He had barely announced the name of his running mate when the Democratic candidate for the US elections, Kamala Harris, embarked on a tour of swing states (“Pivotal” or “key” states) won by his predecessor, Joe Biden, in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.
In 2016, Republican President Donald Trump repealed most of these swing states in their bag: Florida – a must – but also Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Iowa. They alone represented 88 of the 538 electors (270 are needed to win the election).
The winner takes it all
In American presidential elections, the candidate who comes first in a state wins all of its primary voters. This winner-take-all system (in effect everywhere except two states) puts the first-place candidate in the top 10 in a state. swing states at the center of all electoral strategies.
Democrats have no interest in campaigning in California, where they have won by a wide margin since 1976, or in New York or Washington, which are theirs.
Republicans can also count on a large part of the central states of the country, although the balance sometimes changes: thus, in Texas, Republican territory since 1980, the advance of the Grand Old Party (GOP), another name for the Republican Party, decreases from election to election (5.6 percentage points in 2020).
Thus, if certain States are immovable swing statesThe list of these key territories evolves over time. For the November 2024 elections, between six and nine states, with between 77 and 163 electors, can be considered as such, with less than five percentage points of difference between the two main ones, according to the aggregator 270towin.com.
