Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely Democratic presidential nominee. But can he win the presidency?
Because of the surprises of the Electoral College system, the answer depends on how he does in a limited number of swing states.
In 2020, seven states had their presidential winner determined by less than 3 percentage points: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. Joe Biden won the first six of those seven, so he won the White House.
When President Biden was still in the race, polling looked dire for him In all these states. Commentators speculated that North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and possibly Nevada were also out of his reach.
Biden’s best path to victory, it was believed, lay in the rust belt trio of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Those three swing states, plus a single electoral vote from traditionally Democratic states and Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, would have given Biden 270 electoral votes — the minimum he needed to win.
But Biden’s best path may not be Harris’s. For an optimist this is good news for him – and for a pessimist chances are this is a real problem.
The pessimistic scenario is that some suspect Harris could do worse than “Joe from Scranton” among working-class whites in the Rust Belt — making states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania even harder for him.
The optimistic scenario is that Harris is likely to do better than Biden among non-white voters — particularly putting states with large black populations (Georgia and North Carolina) or Hispanic populations (Arizona and Nevada) into contention.
Some preliminary polls show how Harris has fared in swing states since Biden dropped out, though given the recent ups and downs in the race, it’s unclear how much to build on. But here’s how the swing state math stacks up.
Seven swing states
In 2020, Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 percentage points, but the race for an Electoral College majority was much closer. Biden carried 19 safe Democratic states, the District of Columbia and Nebraska’s Second District.
But he came out on top, narrowly winning six of the seven swing states listed above. Here are his margins of victory in each:
- Michigan: 2.8%
- Nevada: 2.4%
- Pennsylvania: 1.2%
- Wisconsin: 0.6% (this was the “tipping point state” that put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win)
- Arizona: 0.3%
- Georgia: 0.2%
Trump, meanwhile, won one of the closest swing states:
- North Carolina: 1.4%
Trump also won 3.4 percent of the vote in Florida, which most analysts now believe should be considered a red-leaning state rather than a swing state.
The Biden-Trump rematch was set to focus on the same lineup of swing states, in the same order of contests as last time. However, one change is that As many polls have suggested That Nevada (a state Trump lost in 2016 and 2020) has since moved further to the right.
Does Harris have a place to grow up in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona?
Now, Harris’ selection could further shake up the map. “Kamala Harris is doing significantly better than Joe Biden among black and Hispanic voters,” CNN polling analyst Harry Enten said. Wrote in X, added: “While Biden really had one path to winning the Electoral College, Harris has multiple. In particular, he can win in the Sun Belt (AZ, GA, NC, & NV).”
Currently, the evidence that can happen is Georgia, where strong 33 percent The population is black and where there is Voting Harris-Trump appears to be a much closer race than Biden-Trump. A landmark communications poll Harris showed 1 point downand an Emerson College poll His 2 points are shown below. (Biden was trailing by about 4 points on average when he dropped out of the race.)
North Carolina is even closer, considering Trump won it twice, but it was close in 2020 and the state 21 percent are black. So maybe Harris can make the state competitive — though it’s important to remember that he doesn’t yet lead the ticket nationwide, so we don’t yet know how well he’ll do among black voters when he’s nominated over Biden’s run. partner
For Nevada and Arizona, the question is more about Hispanic voters, who make up more than 20 percent of the electorate. inside each condition Democrats have won Nevada in each of the past four presidential cycles, but that has slipped slightly in recent years. Meanwhile, Arizona is a traditionally Republican state where Democrats have made surprising gains in the past few cycles.
If Harris struggles in the Rust Belt, he’ll have to make room elsewhere
The Rust Belt power trio of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania famously decided the outcome of both the 2016 and 2020 elections, swinging first toward Trump and then toward Biden.
If Harris wins all three again (as well as the Nebraska Second District vote), he wins the presidency. But what if he can’t win all three?
Another way to think about it is this: If he loses one or more of the Rust Belt trio, what will he do for the other four swing states (Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona)?
You can break down the situation in a few different ways, but here are a few:
1) If Harris loses all three of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania: He still has a chance to win, but there is no more room for error and it depends on a big swing of both black and Hispanic voters in his favor. He would need to win all four of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona – which would give him 275 electoral votes. That’s easier said than done — Trump won North Carolina twice, and he only lost Georgia and Arizona by the slimmest margins in 2020.
2) If Harris wins Michigan, but loses Wisconsin and Pennsylvania: The trio will not necessarily move together. Biden did slightly better in 2020 than the other two Rust Belt states in Michigan, which has a larger black population, and Harris is likely to win back voters alienated by the Gaza war.
If he gets Michigan’s 15 electoral votes, Harris will have two options. Both Georgia and North Carolina wins would be enough to put him over the top. Alternatively, it would be two plus wins between both Nevada and Arizona.
3) If Harris wins Michigan and Pennsylvania, but loses Wisconsin: Adding Pennsylvania would close him out — by 260 electoral votes. All he needs to do is win at either Georgia, North Carolina or Arizona to put him over the top. (Nevada’s electoral votes are too small to get him there.)
That helps explain why Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has emerged as a leading vice presidential candidate — his state’s 19 electoral votes are crucial to the electoral math of, say, Arizona’s 11.
For now, this is all speculative, as national voters have had a chance to make up their minds about what they think of Harris since becoming the presumptive nominee. He’ll have months to campaign in swing states to try to make his case — and the Trump campaign will have months to try to make his case against him, too.
But the electoral math is already enough to show that, while his chances of winning may not depend entirely on Rust Belt states, if he loses them, his options are slim.
