In a close-run election, watch the swing states
Analysts predict that in the current race, Trump could lose by a margin of up to 5% and still win the electoral college. Therefore, while a 7.5% lead for Biden may sound impressive, it doesn’t tell us much, especially as it’s still well within the statistical margin of error.
In order to get a better grasp of who’s likely to win, we need instead to look at each state separately. To make this otherwise quasi-Sisyphean task more manageable, polling companies tend to pay scant attention to those states where the results are mostly predictable, and instead focus on the swing states.
There are 21 states (aside from the District of Columbia) that tend to vote Democratic: Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Hawaii, Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, and California.
Combined, these states amount to 233 electoral votes.
There are 22 states that tend to vote Republican: West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.
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