Of the seven battleground states at the center of the election contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Pennsylvania carries the most electoral votes, and experts predict whoever wins the state will likely take the election—but it is possible for either candidate to win without the Keystone State, where margins are still razor thin.
A person drops off a mail-in ballot on Oct. 15, 2024 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Neither candidate is likely to win without Pennsylvania: Statistician Nate Silver has estimated Harris has a more than 88% chance of winning if she secures Pennsylvania, while Trump’s odds of returning to the Oval Office rocket to more than 90% if he takes the state (overall, Silver’s model gives Trump a just-over-53% chance of winning the race, reflecting a virtual tossup).
Pennsylvania is one of seven hotly contested swing states—along with Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada—and analytics website FiveThirtyEight says there's a 22% chance of Pennsylvania serving as the "tipping point" state whose electoral votes decide the 2024 election.
While its 19 electoral votes would go a long way in getting the eventual winner to the 270 needed to become president—it is possible for either candidate to win without Pennsylvania.
Polling in Pennsylvania shows the margin between the two candidates is virtually nonexistent— FiveThirtyEight’s polling average has Trump ahead by 0.3 points—and the narrow gap between Harris and Trump in most other swing states also predicts an election that will be decided by ultra-thin margins, so just a small polling error could lead to a winning electoral map that doesn’t include Pennsylvania.
Supporters of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in Reading, Pennsylvania on Oct. 9, 2024.
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Trump’s most straightforward path to victory without Keystone voters runs through Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina (where the latest polls show him ahead), and at least one of the two remaining Great Lakes battleground states: Michigan and Wisconsin. Harris has a narrow lead in both of the latter two states, the latest polls show, but Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 and lost by only 20,000 votes in 2020. If he loses North Carolina but keeps Arizona and Georgia, Trump would need both Michigan and Wisconsin to win.
For Harris, the most plausible path to victory without Pennsylvania requires her to win Wisconsin and Michigan, where she's currently polling ahead, as well as at least two of the other swing states where Trump has an edge. She could do so by adding North Carolina and Georgia, or with Arizona, Nevada and either North Carolina or Georgia. If she’s able to secure both North Carolina and Georgia, two states where Trump is currently ahead that usually pick the same candidate, she could win with just the addition of Michigan. Harris could also win by sweeping the Sun Belt states of Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, even if she loses all three northern battlegrounds. It’s unlikely to unfold this way, but senior campaign advisor David Ploufee told CNN the Harris team isn’t discounting the possibility.
It’s still a toss up. In a new poll out Wednesday, Harris has a two-point lead over Trump. She was also shown to be ahead in a pair of New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College polls released Oct. 12, but Trump was up one point in a Sept. 28-Oct. 8 Wall Street Journal poll of registered voters who said they would “definitely” or “probably” vote for either candidate. As of Thursday, FiveThirtyEight’s polling average has Trump ahead by 0.3 points.
Andrew Dutton, 31, votes using an absentee or mail-in ballot while his service dog Buddie, 4, sits ... [+]
Joe Biden narrowly won Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona by less than a percentage point each, flipping states that voted for Trump in 2016. Biden also flipped Pennsylvania and Michigan, winning by 1.2% and 2.8% of the vote, respectively. Biden won in Nevada (the state has voted for Democratic presidential candidates in every election since 2008) by less than 3 percentage points and Trump won in North Carolina by less than 2% of the vote.
Harris shouldn't be counted out in North Carolina. The southern state has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate only once in the last 40 years (Barack Obama in 2008), and while Trump is still narrowly favored, current polling shows Harris could overtake him. If so, she’d become the second candidate from her party to win the state since 1980 as its population has grown to include more Democratic-leaning demographics, including people with college degrees. North Carolina has 16 electoral college votes, tied with Georgia. If Harris wins the state, she has a 91.3% chance of winning the election, according to Nate Silver. If Trump loses North Carolina, Pennsylvania becomes even more important for him—he would need to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and either Arizona or Georgia.
The seven battleground states contain a tiny fraction of the population of the United States, but those voters will almost certainly choose the next president in a country where the other 43 states sit more comfortably in Democratic or Republican camps. As a result, Trump and Harris have targeted a majority of their advertising budgets and campaign funds toward those states in an effort to tip their electoral college vote counts above 269 (if there is a tie, the U.S. House of Representatives chooses a winner and each state's delegation gets a single vote). This year's election could be even tighter than the one in 2020, when a shift of 43,000 votes could have turned the tide in Trump’s favor, Reuters reported.