Could Kamala Harris shift the swing states to the Democrats?

States that swing between Democrats and Republicans regularly are the focus of the presidential campaign, and Kamala Harris’s campaign will be hoping to win them.

The full consequences of Joe Biden’s seismic decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race will take some time to be felt. One immediately apparent outcome is the change of election dynamic that comes with a presumptive nominee who ticks a range of different identity boxes including gender, age and ethnicity.

Importantly, the big question is whether she can win over swing voters, especially those in a set of states that regularly move between the Republicans and Democrats in elections, making it difficult to predict which candidate will triumph on polling day.

Most other (non-swing) states are seen as predictable or at least as leaning towards one party’s candidate. That means candidate time and money is lavished on these swing states, which in 2024 include Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

They count for so much because the president is not elected by the overall popular vote but by winning each state. Each state carries a specific number of votes, with states possessing big populations garnering the most votes.

For instance, Pennsylvania holds 19 votes and California 54. This system is called the electoral college (EC), and the EC vote in nearly all states is distributed on a winner-take-all basis. Since the EC has 538 votes, candidates need to win states that have a combined EC total of 270 to be elected president.

It is forecast that Kamala Harris might have more ability to reduce the shift of ethnic minority voters to Donald Trump. She might also be better able to exploit Republican electoral weakness on the issue of reproductive rights, but might have less appeal to white voters without a college education. The concern for Democrats is that this last group of voters is over-represented in critical mid-west swing states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Vice-presidential picks

This immediately increased speculation about Harris’s potential vice-presidential pick being from a swing state. The internet is laden with comedy memes about the necessity of picking a low-risk, mid-western white male, especially given the immediate Republican response of painting Harris as the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) candidate.

Which is why an early favourite is Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who won a decisive majority in 2022, beating Trump supporter Doug Mastriano, who was part of the January 6 rally at the Capitol. Another swing state name in the frame is Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and generally seen as a sensible centrist.

Others looked at Democrats with an ability to win state wide in the south, notably governors Roy Cooper from North Carolina and Andy Beshear from Kentucky. It is possible to squint at the data in a way that makes North Carolina a competitive state, but even the popular Beshear could not shift his home state to the Democratic column in a presidential race.

Also mentioned in dispatches is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She would be a formidable candidate in her own right, but would likely lead to a doubling of the misogyny on offer. Whoever does get the nod, swing-state residents will be waiting for door-knocks and the relentless campaign adverts as they contemplate the profoundly different choice of candidates in November.

What does history tell us?

The role of the EC was vividly illustrated in 2016 when Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.87 million votes, but won an EC majority due to a combined winning margin of 77,744 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin giving Trump their important 46 EC votes.

In 2020, Joe Biden won those crucial states back, denying Trump a second term. Biden also flipped Arizona and Georgia, and together these five states, plus Nevada, are the key swing states in 2024. It is a reflection of Trump’s strong position in the polls in summer 2024 that Nevada, a state which the Democratic candidate has won in every presidential race since 2008, currently looks winnable for Trump.

As recently as 2016 the EC vote-heavy states of Florida and Ohio were seen as critical swing states. Today, only the most optimistic Democrat imagines these to be in play.

As a swing state, Wisconsin has taken on outsize relevance as the so-called “tipping point” state in both 2016 and 2020. This refers to the state that pushes the winner past the finish line, supplying the final votes he or she needs to reach a majority of 270 in the EC.

In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin’s 10 EC votes by 0.8% and Biden won by 0.6% in 2020. In the summer of 2024, polls suggested that Wisconsin again was likely to be closely fought, but at the point of Biden’s withdrawal from the race, polls regularly put Trump ahead in that state along with all other of the five identified swing states.

The question now is whether Harris can turn her late arrival in the campaign to her advantage in the swing states, and take them over the line on her side.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.