Winning the U.S. election is as simple as winning the majority of the 538 electoral votes available across the country’s 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The number of electoral votes a state has is proportional to its population, and in general, the candidate who gets the most votes in a state gets all of its electoral votes.
Based on polling and vote histories, the results of many states are a foregone conclusion – with 30-point victories in the past two elections and a 30-year history of going to the Democrats, California’s 54 electoral votes, for example, are almost certainly going to be won by U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Analysts like the Cook Political Report see 226 electoral votes likely going to the Democrats and 219 to the Republicans.
That leaves 93 electoral votes considered to be a toss-up, spread across seven states that could swing either way on election night. Those states are Pennsylvania …