21 days after election day, Pennsylvania confirms itself as the true ‘battleground’the battlefield that will decide the winner, or the victor, of the duel for the White House. Donald Trump e Kamala Harris Monday they dueled at a distancel Keystone Statewith the vice president who, in her seventh electoral stop in the state, held a rally in Erie, a town that could prove crucial because it has a Democratic majority in a Republican county.
Trump was also in Pennsylvania last nightin Oaks in Montgomery County, one of the counties around Philadelphia where the former president is trying to gather support among the ‘blue collar’ communities, traditionally Dems, as he did in 2016 by winning in the state. And Joe Biden is expected in Philadelphiathe state where he was born in 1942 before moving with his family to Delaware in 1953, and which he managed to win back from the Democrats in 2020, after Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.
Because it is a crucial state
It is also expected in the state the Democratic candidate for vice president, Tim Walzfor a series of electoral appointments, and the stages of candidates and allies – last week Barack Obama arrived in Pennsylvania and addressed a harsh warning to male voters, in particular African-Americans, who resist the idea of a female president – not they will only intensify in view of election day. This is because, numbers in hand, pollsters and political analysts have no doubts: according to a recent analysis by The Hill, whoever wins the Keyston State on November 5th will have an 85% chance of becoming president. And Nate Silver, the guru of American pollsters, even talks about 90% of the possibilities.
In fact, Pennsylvania appears crucial in the ‘path’ of both Harris and Trump towards victory in the electoral college. In every duel for the White House, a candidate builds a ‘path’ to the White Houseand a haul of electoral votes, through victories in states where his party has a traditional advantage and aiming for enough victories in contested states to reach 270 electoral votes.
Both Harris and Trump they could in fact have alternative paths in the event of defeat in Pennsylvaniabut these would require them to win in states where they are not traditionally favored. “We don’t expect any of the two candidates can reach 270 electoral votes without winning Pennsylvania, where they are currently tied”, reads the analysis carried out by The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ whose director, Scott Tranter, still gives Harris a slightly higher percentage of victory, 52%.
The Pennsylvania Factor
I am There are several factors that make Pennsylvania so decisive, starting with the fact that from a demographic point of view, economic and political appears as a microcosm of the entire United States. With a history of strong manufacturing, the state now has new types of industries, but also a large energy sector, with large deposits of shale oil. The population is predominantly whitebut with growing minority communities, with industrial cities like Allentown now being majority Hispanic. The percentage of African Americans is 12%, close to the national 13%.
Finally, according to a now classic model not only in the USA, there are large urban areas, such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, that vote Democratic, with large rural areas instead conservative. In the middle are the middle-class suburbs, once republicans and now looking to the left. In short, a state that appears split between Republicans and Democrats, as demonstrated by the fact that in 2016 Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 44 thousand and four years later he was defeated by Joe Biden by 82 thousand.
Furthermore, Pennsylvania fifth most populous state in America, among the seven key states it is the one with the wealthiest electoral votes, 19. Without forgetting that since 1972, the Keystone State has always voted for the winner of the presidential elections, except in two cases: in 2000 when Al Gore won in Pennsylvania and in 2004 when it was won by John Kerry, while both elections they were won by George Bush.
Victory or defeat, the scenarios
According to some examples of the path to the White House from the BBC, if Harris wins Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – for the last 50 years the three Rust Belt states have always voted the same wayexcept in two elections – and the congressional district of Nebraska, the only state together with Maine which assigns large voters even with proportional representation, the Democrat will be the next president. If, however, Trump wins in Pennsylvania, even without Michigan and Wisconsin but with North Carolina and Georgia, then he will be the one to return to the White House.
If he doesn’t win Pennsylvania, Trump would have no chance of winning without conquering at least three states won by Biden in 2020. While for Harris a defeat in Pennsylvania would mean having to win by force or in North Carolina, which has 16 electoral votes and went to Trump in both 2016 and 2020, or in Georgia, which always has 16 electoral votes and was lost by Trump four years ago by just 11 thousand votes.
