The White House’s address may be 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the real road to the presidency runs through the state of Pennsylvania, the biggest prize among the electoral battleground map.
According to calculations by elections analyst Nate Silver, the candidate who wins Pennsylvania has more than a 90% chance of winning the White House.
“It’s the granddaddy of all the swing states,” said former congressman Patrick Murphy, who represented north-eastern Pennsylvania as a Democrat from 2007-11.
With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania – the fifth most populous US state – is the lynchpin of the swing-state electoral firewalls for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
If the Democrats win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, along with one congressional district in Nebraska, she’s the next president. If the Republicans carry Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, Trump is back in the White House next year.
Without Pennsylvania, there is no way Trump can win without flipping at least three of the states Joe Biden won in 2020.
Nicknamed the Keystone State, Pennsylvania could in fact be the key to the White House.
It is also where BBC Question Time will broadcast a US election special on Thursday 10 October, diving into the issues and voter concerns behind the presidential contest.
A battleground that looks like America
Pennsylvania is not only the most valuable swing state, it also can be seen as a microcosm of the US as a whole – demographically, economically and politically.
It is a former manufacturing state that has been transitioning to newer industries and businesses, but it has a large energy sector because of its abundant oil shale deposits. Agriculture is still the second-largest industry in the state.
The majority of the population is white, but there are growing immigrant communities. Some areas, like Allentown – the working-class factory city made famous by a Billy Joel song – are now majority Hispanic. The state’s black population, at 12%, is just under the US total of 13%.
As for the politics, the state’s two large urban areas, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, heavily favour the 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.
That gives rise to the old quip that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with (deeply Republican) Alabama in the middle.
Somehow, all these political cross-currents and shifting dynamics have kept Pennsylvania at a near dead-even balance when it comes to presidential elections. President Joe Biden won the state by about 80,000 votes in 2020. Donald Trump carried it by about 40,000 in his surprise 2016 win over Hillary Clinton.
Only once in the last 40 years has a candidate won Pennsylvania by double-digits – Barack Obama in his 2008 electoral landslide.
Current polling puts the race between Harris and Trump in the state at a virtual dead heat. According to the 538/ABC News poll tracker, Harris holds a lead by less than a percent – a margin that has hardly shifted over the course of this tumultuous political year.
