Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But can she win the presidency? Due to the wonders of the Electoral College system, the answer depends on how she will do 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 out of those seven, so he won the White House.
When Biden was still in the race, polling was looking grim for him in all these states. Biden’s best path to victory, it was believed, was to hold strong in the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Those swing states, plus the traditionally Democratic states and a single electoral vote from Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, would have given Biden 270 electoral votes — the bare minimum he needed to win.
But Biden’s best path may not be Harris’s. There’s an optimist’s case that that’s good news for her — and a pessimist’s possibility that it’s a real problem.
The pessimistic case is that some suspect Harris may do worse among Rust Belt working-class whites than “Joe from Scranton” did — making states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania a tougher reach for her.
The optimistic case is that perhaps Harris will do better than Biden among nonwhite voters — putting states with particularly large Black populations (Georgia and North Carolina) or Hispanic populations (Arizona and Nevada) back into contention.
The Biden-Trump rematch was set to focus on the same lineup of swing states, in about the same order of competitiveness as last time.
Now, Harris’s selection could scramble the map. “Kamala Harris is doing SIGNIFICANTLY better than Joe Biden is among Black and Hispanic voters,” CNN polling analyst Harry Enten wrote on X.”
Currently, the evidence of that is strongest in Georgia, where 33 percent of the population is Black and where there is polling showing Harris-Trump is a much closer race than Biden-Trump was.
For Nevada and Arizona, the question is more about Hispanic voters, who make up more than 20 percent of the electorate. Democrats have won Nevada in the past four presidential cycles, but it has drifted right a bit in recent years. Arizona, meanwhile, is a traditionally Republican state that Democrats have had surprising success in the past few cycles.
The Rust Belt power trio of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania famously determined the outcomes of both the 2016 and 2020 elections, by first swinging toward Trump and then to Biden.
If Harris wins all three again (as well as that Nebraska Second District vote), she wins the presidency. But what if she doesn’t win all three?
You can break down the scenarios in different ways, but here are a few:
1. If Harris loses Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, she has a chance of still winning, but there’s no more room for error. She would have to win Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Arizona — that would give her 275 electoral votes. This is easier said than done — Trump won North Carolina twice.
2. If Harris wins Michigan, but loses Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Biden did slightly better in Michigan than in the other Rust Belt states in 2020, it has a larger Black population, and perhaps Harris could win back voters alienated by the Gaza war.
If she secures Michigan’s 15 electoral votes, Harris would have two paths. Winning both Georgia and North Carolina would be enough to put her over the top. Alternatively, winning one of those two plus both Nevada and Arizona would do it.
3. If Harris wins Michigan and Pennsylvania, but loses Wisconsin: Adding Pennsylvania would put her close — at 260 electoral votes. She would only need to win one of Georgia, North Carolina, or Arizona to put her over the top.
For now, all of this is speculative, since national voters have barely gotten a chance to make up their minds on Harris. But the electoral math is already enough to show that, while her chances of victory may not utterly hinge on the Rust Belt states, her options are slim if she loses them.
Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox.
