This year is no exception. Strategists in both parties consider Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin the pivotal states that are most likely to decide the winner in 2024—just as they did in 2020 and 2016. Although taking this trio of Rust Belt battlegrounds is not the only way for Vice President Kamala Harris to reach the necessary 270 Electoral College votes, 'if you look at the history of those states ... then you have to believe they are the fastest way to get there,' says the longtime Democratic operative Tad Devine.
Republicans consider those three states equally indispensable for Donald Trump. If Harris can sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which offer a combined 44 Electoral College votes, and hold every state that President Joe Biden won by three percentage points or more in 2020, she would reach exactly the magic 270 votes.
The turmoil has shattered and remade each party's agenda, message, and electoral coalition. And yet, no matter what else changes, the most direct path to the White House always seems to run through a handful of blue-collar states in the nation's old industrial heartland.
Even if Trump sweeps all four of the major Sun Belt battlegrounds—North Carolina and Georgia in the Southeast, and Arizona and Nevada in the Southwest—he cannot reach 270 without carrying at least one of the big three Rust Belt states.
Collection
[
|
...
]