During their respective campaigns, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump focused their efforts on seven states, where voters alternately vote for Democrats or Republicans (hence the name undecided states, Key states): Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada.
In fact, the American vote is an election by indirect universal suffrage during which citizens designate the electors who make up the electoral college and vote on their behalf. In total, 538 electors, spread across all 50 states, nominate the president. In most states (except Maine and Nevada), the candidate who comes first wins with all of their electors. This system of winner takes all place them undecided states at the center of all electoral strategies.
For each of these states, crucial for these elections, the results are published by the American agency Associated Press, which makes it possible to follow the evolution of the elections live.
Pennsylvania
Number of voters : 19
Pennsylvanians are among the Americans who have suffered the most from inflation, to the point that one in eight residents is food insecure. This traditionally Democratic state, where Donald Trump surprised in 2016, was won by Joe Biden in 2020, undoubtedly in part because of his connection to the working-class city of Scranton, where he grew up.
Georgia
Number of voters : 16
Atlanta and its suburbs represent half of the Peanut State’s population; Suffice it to say that the political weight of the city is important, especially because the suburbs have ceased to be Republican and are populated by African Americans (30% of the state’s population) and graduates, mainly Democrats. In 2020, Biden won this key state by a narrow margin as President Trump lobbied the governor for it. ” find “ the 11,800 votes necessary to reverse the trend.
North Carolina
Number of voters : 16
In this state, the last four elections were decided by less than four percentage points. In 2020, Donald Trump won by just 1.3 points (74,483 votes).
For the 2024 elections, polls at the beginning of the year predicted a big victory for Trump in this state, before showing a decline in favor of Kamala Harris starting in mid-August, according to the think tank Cook Political Report. However, the task will be difficult for the vice president, in a state that has only placed the Democratic candidate in the lead twice in the last fifty years: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008.
Michigan
Number of voters: 15
Like Wisconsin, Michigan placed the winner of the last two presidential elections in the lead. Demographically, the Great Lakes State has the highest proportion of Arab-Americans in the country, a demographic group whose weight could be missing from the Democrats, without giving in to the Republicans, very close to the positions of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. In the Michigan Democratic primary, more than 100,000 voters chose the option “ uncommitted » on his ballot, after a campaign by activists calling for an end to military aid to Israel.
Arizona
Number of voters: 11
In 2020, Joe Biden won the Grand Canyon State by a very narrow margin of 0.3 points, where previous elections had been favorable to Republicans. The vote could be decided, in particular, on the issue of abortion, while Arizona Republicans recently failed to restore an 1864 law that banned it entirely.
Wisconsin
Number of voters : 10
The state of the badger, Wisconsin’s emblematic animal, clearly tilted in favor of the winning candidate, Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, with a margin of around 20,000 votes each time. Proof of its strategic importance, the Republican convention took place there in July and Kamala Harris hosted her first campaign meeting there.
Snowfall
Number of voters : 6
Nevadans certainly voted Democratic in the last election, by a narrow margin, but there is no indication that this advantage will be strong by 2024, especially since the state has the third highest unemployment rate in the United States, at 5. 2%. Both candidates also sought to appeal to the Latino electorate, which represents about 20% of the state’s population.
