The countdown to know the result of the United States presidential elections is already underway: the count has already begun in the first states on the east coast to decide the next president of the North American nation: Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. All polls indicate that they will be one of the closest elections in history: the surveys give a minimum distance between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and experts believe that it will be the smallest detail that will tip the balance and decide the next tenant of the White House.
More than ever, the key could be in the so-called ‘swing states‘some territories that the candidates try to visit in these last days of the campaign: unlike those regions in which the advantage is clear for Democrats or Republicans, The key to the White House may be in the so-called ‘hinge states’.
Seven ‘hinge states’ with 93 electoral votes
Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin: these states, which distribute 93 electoral delegatesare the so-called ‘swing states’: states without a clear voting trend and that may vary from one election to another.
Unlike other territories, these States are not Democratic or Republican fiefdoms, so The candidacies of both parties focus their efforts on capturing the vote of these regionsknowing that they have played a key role in other elections and will certainly do so in these ones.
The number of swing states It is not fixed, since it can vary in each election: it depends, in large part, on how defined the voting expectations are in each region. In the case of the 2024 elections, those are the 7 closest states between Trump and Harris: in them, the average of the polls gives a difference of just one or two percentage points between both candidates.
Harris starts with a minimal advantage with everything to be decided in three weeks
This average of national and state polls, published and periodically updated by the The New York Timesthe fight between Democrats and Republicans is red hot: Harris wins by 1 percentage point in four of them (Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin) while Trump does it by one point in Michigan and by two in Georgia and Arizonaa State that was decisive for Biden’s victory in 2020 and that would now change color.
So things are, The hinge states will be key to deciding the next president from the United States: National polls give Kamala Harris a slim lead just one percentage point over Trump (49% to 48%). If the forecasts remain as they are now, Harris would win the White House with 277 electoral delegates compared to 261 of Trump. However, changing one or two of these swing states would change the final result. The electoral system, known as winner-takes-allcould decide the elections by a single vote
The advantage is so slim that it falls within the margin of error, and in an environment as volatile as this election campaign, the accuracy of the polls is very relative. In that sense, the color change of any of the swing stateseven if it were just one, it would blow up the victory by the minimum that the polls, yes, so far give to Harris.