US Election 2024: Why Pennsylvania Holds The Keys To The White House? Who Will Win It?

Last Updated:November 05, 2024, 10:46 IST

US Election 2024: Pennsylvania offers 19 of the 538 electoral votes. The state has been voting for 10 of the last 12 White House winners. The candidate who has won Pennsylvania has also won Michigan and Wisconsin in the past eight elections

The final New York Times/Siena College poll of Pennsylvania published on Sunday suggested Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were locked in a tie, with both candidates at 48% of likely voters. (Getty Images)

In this election, swing state Pennsylvania will seal the deal for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, as it has more electoral votes, 19, compared to the six other swing states.

In the past several months, the former president, Trump, had held more than a dozen rallies and roundtables in Pennsylvania – including one in Butler where he was shot at.

So, what makes Pennsylvania more special?

Key Facts About Pennsylvania

The fifth most populous state in the US offers 19 of the 538 electoral votes, and is the biggest of seven swing states.

Not only is Pennsylvania an important battleground or swing state, but it is also a microcosm of the US as a whole – demographically, economically and politically.

Pennsylvania is a white-dominated state, with black population accounting for 12%, which is just the US total of 13%. But there are growing immigrant communities.

There are 9 million registered voters in the state out of its 13 million population. The key issues for voters are economy, inflation and cost of living.

The state has two large urban areas, Philadelphia and Pittsburg, heaving in favour of Democrats. Between the two are vast stretches of rural territory where Republicans dominate. And the suburbs that once were reliably conservative are now tilting to the left.

Contribution of Pennsylvania In Elections

Pennsylvanians have voted for the winner of every presidential election since former President Barack Obama won in 2008. And in the prior four presidential elections, Pennsylvania voted for Democrats.

The state turned red (Republicans) in 2016 when Trump won it by nearly 45,000 votes. He was the first Republican to win the state since the 1980s. In 2020, the Keystone State flipped again. President Joe Biden won it by about 80,000 votes, according to Pennsylvania voting results data. Although Biden’s win was larger than Trump’s, it was not an overwhelming victory. In a state that then had more than 9 million registered voters, his win amounted to 1 percentage point.

Why Will Pennsylvania Be A Decider This Time?

Pennsylvanians have routinely picked winners, voting for 10 of the last 12 White House winners. The candidate who has won Pennsylvania has also won Michigan and Wisconsin in the past eight elections.

According to statistician Nate Silver’s election forecasting model, Pennsylvania is far more likely to tip the election than any other battleground state. It also found both candidates have a more than 85% chance of winning the election if they secure Pennsylvania.

The final New York Times/Siena College poll of the state — published on Sunday — suggested the two were locked in a tie, with both Trump and Harris at 48% of likely voters. Before then, they were locked in a virtual dead heat, with Harris slightly ahead.

Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said, as quoted by NPR, Trump will “do well in Pennsylvania to the extent that" his campaign would bring irregular voters lean towards him. Harris will need to maintain gains that Biden made in many of the suburbs around Pittsburg and Philadelphia, Hopkins added.

Harris is also relying on the sizeable share of Black voters and smaller number of Latino voters in places like Philadelphia, he explained.

There are nearly 580,000 eligible Latino voters in Pennsylvania, according to the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute’s latest data. Pennsylvania’s share of eligible Latino voters has more than doubled since 2000, the data shows.

The NPR quoted Joe Hill, a board member of Black Leadership Pennsylvania, a political action committee working to educate Black residents across the state about voting, as saying how Harris’ “strong appeal" in the state is “motivating a lot of women in Philadelphia and Pittsburg".

Democrats have spent about $159 million on advertising in Pennsylvania compared Republicans who have spent around $121 million, according to a recent AdImpact report.

What Are The Voters Saying?

Reports suggest that most of the voters in Pennsylvania have know who they are voting for. Only about 3% of voters in the state identify as undecided, according to an August 2024 Emerson College Polling/The Hill swing state survey. The same survey suggests Republicans and Democrats are split at 48%.

A poll of 800 likely Pennsylvania voters conducted in September said people in the state care most about the economy, followed by abortion. And some of them believe that Trump can “handle the economy".

Meanwhile, abortion rights – which Harris has strongly advocated for — is the top of the concerns for nearly half of Pennsylvanians, including the independents.

When Will Pennsylvania Waiting Game End?

Biden was named the winner of Pennsylvania in the 2020 elections late morning of November 7 – the fourth day of vote counting – after taking lead in the state. His 20-something electoral votes helped him top the 270 needed to win the presidency.

But it is difficult to draw similar conclusions in 2024 as more voters opted for mail-in voting for the first time in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It was the first year Pennsylvania allowed no-excuse mail-in voting, leading to a record 2.6 million mail-in ballots. In 2020, 38% of Pennsylvanians voted either early or by mail, compared to 4% in 2016, according to CBS News’ records.

In 2020, about 54% of total votes cast were reported by 12 a.m. ET after Election Day, according to the Associated Press. The “overwhelming majority of ballots" were counted by Thursday night into Friday morning in 2020, according to Boockvar.

Boockvar estimates that this year, the majority of ballots will be counted by the end of Wednesday instead of Thursday, which may help speed up the process of projecting a winner.

In case there is a close race, Pennsylvania has an automatic recount if the margin in any statewide race is 0.5% votes or less. The state also allows losing candidates to file a request for a machine recount if they pay for it.

Mail-in voting is expected to be lower this year, but Pennsylvania reports it has already received 217,000 completed ballots that cannot be opened and tabulated until election night, as per the state law. It has also received around 27,000 military and overseas voter ballots that have been distributed by Pennsylvania state officials so far.

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