US election 2024
Hotly contested swing states – where the battle for the White House will be decided
Have I already won? In Pennsylvania, it is rarely clear before an election who will emerge as the winner.
© Bastiaan Slabbers / Picture Alliance
The actual US presidential election only takes place in a handful of states: the swing states. They ultimately decide who moves into the White House. This year it should be exciting in five states – an overview.
Direct democracy could be so simple, but in America a different law applies: it is not the majority of electoral votes that ensures victory, but the majority of electoral votes. It’s a strange procedure, a relic from the founding years of the American republic. At that time, they did not want to leave the presidential election to the US Congress. However, the founding fathers also spoke out against direct election by the people. This would have excluded millions of “Negroes,” as the black slaves of the young American republic were called at the time. So electors were the compromise. Women have now also joined.
Only the voters in the states count
The rule applies: counting is done at the state level. The candidate who receives the most votes receives all of the electors in a state. And the larger the population there, the more electoral delegates are sent to Washington.
Also read:
This is how the US electoral system works
This is how the primaries work
7 pictures
Anyone who wants to move into the White House must win at least 270 of the 538 voters. And it can happen that a candidate loses even though he wins the majority of votes. The last time this happened was to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Her lead over Republican Donald Trump was almost three million votes. But he won in the “right” states and became the new US President. In 2000 it hit Democrat Al Gore – he was 400,000 votes ahead of his opponent George W. Bush, but only had 266 electoral votes, he was missing those from the state of Florida.
Some states always swing, some settle
The elections are won in the swing states, in those three to eleven states that cannot be firmly assigned to a party. This can change from election to election. Florida, for example, was a hotly contested region for a long time, but the “Sunshine State” is now considered red – that is the color of the Republicans. Georgia, on the other hand, has always been in the hands of the conservatives, but the Democrats recently won here. This year it could be a shaky candidate again. It will definitely be exciting on November 5th in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and as so often: Pennsylvania.