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SUNSHINE STATE: Florida is one of the most important states to insure for Trump and Biden. Photo: JOE RAEDLE / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA
A small number of states can change the entire outcome of elections in the United States. In particular, two states are set to be wildly exciting in this election.
When Joe Biden and Donald Trump plan where voter meetings will take place now in the run-up to the election, they are concerned about where there may be crucial voters to choose from who can secure the candidate a majority in the state.
It’s no coincidence that popular former President Barack Obama turns on the allure of Biden’s camps in Pennsylvania and Florida.
VG gives you advice on which states to watch closely this last week or so until the election.
CAMPAIGN: Latino voters hold a car parade to support Biden in Florida. Photo: Thomas Nilsson / VG
Seven potential surprises
Each of the presidential candidates has a few states where they know their party has such strong traditions that they feel confident of winning.
For example, people in New York and California tend to vote democratically, while in Wyoming, the majority have voted Republicans in every election for nearly 60 years.
Such statements provide statisticians with something like tangible material to work with when trying to predict the outcome of an election. But then there are the auspicious states, which help make the elections wildly exciting.
By 2020, the battle is roughly seven states.
Three of them are in the Midwest:
- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin
The remaining four are southern states:
- Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia
All of these states were won by Donald Trump in the last election, but now Joe Biden has an advantage or a dead race against the incumbent president in all seven polls.
Get up to speed, that’s why tilt statuses are important:
Why are tipping states so important?
The tilted states are so crucial, because it is in these states that you can really say that presidential candidates can influence the outcome.
To guarantee re-election, Trump should also win the seven states mentioned above this year. Currently based on the pollsIt looks like it could be a challenge for the incumbent president.
It is worth seeing in 2020 also Texas, which this year, for the first time in half a century, may lose the Republicans. If that happens, it’s highly unlikely that Trump could win, Civita adviser Eirik Løkke tells VG.
This is what the measurements look like:
Florida nail biting
VG has asked four US experts which state or states they will follow most closely, roughly this week, until the November 3 elections.
- Hilmar Mjelde, researcher, NORCE: Florida and Pennsylvania.
– They have many voters: 29 in Florida, 20 in Pennsylvania, and therefore have a great influence on the electoral result. Florida has been increasingly Republican for a long time, but Obama won it in both 2008 and 2012. Democrats won every election in Pennsylvania from 1992 to 2012. Trump won it in 2016. Pennsylvania could quickly become the deciding state the result, both parties have a laser focus on that, says Mjelde.
- Sigrid Rede Gårdsvoll, commentator, Amerikanskpolitikk.no: Florida.
– Biden would probably like to take Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but when the results here are ready is uncertain. But if Biden is doing very well in Florida, we can already know on election night that Biden won overall, Gårdsvoll believes.
- Eirik Løkke, advisor at Civita: Florida
– Florida is a state in which Trump is almost entirely dependent on winning, unlike Biden. So if Biden wins Florida on election night, it could point in the direction of Biden’s landslide. Whether Trump wins, on the other hand, is undecided, but it will be tremendously exciting to wait for the rest of the states.
- Erik Mustad, Associate Professor, University of Agder: Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan
– Here the measurements have fluctuated this time. And they have voters who can tip both ways.
Historical lessons
History has taught us that inflection states should never be underestimated. Because even though Obama obtained a Democratic majority in 2012, several of the states were not loyal to the Democrats in the next election.
– In 2016, Donald Trump won the elections by a total of just under 78,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania; there are good margins in an election where 136 million votes were cast. If these had gone the other way around, Hillary Clinton would have won, explains Amerikanskpolitikk.no commentator Sigrid Rege Gårdsvoll.
Even when Bush was elected in 2000, the tip states decided, recalls Hilmar Mjelde, a researcher at NORCE.
– Tilted states decide why they “tip” the winning candidate over 270 voters, which is necessary to win the election. In 2000, George W. Bush had 246 voters. When Florida finally won with 537 votes as well, it won 271 electoral votes and thus the election, says Mjelde.
Although Florida has become the school’s example of an auspicious state, it was actually another lesser-known state that was also pivotal to Bush’s victory in 2000, says Civita aide Eirik Løkke.
New Hampshire’s smallest state was, in fact, a crucial tip state, even though it had only four voters.
– Bush jr. he won the state by 7,000 votes. If Al Gore had won the state, he would have become president even if he had lost in Florida, winning 271 voters to Bush’s 267. But it was Bush who won, with 271 to 267 voters, says Løkke.
