The presidential contest between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to be a close one, with strategists on both sides of the aisle saying the result will likely hinge on voter turnout.
In 2016, Trump won by squeezing out just enough votes in key Electoral College states over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, with the race being decided by about 77,000 votes. Then, in 2020, President Joe Biden eked out a victory over Trump so close that it took days to call.
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Just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a 269-269 Electoral College tie.
Polling shows Trump and Harris neck-and-neck, with the victor expected to be decided by just seven states. A Des Moines Register-Mediacom poll of Iowa over the weekend showed Harris leading Trump 47% to 44%, a late sign of hope for the vice president.
Meanwhile, early voting turnout for Republicans is putting Trump in a good position heading into Election Day, as more GOP voters have turned to the voting method at the urging of the former president.
Pennsylvania — 19 electoral votes
The Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes have made it the crown jewel of the 2024 election, with both candidates spending a significant amount of time in Pennsylvania as they sought to win over crucial blue-collar union workers in the state.
Once a Democratic stronghold, Pennsylvania has been a state to watch after Trump became the first Republican to win it since 1988. Biden flipped the state blue again in 2020, largely due to voter turnout in population-dense areas like Philadelphia and its suburbs.
“I think if Harris wins Pennsylvania, she wins the thing. If she loses it, she loses it, you know? I mean, the reality is, I think she’s going to need a sweeping Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
Bannon said the “big question” in Pennsylvania will be on turnout, especially turnout of black voters in the Philadelphia suburbs. He’s watching whether Harris can win the suburbs at least by the same margin Biden did in 2020.
Pennsylvania has a total of 9 million active registered voters, 4 million of whom are Democrats, 3.7 million are Republicans, and 1.1 million who have no affiliation or are affiliated with minor parties, according to Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt.
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However, the gap between the parties’ registered voters is smaller than it was in 2022, when the annual voter registration report showed more than 500,000 registered Democrats than Republicans.
Harris has struggled with union support since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden stepped aside and endorsed her. Two major unions, Teamsters and the International Association of Fire Fighters, chose not to endorse either Harris or Trump in 2024, despite having backed Biden in 2020.
Republican strategist Ron Nehring told the Washington Examiner that Harris’s struggles in the state are because she is from a “different generation of the Democratic Party” than Biden.
“Joe Biden is a longtime traditional union Democrat. He has cultivated his relationship with union officials, and he has talked the union talk for his entire career,” said Nehring. “Kamala Harris has a problem in that culturally, she doesn’t speak that language. Kamala Harris is from a different generation of the Democratic Party that is more focused on social issues, it’s more woke. And this woke stuff doesn’t really fly with a lot of union workers.”
Wisconsin — 10 electoral votes
Wisconsin is part of the “blue wall,” along with Pennsylvania and Michigan, that voted for the Democratic presidential nominee six straight times from 1992 to 2012. Wisconsin voters share similar concerns to Pennsylvania’s voters, with union members making up a notable portion of the state’s demographics. Harris made an appeal to union members in the state last week, arguing to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union that Trump is a threat to labor workers.
Wisconsin has played a key role in four of the past six presidential cycles, with Biden only beating Trump by less than 1 percentage point in 2020. The state, which has flipped between both parties in recent cycles, had a high-profile judicial election in 2023 in which the left-leaning candidate beat the conservative pick.
The election was the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with donors on both sides of the aisle bringing in about $45 million to the contest.
Still, Trump has visited the state frequently as he looks to break into the blue wall, signaling he believes the state is still in play. He nabbed the endorsement of former Green Bay Packers Quarterback Brett Favre as well, tapping into the state’s love for the team and Favre’s fanbase.
Arizona — 11 electoral votes
The Grand Canyon State is one of the states both Trump and Harris have spent most of their time.
The state, which has seen shifting demographics and rapid population growth, was once such a Republican stronghold that from 1952 to 2016, only a single Democratic nominee won its electoral votes: President Bill Clinton, in his 1996 reelection.
Biden won there in 2020 by 10,457 votes out of nearly 3.4 million cast (49.36% to 49.06%). Harris is hoping to hold on to the state as she seeks the presidency.
But as immigration continues to top voter concerns in the battleground state, Bannon says he has felt “nervous” about Harris’s chances to hold on to it.
“Of all the battleground states, it’s the only one where immigration is the No. 1 issue, and I think immigration voters are Trump-focused. So of all battleground states, I’ve never felt really good about Arizona,” said Bannon.
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Still, CEO and president of the Phoenix-based HighGround, Inc., Chuck Coughlin, an independent, told the Washington Examiner that the Grand Canyon State’s outcome will likely rest on voter turnout.
Coughlin said that Republican efforts to turn out low-propensity voters is an uphill battle for the party, saying “it’s a hard thing to do to turn a nonvoter into a voter.”
On the flip side, Harris’s campaign will be reliant on younger voters in the state, said Coughlin, and the question will be whether or not she can get them to participate.
“Can she get them to participate at rates greater than we anticipate? Because, you know, there’s a lot of juice in that orange,” said Coughlin, saying that if voter turnout reaches similar levels to 2020 that will be a good sign for the vice president’s campaign.
“My instinct on the on the grand scale of things, is, if you turn out in ‘20 was about 79% of the registered population turned out here. That’s pretty high. That was almost a record in Arizona. Can she match that?” said Coughlin. “If she does, I think she’s gonna win, if you know, if it’s below, if it’s in the mid-70s, 76, you know, somewhere in there — I think it’s better for Trump. And so I think watching these returns and seeing how they come in is really important.”
Michigan — 15 electoral votes
Michigan has gone for both parties in the two most recent presidential races. Trump flipped the Wolverine State in 2016 by the smallest margin in the nation before Biden won it back for the Democrats in 2020.
In recent history, Michigan had largely become a blue stronghold, with no Republican having won the state since former President George H.W. Bush did in 1988 before Trump eked out his 2016 win against Hillary Clinton.
Democrats have had much recent success in Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) easily won reelection in 2022 while Democrats captured majorities in both chambers of the state legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years.
Biden beat Trump by a 2.8% margin in 2020. Still, a third-party candidate, such as Green Party candidate Jill Stein, could eat into the pool of people who vote for one of the two parties. With enough spoilers on the Michigan ballot, a critical amount of votes could get drained from Harris, keeping the state in play as a swing state.
Michigan will be one to watch, however, as Democratic infighting in the state regarding the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza has become a central issue in the state.
Abandon Harris, a pro-Palestinian group previously known as Abandon Biden, issued an endorsement for Stein in October, a move that threatens to derail Harris’s White House bid.
Nevada — 6 electoral votes
Republicans have not flipped the state of Nevada in the last four presidential cycles. Still, Democrats’ presidential victories have been close enough to keep Republicans playing there. Trump lost Nevada in 2016 and 2020 by less than 3 percentage points.
During the 2020 election, Biden won the majority vote for every voting group except white voters and voters 45 and older, securing his win in the state. Nevada, which has a population of 3.1 million, has a larger share of voters who don’t identify as Republican or Democrat than are registered with either party.
Latino voters, a key coalition that Harris and Trump have been courting, make up almost 30% of Nevada’s population. Harris has struggled to get Latino men in her court, with polling showing her lagging with the coalition.
However, recent comments made at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally by a comedian about Puerto Rico could pose a last-minute hurdle for the former president, who has made inroads with the voting bloc.
Georgia — 16 electoral votes
Georgia is another longtime Republican state that is now purple as its population continues to swell. Biden in 2020 beat Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million cast (49.47% to 49.24%). The last Democratic nominee to win Georgia was Bill Clinton in 1992.
Down-ballot races in recent cycles offer both parties hope. The 2022 midterm elections showed Republicans are still competitive in the state as Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger prevailed over their Democratic opponents by large margins. Democrats, though, hold both Peach State Senate seats.
Nehring said that the frosty relationship between Trump and Kemp wasted time for the Republican Party as they tried to reach voters in the state, which could hurt them in the swing state should the margin be as slim as it was in 2020.
“Time was wasted on internecine warfare that could have been spent on expanding the playing field in terms of voters who are on the table and can be reached,” said Nehring.
Trump and Kemp appeared to patch things up earlier this year. But intraparty disagreements have continued between Trump and Georgia election officials in the days leading up to the election, with the Republican National Committee filing a lawsuit over the weekend against election boards in Fulton and six other heavily Democratic counties.
The Georgia Supreme Court handed the RNC a victory on Monday regarding the lawsuits, ruling that certain absentee ballots can only be counted if they arrive by Election Day, a move that will set aside at least 3,000 late-arriving ballots pending further litigation.
Georgia state election officials have denied that there has been any election interference leading up to the election. It’s unclear how the party infighting will affect turnout in the state, if at all.
Meanwhile, Harris has worked to shore up black voters in the state, whose support she will need if she hopes to win the Peach State in 2024.
North Carolina — 16 electoral votes
North Carolina is a source of enduring frustration for Democrats. Barack Obama won it in his 2008 romp over McCain, the first time the Tar Heel State had gone blue since 1976. But Obama lost North Carolina in 2012, even while easily winning reelection.
Trump then beat Hillary Clinton and Biden in the state in the next two presidential elections. Trump is looking to clinch a victory in the state for a third time Nov. 5 and has appeared confident he will do so, telling rallygoers at his last rally in the Tar Heel State Monday that it is “ours to lose.”
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Still, down-ballot controversy surrounding Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s gubernatorial bid could depress Republican turnout in the state. Robinson reportedly made a series of controversial comments on a pornography website that included racial and sexual content.
Trump is leading Harris in the state by 1.5 points, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average. Meanwhile, Robinson is trailing Democrat Josh Stein by double digits, with RealClearPolitics showing the Republican 13.8 points behind. Early concerns that Hurricane Helene would suppress voter turnout in the state turned out to be unfounded, with the state surpassing its 2020 early voting record over the weekend with more than 4.2 million voters casting their ballots.
