Explained: Why 7 states may decide which way the US presidential poll swings

medium nocaption114538897Just as countries have swing voters, the ones that aren’t sure who they’ll vote for right up to election day, the United States has ‘swing states’, which hog the limelight ahead of every presidential poll – and it isn’t the states with the largest populations.They hold key to magic numberOpinion polls show voters in these states have not decisively pledged their loyalties to either US vice president and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican challenger, former US president Donald Trump, which is why both are going all out to woo them.There are seven swing, or battleground, states this time: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. Together, they have 93 electoral college seats out of a total 538. Of the remaining seats, most polls predict 226 going to Harris and 219 to Trump. The magic number, which a candidate needs to win the race, is 270. medium nocaption114538567Electoral college and the race to 270 For presidential polls, the US has what is known as the ‘electoral college’ system. American states have a specific number of electoral college votes assigned to them for presidential polls. Essentially this means that that isn’t one election but 51 separate elections – one for each of the states and the capital district. The candidate that wins the majority of votes cast in a state gets all the electoral college seats of that state in what is called a ‘winner-takes-all’ system. The blue states in the map are tipped to go with Harris and the red ones with Trump. The yellows represent the states that together have the 93 undecided seats.A few thousand votes can decide who winsIn 2020, 43,000 votes in three states — less than a third of a percentage point of all voters nationwide — made up the decisive factor that ensured Joe Biden’s win. Thanks to the electoral college system, a candidate can become US president without even winning the popular vote, or the majority of the total number of votes cast. Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, based in New Jersey, calls the electoral college an “antiquated system”. Cassino writes, “For most of US history, the electoral college outcome reflected the popular vote, with only one or two instances in which the candidate who got the most votes didn’t become president. In recent years though, the system has failed repeatedly. Since 1988, the Republican candidate for president has won the popular vote just once, in 2004. But George W Bush and Trump were able to win elections because of vagaries in our democratic system. ”In 2016, Trump got about 3 million votes less than Democratic Hillary Clinton but still became US president. Something that had happened only on four occasions previously. It all goes to show why cornering the swing states is critical for victory. medium nocaption114538614All eyes are on Pennsylvania Among the swing states, Pennsylvania has the highest share of electoral college seats at 19. It is considered the most likely ‘tipping point’ state, or the one that carries a candidate to the 270 target. If Harris loses Pennsylvania, she would need to win either North Carolina or Georgia — which have voted Democratic only thrice in the last four decades. If Trump loses Pennsylvania, he would need to win either Wisconsin or Michigan. In 2016, Trump became the only Republican both these states had voted for since the 1980s.Reports say the Harris and Trump campaigns and their allies together spent $279.3 million in broadcast advertising in Pennsylvania till Oct 7, over $75 million more than Michigan. Cassino writes that since “the electoral college vote is based on the winner of each state, rather than the whole country, so a few states that have a balance between Democrats and Republicans are the only ones that really matter. In those states…voters are bombarded with campaign ads on TV, phone calls from the parties, postcards written by voters around the country, and candidate rallies. In the rest of the country, including the most populous states of California, New York and Texas, there’s no outward sign that an election is going on at all.” medium nocaption114538589But even one seat could decide it Incidentally, there are two exceptions to the ‘winner-takes-all’ system: Nebraska and Maine. Both allocate one electoral vote to the winner in each congressional district. In 2020, Biden won one of Nebraska’s five votes, while Trump took one of Maine’s four votes. This time, one of Nebraska’s electoral college seats — per its Congressional District method — is seen as being closely fought. If Harris wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin while Trump takes the other four battlegrounds, the Nebraska seat, centered around Omaha, would determine whether the election ends in a tie or Harris prevails.To swing or not to swing? It’s not a fixed number Five of the 2024 swing states are those that voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In 2020, these states were won by a margin of three percentage points or less, along with North Carolina and Nevada, which are part of the swing states’ list because of the tight race they saw last time. But the list keeps changing. Since 1992, 30 states have voted for different parties in consecutive elections. The 1992 election had the highest number of states switching loyalties and going with a new party than the one in the previous election. On the other hand, 20 states and Washington, DC, have since 1988 voted for the same party in every election.medium nocaption114538725Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had for decades served as a ‘blue wall’ for Democrats. But Trump narrowly took all three in 2016. In 2020, Biden reclaimed Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.And finally, why Trump could winAs election day approaches on November 5, opinion polls show Kamala Harris leading Trump. But he could still pull out a win despite being down a few points in the popular vote, just like he did in 2016 “….so long as the race is close in those swing states, and, by all indications, it is,” according to Cassino. “It’s almost certain that Harris will get millions more votes than Trump does in the final tally, but our system means that he may become president anyway,” he says.Source: 270towin.com, usafacts.org, Statista, media reports