Like it or not, it seems that either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. Which one will it be? Well, right now it is pretty much a toss-up.
However, it isn't really the national polling average or results that matter. Or at least it isn't nearly as important as what is going on in a few key battleground states. For those unfamiliar with the U.S. election process, each state is assigned a certain number of electoral votes based on population (specifically based on the number of senators and congressional districts). In most cases, states are winner take all where the winner of the election in a given state gets all of the delegates for that state. There are a couple of exceptions but they aren't worth mentioning at the moment. There are 538 electoral votes in total so the candidate that gets at least 270 wins the election. The key is that it is the electoral vote that matters, not the popular vote. The idea is the states choose the president, not just the overall popular vote.
In order for Harris to get the needed number of electoral votes, she simply has to win the states Biden won the last time. She could even lose a couple of battleground states (depending on which ones) and still win the election. For Trump to win the election, he must win all of the states he won in 2020 (which at the moment seems likely) and pick up a couple that he lost. The states where the polling is close enough that things could go either way include Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.
In order for the math to work out for a Trump win, in addition to winning the states that he won in 2020, he must also pick up one of the following combinations of states:
Pennsylvania + Georgia
Michigan + Wisconsin + Arizona
Georgia + Michigan + Arizona
Georgia + Michigan + Nevada
Georgia + Wisconsin + Arizona
Georgia + Michigan + Wisconsin
Pennsylvania + Wisconsin + Arizona
Pennsylvania + Wisconsin + Nevada
Pennsylvania + Michigan + Nevada
Pennsylvania + Michigan + Arizona
Pennsylvania + Michigan + Wisconsin
If you see any more likely combos I've missed, let me know.
Trump could of course win more than one of the minimum combinations above and there are many other theoretical combinations. But as a practical matter, these are the states where Trump has a real chance of winning and it will have to be some combination of those that gets him to or over the 270 mark. In fact, at the moment, Trump seems on track to win both Georgia and Pennsylvania which would be enough...at least according to https://polymarket.com/elections. But there is still a month to go and things can definitely change.
In any case, if you are interested in watching election returns in real time next month, these are the states to watch. Indications so far are that this election will be at least as close as the last one. It should be interesting.
The image at the top shows one possible path to victory for Trump (from NBC).
The image below shows actual results from the 2020 election (from CNN). The blue states with the lines indicate battleground states where results were very close and Biden won typically by less than 2%.
