The 2024 presidential election is looking surprisingly close, according to current polls.
The latest New York Times/Siena College national poll found Vice President Kamala Harris tied with former President Donald Trump, but our polling average shows Harris with just a 2 percentage point lead.
And the seven battleground states that will likely decide the election are all roughly equally or more closely divided.
So, my task today was a difficult one.
I wanted to provide busy readers with a narrowed-down list of the states that would be most helpful in understanding the presidential election. I wanted to focus on a combination of Blue Wall and Sun Belt battleground states that have an advantage over other states and tell you how this election will play out. When I was stuck, I called Nate Cohn, The Times’ chief political analyst, and he said he too was finding it hard to narrow down the battleground states.
“Even though things are really stable because everything is so close, even the slightest movement is enough to change the overall outcome,” he said.
In other words, everything and everywhere matters in this election. This is a close call, with entire states and key voter groups behaving a little differently than in the past, and it’s hard to know exactly where the tipping point of the election will be. Both candidates are fighting hard on opposite sides of the map.
But after considering the polls, the size of each state, and how each state aligns with each candidate’s most obvious path to victory, Nate and I have come up with four states that we think are especially worth watching closely. My colleagues in the newsroom will be covering these states, and I plan to visit all of them before the election.
Pennsylvania, …
That’s the indomitable, undisputed, and unbeatable battleground state champion: Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania is the largest battleground state with 19 electoral votes and the only one widely seen as crucial to each candidate’s most direct path to victory. It’s also the state with the most TV and radio ad spending: Trump-Harris groups have secured more than $138 million in airtime in the state between now and Election Day, according to AdImpact. (Michigan is the next highest, with more than $82 million.)
Pennsylvania is also the battleground state where both candidates Trump and Harris have spent the most time. Harris has held or attended public events in the state nine days since entering the presidential race on July 21. Trump has held or attended such events in at least eight days since the race reset. (These figures for both candidates also include a Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia and a non-campaign appearance at a Sept. 11 memorial in Shanksville.)
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 and took the presidency, and Biden did the same in 2020. Either candidate could win the 270 electoral votes, but the path to do so will be complicated.
Wisconsin
Let’s talk about the clearest path to victory for Harris: In our polling average, she currently holds a 2 percentage point lead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And if she wins all three states and picks up Nebraska’s one electoral vote, Harris would win the presidency if the votes in the states aren’t as close as expected.
That makes Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes crucial not only to Harris, who has campaigned there three times since becoming the Democratic nominee, but also to Trump, who could use it to bounce back if he loses in Pennsylvania.
In 2020, Wisconsin was considered a “tipping point” state that Biden won by less than 21,000 votes, giving him an Electoral College lead. The state is likely to be close again, with Democrats and Republicans alike skeptical of Harris’ polling advantage in the perennially close state. Michigan is also a key state, but it has a history of being friendly to Democrats recently, with Democrats performing well in the 2022 midterms and 2020 elections.
“Wisconsin is probably one of Trump’s best chances to break Harris’ line, next to Pennsylvania,” Nate told me.
North Carolina
Trump’s advisers believe his path to victory is through Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, in that order, but as Nate says, North Carolina is where the polls are showing a “surprising” advantage for Harris.
North Carolina is the first state to be won by a Democratic presidential candidate since Barack Obama in 2008, but our polling average gives Trump a lead of less than 1 percentage point, and it’s unclear how the scandal surrounding Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, whom Trump endorses, will shape his fate there. The Trump campaign appears to be watching the state closely; Trump has campaigned in the state for at least six days since Harris entered the race, more than any other state except Pennsylvania.
North Carolina has 16 electoral votes that could be a key help for Harris to make up for her loss in Pennsylvania, a state she and other Democrats are fighting tooth and nail in.
Georgia
Georgia is a must-win state for Trump — Biden won it narrowly in 2020, but it’s currently Trump’s favorite of the seven battleground states, according to our polling average.
Neate noted that Georgia also helps highlight important and surprising trends in the 2024 election: Harris is showing stronger support in whiter states like Michigan and Wisconsin, while Trump has slight advantages in more diverse states.
But that’s not the end of the story. Harris’ campaign is hoping a surge in voter turnout in and around Atlanta and in rural areas of the state could help her win the state. Harris has campaigned in the state for four days since announcing her candidacy, while Trump has only been there twice.
And Beyond
In selecting these four states, I excluded two other important battleground states: Arizona, with 11 electoral votes, and Nevada, with six electoral votes.
Both candidates are taking these states seriously — Harris will be campaigning in Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday, for example — but given their small size and the trajectory I laid out above, they seem unlikely to have a decisive impact.
Nate told me that once the results of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia are known, they will be able to predict the election outcome with a fair degree of accuracy. “The situation in Arizona and Nevada will again have an impact only under relatively limited circumstances,” he said.
But Arizona and Nevada are going to tell us a lot, so we’re going to be watching those states very closely, as well as California, New York, and other Democratic-leaning states that could determine control of the House. So, really, we can’t take our eyes off anything.
—Ama Sarpomaa contributed reporting.
