From the sun belt to the rust belt, these seven swing states will be key for the presidential candidates to win the 2024 US elections. Here’s where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris stand.
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00:00Both Vice President Harris and former President Trump are trying to get to the magic number,
00:04which is 270 electoral votes.
00:07The swing states are going to be key in this election cycle.
00:11And those are the states that are going to determine where the election is won or lost.
00:15Even if Vice President Harris is ahead in a national poll, the popular vote doesn't
00:18elect the president, it's Electoral College.
00:21So she could be up nationally, she could win more votes than Trump nationally, but she
00:24could still lose the election if she doesn't win the Electoral College.
00:27So that's why the swing states are so important, because those are going to be the states that
00:31both candidates are going to need to get to 270 and above.
00:35Arizona is a key Sunbelt state, and it has 11 electoral votes.
00:40And it's really a really important state because it was Republican-leaning for decades.
00:46Democrats really didn't have a lot of success there.
00:48When Joe Biden won it in 2020, that was the first time a Democratic nominee had won that
00:53state since Bill Clinton.
00:55And right now, Vice President Harris and former President Trump are really locked in
00:58a tight race there.
01:00And Harris has been trying to use her record as California attorney general to say that
01:04she will be tough on drug cartels and that she will be strong on immigration.
01:08Before I was elected vice president, I was an elected United States senator.
01:15Before that, before that, I was an elected attorney general, and before that, an elected
01:22district attorney.
01:25So that's really moved the needle in that race and made it a lot more competitive than
01:29it was earlier this year.
01:30Across the Sunbelt, she's really been an effective messenger for the administration and now in
01:34her own campaign, in terms of speaking about abortion and reproductive rights.
01:38Now over 20 states in our country have a Trump abortion ban, many with no exceptions.
01:46Georgia is a critical southern swing state that has 16 electoral votes.
01:51It's one of the most important swing states because it's very highly contested.
01:55This is a state that had trended Republican on the presidential level for years.
02:00Biden won it narrowly in 2020, and he won it by about 12,000 votes.
02:05It was a very narrow win, and for years, Trump said that he was the one that actually won
02:09the state.
02:10I've been in two elections.
02:11I won them both, and the second one, I won much bigger than the first, okay?
02:16Trump tried to overturn the results, and it really created, in many ways, a yearlong feud
02:21between Trump and those officials.
02:23Once Biden stepped aside as nominee, Harris came into the race, and she really immediately
02:28made that state competitive again.
02:30Right now, it's basically about a 50-50 race.
02:34Michigan is a key industrial state.
02:37Michigan has 15 electoral votes, and it's really important because this is one of the
02:41core states of the Blue Wall, and the Blue Wall is the series of states that Democrats
02:46have won since 1992.
02:48From 1992 to 2012, Michigan only voted for Democratic presidential nominees, but Trump
02:54flipped it in 2016, narrowly, against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Biden
02:59won it back in 2020.
03:01And the reason why Trump won it in 2016, not only was he able to make in-rows of union
03:05households, but he really was able to get some of the working class voters who had voted
03:09for Democrats in the past, who were attracted to his economic message, and sided with him
03:13over that.
03:14Biden was able to get a lot of those traditional Democratic voters back, and those voters,
03:18in many ways, are for grabs this year.
03:20I will say, unions are going to be a really big part of the equation in Michigan.
03:25The recent Teamsters non-endorsement of either Harris or Trump is going to be important.
03:29This is the first time that the Teamsters haven't endorsed a presidential candidate
03:32since 1996.
03:34Nevada is a small state with six electoral votes, but it's going to be mighty as both
03:39candidates are fighting for those electoral votes.
03:42It's really important, largely because it really was impacted by the economy during
03:46the pandemic and afterwards.
03:48Especially in Las Vegas, tourism is basically the industry, and for a while, tourists weren't
03:54coming back.
03:55It really impacted everything from the food industry to the hotel sector, and Democrats
04:00really rely on those culinary workers to really help turn the vote up in that state.
04:06But also, a lot of those voters have been swayed by Donald Trump's economic message.
04:10He said that, hey, you know, I can bring back the economy that we had before the pandemic.
04:15We will rescue our economy.
04:17We will crush inflation.
04:18Even though inflation has gone down, a lot of voters, that's still at the top of mind
04:22because they have, you know, had to deal with that issue over the past few years.
04:26But in terms of the electorate, it's a very diverse population.
04:29The Latino vote in Nevada is going to be really important.
04:32Harris and Trump are both trying to court the Latino vote, and that's definitely going
04:36to be the determination.
04:37We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it.
04:46North Carolina is a key Southern battleground, and it has 16 electoral votes.
04:51It's very economically diverse.
04:53You have a large rural population, and then you have large metropolitan areas anchored
04:58in Raleigh, anchored in Charlotte.
05:01And you have just a really strong contingent of swing voters.
05:05You also have a large Black population in North Carolina.
05:07So it's a state where Republicans have seen more success on the presidential level, but
05:13Barack Obama was the only Democrat to win, other than Jimmy Carter, since 1976.
05:18It's going to be harder for Democrats.
05:19In 2012, they came close but didn't win.
05:23In 2020, they were a point away from winning.
05:25And Harris thinks that they can win this state, but Republicans are still well-positioned there.
05:31Pennsylvania is going to be key in this election, and it has 19 electoral votes.
05:36So whoever wins Pennsylvania really is going to be well-positioned to win the presidency.
05:40And it's a place where there are a lot of the more industrial-working voters who have
05:44kind of gravitated towards Republican candidates recently.
05:47A lot of those voters voted for Donald Trump in 2016, which allowed him to flip the state
05:51that year.
05:52But Biden won that state back.
05:55Harris doesn't have that strong of a relationship with those sorts of voters that Biden has,
05:59so she's really been trying to shore up her support with those voters.
06:03For Trump, he's going to run up the vote in those rural counties, and he's also going
06:06to try to make inroads in Pittsburgh with union voters.
06:10One of the key issues in Pennsylvania this year is fracking.
06:14It's an oil and gas drilling technique that is controversial to some, but has really contributed
06:18to an energy boom in the state.
06:20And it's something that Republicans have really tried to attack Harris with because when Harris
06:25was running for the 2020 nomination, she said that she opposed the practice.
06:29But she's come out this year and said that that's not a position that I have anymore.
06:32She said that she would not stop fracking if she was in the White House.
06:36And she basically has tried to move on from the issue.
06:38I think she's going to do very badly in Pennsylvania.
06:41You have to frack.
06:42We need the energy.
06:43And Pennsylvania needs the jobs, but Pennsylvania needs the energy also.
06:47Whoever wins the economic argument in that state, they're going to be very likely to
06:51win the presidency.
06:53Wisconsin has 10 electoral votes and is by far the most important swing state in the
06:58election this year.
06:59Biden won about 20,000 votes in 2020.
07:02Former President Trump won it in 2016, very narrowly.
07:052016, it basically was the tipping point state.
07:09It was the state where once Trump won it, it basically decided the presidency.
07:13Wisconsin is a state where there are a lot of voters there that really truly are swing
07:18voters.
07:19It's probably going to be decided by a very tight margin.
07:21And both candidates know that they've devoted lots of time there.
07:25Even though Nebraska's second congressional district only has one electoral vote, that
07:30could determine who wins the election.
07:32In most states, whoever wins the majority of votes in that particular state wins the
07:36entire share of the electoral votes.
07:39But in Nebraska, it's different.
07:41It's allocated by district, by congressional district.
07:44This year has been really unique because Republicans really tried to make an effort to change the
07:49law so that basically it would be a winner-take-all state.
07:52So far, their efforts have failed.
07:54The stakes of this election are so high that both parties really are fighting for this
07:58one electoral vote, because it really could make the difference in who gets to 270.
08:03These swing states really, truly do hold the key to the White House.
08:07They represent every single demographic.
08:09This election is expected to be so close.
08:12And in the swing states, the races could be decided by thousands or even hundreds of votes.
08:18It's really that competitive.
08:19And for Vice President Harris and for former President Trump, every vote's going to matter.
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