In the tortuous road of the electoral college, Kamala Harris has an advantage over Donald Trump but has fewer possible combinations to achieve victory. The two candidates must reach the magic threshold of 270 voters out of 538 (each state assigns a number proportionate to the population). Of these, 93 are located in seven ‘battleground’ states, divided into two groups: the Sun Belt (49 votes), i.e. the southern states (Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina) and the Rust Belt (44 votes), the somewhat rusty heart of the American manufacturing industry (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania).
The vice president, based on the combined evaluations of three nonpartisan political analysis centers, starts from 226 votes considered solid or probable for the Dems, therefore she must earn 44. The tycoon instead counts on 219 votes, 51 below the final goal. Harris has 25 winning combinations, the former president 32, like a sort of complex slot machine. Both candidates will have to win at least three swing states to cross the finish line, a game that is played on a few tens of thousands of votes, as in 2016 (when Hillary Clinton lost by 77,744 votes) and in 2020 (when Biden won by 65,009 votes ).
Among the many combinations, some are more likely than others. Harris would become president with 276 electors if she won in the Midwestern states, the historic Democratic ‘blue wall’ (of white workers) that Trump managed to tear down in 2016 and which Biden brought back into the fold in 2020. History suggests that one candidate wins in all three of these states but the tycoon would need at least one more elsewhere. The key state of the Rust Belt, the one with the highest number of electors (19), is Pennsylvania. If Kamala wins it, she only needs two more swing states (except Nevada, which has only 6 voters). And if he puts his hat on Pennsylvania and another Rust Belt state, the tycoon is forced to win in all the other battleground states. The Democratic candidate would enter the White House even if she won all four states in the Sun Belt, where the keys to success are in the hands of blacks and Latinos, but this is an unlikely path because the Democrats have never played poker here since Harry Truman in 1948.
However, if Trump succeeded – as has happened to various Republican presidents – he would need another swing state: but the controversy over the offense against “Puerto Rico, a garbage island” could weigh on the Hispanic vote. Trump absolutely must hold North Carolina as in the last two elections, otherwise he will have to win at least two Rust Belt states and two more in the Sun Belt. It could also happen that one of the two candidates wins by winning all seven states (in the two previous elections the winner won six out of seven swing states). Or a very rare tie: if Kamala were to win all the swing states in the Rust Belt, then the most Trump could hope for is to break even by winning all the remaining battleground states and also triumph in Nebraska (which divides his electoral votes ). At that point the winner would be chosen by the next House of Representatives, where each state delegation would cast one vote: for president you need to get at least 26 and Republicans usually have the majority.