Pollsters and political analysts have no doubts: it will be Pennsylvania, more than any other key state, that will hand over the keys to the White House to Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. Speaking in numbers, a recent analysis by The Hill, the candidate who wins the Keystone State on November 5th will have an 85% chance of becoming president. And Nate Silver, the guru of American pollsters, even talks about 90% of the possibilities.
In fact, Pennsylvania appears crucial in the ‘path’ of both Harris and Trump towards the goal of the magic number, the 270 electoral votes needed for election as president in the electoral college.
In each duel for the White House, a candidate builds a ‘path’ to the White House, through victories in states where his party has a traditional advantage and aiming for a sufficient number of victories in contested states to reach 270 electoral votes.
According to analysts, both Harris and Trump could indeed have alternative paths in the event of defeat in Pennsylvaniabut these would require them to win in states where they are not traditionally favored.
“We do not expect either candidate to reach 270 electoral votes without winning Pennsylvania, where they are currently tied,” we read in the analysis carried out by The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ whose director, Scott Tranter, who gives However, Harris had a slightly higher percentage of victory, 52%.
Because Pennsylvania is decisive
There are several factors that make Pennsylvania so decisivestarting from the fact that from a demographic, economic and political point of view it appears as a microcosm of the entire United States. With a history of strong manufacturing, the state now has new types of industries, but also a large energy sector, with large deposits of shale oil. The population is overwhelmingly white, but with growing minority communities, with industrial cities like Allentown now being majority Hispanic. The percentage of African Americans is 12%, close to the national 13%.
Finally, according to a now classic model not only in the USA, there are large urban areas, such as Philadelphia and Pittsburghwho vote Democratic, with the vast rural areas instead voting conservative. In the middle are the middle class suburbs, once republicans and now looking to the left. In short, a state that appears split between Republicans and Democrats, as demonstrated by the fact that in 2016 Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 44 thousand and four years later he was defeated by Joe Biden by 82 thousand.
Furthermore, Pennsylvania, the fifth most populous state in America, is among the seven key states the one with the richest electoral votes, 19. Without forgetting that since 1972, the Keystone State has always voted for the winner of the presidential elections, except in two cases: in 2000 when Al Gore won Pennsylvania and in 2004 when it was won by John Kerry, while both elections were won by George Bush.
According to some examples of the path to the White House from the BBC, if Harris wins PennsylvaniaWisconsin and Michigan – in the last 50 years the three Rust Belt states have always voted the same way, except in two elections – and the congressional district of Nebraska, the only state together with Maine that assigns electors with proportional representation, the Democratic she will be the next president. If Trump wins Pennsylvania insteadeven without Michigan and Wisconsin but with North Carolina and Georgia, then he will be the one to return to the White House.
If he did not win in Pennsylvania, Trump would have no chance of winning without winning at least three states won by Biden in 2020. While for Harris a defeat in Pennsylvania would mean having to win by force or in North Carolina, which has 16 electoral votes and went to Trump in both 2016 and 2020, or in Georgia, which always has 16 electoral votes and was lost by Trump four years ago by just 11 thousand votes.
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