-populous US state at 30 million residents.
But it still might be too soon to talk about the Lone Star state turning blue.
“Joe Biden only lost Texas by five and a half percentage points. That’s closer than Ohio. That’s closer than Florida. It is absolutely in play,” one Texas Democratic Party official told local Spectrum News 1 in August.
"The problem is 5 percent in Texas is just a lot more people than it is in other states.”
