The 2024 election could hinge on Pennsylvania | What you need to know

The entire nation will vote on the next president of the United States on November 5, but the election will likely come down to seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. With the outsized importance of these states, it's worth taking a closer look at the data we have in each of them - not just where the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump stands today, but also each candidate's path to victory and what issues could tip the election. Last but most definitely not least: the Keystone State, Pennsylvania, arguably the most important swing state in 2024.

The history

Pennsylvania voted for the Democratic nominee in every presidential election from 1992 through 2012, forming part of "The Blue Wall" - a trio of northern battlegrounds (with Michigan and Wisconsin) that consistently backed Democrats in the race for the White House. Until 2016, that is. That year, Trump narrowly flipped all three states - in Pennsylvania, largely thanks to big gains outside the major metropolitan areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. In 2020, Pennsylvania once again saw an extremely close contest, but Biden managed to win it en route to defeating Trump.

Still, Biden's edge was slim: He carried Pennsylvania by just over 1 percentage point, a raw margin of only about 80,000 votes in a state that cast almost 7 million for president in 2020. The state also remained somewhat more right-leaning than the nation. In 2016, Pennsylvania swung to the right of the country, as Trump narrowly carried it by just under 1 point even as Democrat Hillary Clinton led nationally by about 2 points. Then in 2020, Biden's narrow win in Pennsylvania was more than 3 points to the right of his national popular vote margin of about 4.5 points.

The 2024 polls

Pennsylvania could very well be on its way to another result that puts it just a bit to the right of the nation. The latest polling averages show Trump running 0.2 points ahead of Harris in Pennsylvania, while Harris leads nationally by 1.4 points.* Nonetheless, Harris is performing better in Pennsylvania than Biden was earlier this year: The president was trailing Trump by more than 4 points when he left the race in late July. Understandably, the 538 presidential forecast views Pennsylvania as a toss-up, with Trump winning a hair more than 1 in 2 simulations.

Not coincidentally, Pennsylvania is the most-polled state in the 2024 election cycle: Since Harris became the nominee, there have been over 100 presidential polls in the Keystone State, while no other state has more than 85 so far. For one thing, its 19 electoral votes make it the largest of the seven core swing states. And because of its size and competitiveness, Pennsylvania is also the most likely "tipping-point" state in 538's presidential election forecast. (If we rank all the states in order of margin from most Democratic to most Republican, or vice versa, the tipping point is the place that delivers the 270th electoral vote to the winner.) Pennsylvania earns that status in 23 in 100 forecast simulations, putting it ahead of the next-closest state of North Carolina (16 in 100).

The demographics

As a geographically large and populous state with a mix of urban areas, suburbs, mid-sized cities and sizable rural regions, Pennsylvania is diverse in many ways. In terms of where the state's votes come from, the counties in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas constituted 53 percent of the statewide vote in 2020, including 63 percent of Biden's overall vote, indicative of how key those areas will be for Harris. By comparison, Trump won about 43 percent of his statewide votes from those two metro areas, so mid-sized communities and rural areas are more critical to his base.

Demographically, Pennsylvania is like the other northern battlegrounds in that its overall population is whiter than the country's as a whole: about 73 percent non-Hispanic white compared with 57 percent nationally. Within the white population is a large and notable chunk of the state's electorate: white voters without a four-year college degree, who accounted for 45 percent of Pennsylvania's voters in 2020, per the exit poll. Nationally, this GOP-leaning group has shifted farther to the right in the Trump years.

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Conversely, Democrats have made gains nationally among white voters with at least a four-year college degree, and the same is true in Pennsylvania. For instance, Philadelphia's four suburban collar counties are fairly white and have nearly 30 percent of the state's population that is white with a college degree. Not coincidentally, the quartet has collectively trended more Democratic than anywhere else in the state in recent years, backing Obama by 10 points in 2012 and Biden by 19 points in 2020, even as the state as a whole moved to the right over that time span.

While we don't have much data that breaks down voters simultaneously by race and education specifically in Pennsylvania, state-level polling broken down by education more broadly suggests that Trump and Harris are both running around on par with their party's performance in 2020.** Overall, voters without a four-year degree look likely to back Trump at a similar - or even higher - rate than in 2020: On average, Trump leads Harris 55 percent to 41 percent among this group, compared with his 54 percent to 45 percent edge in the 2020 exit poll. Meanwhile, college-educated Pennsylvanians prefer Harris by about the same margin they did Biden in 2020, 56 percent to 41 percent.

The heavily Democratic city of Philadelphia forms a key part of the state's electoral math. But while the city's collar counties have moved left, the city proper actually has shifted somewhat to the right, as Democrats' substantial edge declined by about 4 points in each of the last two presidential cycles, from 71 points in 2012, to 67 points in 2016 and 63 points in 2020.

Black voters are a big part of the equation here: Only about 1 in 10 of Pennsylvania's voters identified as Black in 2020, but nearly half the state's Black population lives in the state's largest city. And while Democrats appear to have gained in the more well-educated and affluent parts of Philadelphia, predominantly Black precincts have experienced at least a small decline in Democratic support and, also importantly, turnout rates. This could be a big concern for Harris: An average of recent Pennsylvania polls found her ahead 79 percent to 17 percent among Black voters, but that would be well down from Biden's advantage in 2020 of 92 percent to 7 percent - a potentially critical gain for Trump.

The situation may be similar when it comes to Hispanic voters, who only made up about 5 percent of the state's electorate in 2020, but remain a fast-growing part of it. In 2020, Biden won close to 7 in 10 Hispanic voters statewide, yet the trend wasn't necessarily great for him as precincts with larger populations of Latino voters in Philadelphia shifted to the right. And polls find that, on average, Harris only leads 54 percent to 41 percent among Hispanic voters, which would be a big downtick from Biden's 2020 showing.

One curious poll finding in Pennsylvania has to do with the 45-to-64 year old age group. Nationally, this group appears to have swung slightly toward Trump relative to where it was in 2020, but that's not the case in Pennsylvania. Instead, this mostly Gen X group of voters has moved to the left: In recent polls, it only preferred Trump by about 6 points, on average, compared with his 16-point advantage in 2020 (although note that the groups are slightly different given that four years have passed). This could be just noise, but it is a trend that's popped up across a number of polls.

The issues

The top issues for Pennsylvanians in this election do not differ dramatically from other places. For instance, in Redfield & Wilton's polling, the top three issues across all seven major swing states are the economy, abortion and immigration, in line with national surveys.

Still, there are some nuances to the Keystone State regarding its top issues that are worth noting. For one thing, abortion might be a slightly better issue for Democrats in Pennsylvania than in most other swing states. A poll from The Washington Post/George Mason University found that 74 percent of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, second only to Nevada's 78 percent. At the same time, immigration could be particularly helpful for the GOP, as the same polling found that more voters in Pennsylvania than in any other swing state (65 percent) said that undocumented immigrants "generally make the communities they live in worse."

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Additionally, a big local issue is fracking, which ties into both the economy and the environment. In Franklin & Marshall College's October survey, Pennsylvanians seemed fairly split on the economic impact of fracking but were less likely to say that it was harmful to the environment. Overall, only 36 percent said fracking has helped the economy some or a great deal, while 42 percent said it had not helped much or not at all. Yet 58 percent said fracking hadn't hurt the environment much or at all, compared with just 21 percent who said it had harmed things some or a great deal. And 51 percent felt fracking had done more to help the economy, while 33 percent said it had done more to hurt the environment.

The downballot races

In addition to the presidential race, Pennsylvania has a number of key downballot races that could end up making a big difference in the balance of power in the state. The biggest of these is a tight U.S. Senate contest between three-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick, a former George W. Bush administration official who also ran in the 2022 Senate race, but lost in his party's primary to television personality Mehmet Oz. In the polls, Casey had been enjoying an advantage of around 5-to-8 points for most of the year, but the race has tightened in recent weeks, with Casey now holding a lead of just 3.2 percentage points, well within the historical average 5.4-point polling error for Senate races. The 538 Senate forecast rates the Pennsylvania race as the third closest Senate contest in the nation, after Ohio and Wisconsin.

And it's not just the Senate seat in Pennsylvania that could impact the balance of power in Washington this year. Pennsylvania is home to three U.S. House races currently rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report: the 7th, 8th and 10th districts.

Located in the eastern part of the state, the 7th District was identified by Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics as a presidential bellwether in the last four elections - the district, under its current boundaries, would have voted for the eventual president in each of those contests. The seat is currently represented by three-term Democratic Rep. Susan Wild, who was first elected in the 2018 Democratic wave. Her challenger is state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, who has served in the Pennsylvania state legislature since 2012. We have only one nonpartisan poll of the race, from the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion/Morning Call, which showed Wild ahead by 6 points. Notably, however, she has also led in all the partisan polls of the race too, including internal polls conducted on behalf of MacKenzie.

The 8th District is located in the state's northeast, an ancestrally Democratic area around Scranton that has drifted right in recent years. Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright is defending his seat from GOP challenger Rob Bresnahan, a local businessman who runs a construction company. Like Wild, Cartwright was first elected in 2018. While we have no public polling of this race yet, the district's slim partisan lean (Trump won it by just 2.9 percentage points in 2020) keeps this race in the toss-up camp.

Finally, Pennsylvania's 10th district - which includes the state capital of Harrisburg, the city of York and surrounding suburbs - has been very close all cycle. Spring and summer polling in the race showed Republican Rep. Scott Perry, a former chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, in a single-digit race against Janelle Stelson, a former local news anchor. A more recent, nonpartisan poll from Susquehanna Polling and Research has shown Stelson with a significant lead of 9 points, though it's the only poll of the race since August. All this has caused election observers to shift the race from leaning Republican to a pure toss-up.

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And it's not just federal races happening in the Keystone state this fall. The state executive posts of attorney general, treasurer and auditor general are all on the ballot. Two Republican incumbents, Treasurer Stacy Garrity and Auditor General Tim DeFoor, are defending seats they won in 2020; the pair are the only two Republicans that currently hold statewide elected office in the commonwealth. Meanwhile, the open-seat race for attorney general is between Democratic former state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and Republican York County District Attorney Dave Sunday. While we haven't seen many polls of these statewide races, the polls we do have indicate close races that may slightly favor Democrats in all three offices. Meanwhile, Democrats are also fighting to defend a razor-thin majority in the Pennsylvania state House, which tipped into Democratic control by just one seat in the 2022 midterms, the first time the party has controlled the chamber in over a decade.

Footnotes

*All numbers in this article are as of Oct. 29 at 10 a.m. Eastern.

**Based on polls of likely and registered voters only (if a poll included results among both populations, we used likely voters). If a poll included both a head-to-head matchup between Harris and Trump and a version including third parties, we used the head-to-head version. Crosstabs among groups defined by pollsters as "Latino" and "Hispanic" are both included in averages of Hispanic voters. Finally, if a polling organization (defined as a partnership between a pollster and sponsor, or a pollster alone if their work was not sponsored by an outside group) had more than one survey in the relevant time frame, only the most recent version was included. All polls conducted and released between Oct. 1 and Oct. 29 at 10 a.m. Eastern are included.