What do we see from the latest poll results in 7 key US swing states?

During the election campaign, candidates bet on winning votes in key swing states, in addition to states that are traditionally loyal to their party.

US Vice President Kamala Harris (left) and former President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters/TTXVN

In the United States, winning the most popular votes is not a guarantee of victory. Consider the 2016 election, when Democrat Hillary Clinton won by nearly 2.9 million votes over Donald Trump but still lost. The strategy here is to win more votes in the “right” states. It’s clear that in every election campaign, candidates bet on winning votes in key swing states, in addition to states that have traditionally been loyal to their party. So how do you know which states will be battlegrounds in November? Strategists typically look at historical maps. Some demographic groups tend to vote Democratic or Republican, while some states are split 50/50 between Democratic and Republican groups. But the demographics of these states can change over time. Political preferences within demographic groups can also change. As a result, a state that was once considered a swing state can become either a solid “blue” or a solid “red” state. Ohio is a prime example. From 1900 to 2012, the state correctly picked the winning presidential candidate 93% of the time. But as working-class white voters have increasingly gravitated toward Republicans, so has Ohio. In 2020, Trump won the state by 8 points despite Joe Biden winning that year. Missouri and Florida appear to be following a similar trend, while New Mexico, Colorado, and Virginia have unexpectedly shifted toward the Democrats. So to figure out which states are likely to be the battlegrounds this year, strategists need to look at the latest polls, which tend to be more reliable than state-level polls. But strategists can still get a broad picture by averaging the most reliable state polls and combining them with a statistical model. Nate Silver, a former New York Times and FiveThirtyEight journalist, recently released what Yahoo News calls the most comprehensive ranking of the 2024 battleground states. According to the polls, of the seven swing states, Trump has the advantage in three, including Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, while Vice President Kamala Harris has the advantage in the remaining four: Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Those seven states were also the seven closest states in the 2020 election. Who would win if the election were held today?

National polls currently show Harris leading Trump by an average of 2 to 3 percentage points. In 2020, President Biden defeated Trump by a margin of 306 to 232 electoral votes. If the final results in 2024 match Silver’s projections, with Arizona and Georgia going for Trump; North Carolina remaining red; and Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania remaining blue, Harris would win with 279 electoral votes. But that’s all speculation. In general, demographics and voter distribution largely determine the final outcome of each state. For example, college-educated white Pennsylvanians vote very differently than college-educated white Arizonans. The question is how many of them live and vote in each state. When the margins are small, as they were in 2020, local factors can make a difference. In battleground states with important Senate and gubernatorial elections, including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, the results of these state elections can influence who votes for president. Or battleground states have unique characteristics, as Michigan is a prime example. Home to the largest Arab-American population in the country, Michigan could be a wild card if opposition to the Biden-Harris administration’s Gaza war policy disrupts the state’s usual Democratic voting patterns.

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