Twenty-one days before Election Day, Pennsylvania is confirmed as the real 'battleground', the battlefield that will decide the winner of the duel for the White House. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris yesterday dueled remotely in the Keystone State, with the vice president, on her seventh campaign stop in the state, holding a rally in Erie, a town that could prove crucial because it has a Democratic majority in an otherwise Republican county.
Trump was also in Pennsylvania last night, in Oaks in Montgomery County, one of the counties around Philadelphia where instead the former president is trying to gather support among the 'blue collar' communities, traditionally Democratic, as he did in 2016 by winning in the state. And in Philadelphia today, Joe Biden is expected, the state where he was born in 1942 before moving with his family to Delaware in 1953, and which in 2020 he managed to win back for the Democrats, after Hillary Clinton's defeat in 2016.
The Democratic vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, is also expected in the state today for a series of campaign events, and the appearances of candidates and allies - last week Barack Obama arrived in Pennsylvania and issued a stern warning to male voters, particularly African Americans, who are resisting the idea of a female president - will only intensify in the run-up to 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 Keystone State on November 5 will have an 85% chance of becoming president. And Nate Silver, the guru of American pollsters, even speaks of a 90% chance.
Pennsylvania, in fact, appears to be crucial in both Harris' and Trump's 'path' to victory in the Electoral College. In every race for the White House, a candidate builds a 'path' to the White House, and a haul of electoral votes, through victories in states where his party has a traditional advantage and aiming for a sufficient number of victories in the contested states to reach 270 electoral votes.
Both Harris and Trump could indeed have alternative paths in the event of a defeat in Pennsylvania, but these would require them to win in states where they are not traditionally favored. "We do not anticipate that either candidate can reach 270 electoral votes without winning Pennsylvania, where they are currently tied," reads the analysis by The Hill's Decision Desk HQ, whose director, Scott Tranter, gives Harris a slightly higher percentage, 52%, of victory, however.
Several factors make Pennsylvania so decisive, starting with the fact that demographically, economically and politically it appears to be a microcosm of the entire United States. With a past of strong manufacturing, the state now has new types of industries, but also a large energy sector, with large shale oil deposits. The population is majority white, but with growing minority communities, with industrial cities like Allentown now 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 US, there are large urban areas, such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, that vote Democratic, with the vast rural areas instead conservative. In between are the middle-class suburbs, once Republican and now looking to the left. In short, a state that appears divided between Republicans and Democrats, as evidenced by the fact that in 2016 Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 44,000 and four years later was defeated by Joe Biden by 82,000.
Furthermore, Pennsylvania, the fifth most populous state in America, is among the seven key states with the richest bounty of electoral votes, 19. Not to mention that since 1972, the Keystone State has always voted for the winner of the presidential election, 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 were won by George Bush.
According to examples of the road to the White House from the BBC, if Harris wins Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan - in the last 50 years the three Rust Belt states have always voted the same way, except in two elections - and the congressional district of Nebraska, the only state along with Maine that assigns electors also by proportional representation, the Democrat will be the next president. If, on the other hand, Trump wins in Pennsylvania, even without Michigan and Wisconsin but with North Carolina and Georgia, then he will return to the White House.
If he doesn't win in Pennsylvania, Trump would have no chance of victory without winning at least three states won by Biden in 2020. While for Harris, a defeat in Pennsylvania would mean having to win by force either in North Carolina, which has 16 electoral votes and went to Trump in both 2016 and 2020, or in Georgia, which again has 16 electoral votes and was lost by Trump four years ago by just 11,000 votes.
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