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En solo un mes, alrededor de 150 millones de estadounidenses votarán por la vicepresidenta demócrata Kamala Harris o por el republicano Donald Trump para ser presidente de los Estados Unidos. Ambos afirman que las elecciones son las más importantes en la historia del país.
Pero el ganador del voto popular no necesariamente gana la Casa Blanca. El sistema único de Colegio Electoral de los Estados Unidos significa que las listas de electores de los estados deciden al ganador. Sin embargo, la mayoría de los estados votan de manera confiable por los partidos Demócrata o Republicano. Solo algunos están propensos a cambiar, los llamados estados oscilantes.
Este año, hay siete estados oscilantes, y cada uno presenta una carrera muy reñida dentro de 1.5 puntos, según el seguimiento de encuestas del Financial Times. Juntos representan solo 93 de los 538 votos del Colegio Electoral y el 18 por ciento de la población. Pero son el objetivo de todo el dinero y la energía de las campañas de Trump y Harris.
Dentro de ese subconjunto de estados se encuentra otro segmento importante de votantes: los indecisos. Una encuesta de Ipsos publicada esta semana dijo que este grupo representa solo el 3 por ciento de los votantes probables en los estados en disputa, un número pequeño que refleja la profunda polarización de Estados Unidos. Ganarse la mayoría de estas personas que aún no han tomado una decisión podría decidir la elección, dándoles un gran poder potencial.
¿Quiénes son estos votantes indecisos? Algunos son votantes sindicales masculinos que alguna vez se inclinaron hacia el izquierdista Bernie Sanders pero ahora se inclinan hacia Trump; o conservadores suburbanos cansados del discurso de Maga. Otros son latinos que vacilan en apoyar a Harris debido al alto costo de vida en Estados Unidos, o jóvenes votantes que se sintieron desanimados por la edad del presidente Joe Biden pero que ahora están en juego para Harris. Muchos son mujeres, de todas las tendencias políticas, pero especialmente conservadoras, motivadas por las restricciones impuestas al aborto en los últimos años, un tema central de la campaña de Harris.
Pero las dos campañas también están tratando de ganarse otro segmento más amplio del público: personas desvinculadas del proceso político. En este siglo, la participación en las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos entre los votantes elegibles ha oscilado entre el 54 por ciento en 2000 y el 67 por ciento en 2020, dejando un gran grupo del cual sacar. Ambos bandos están activando sus máquinas de participación en los estados oscilantes, aunque la campaña de Trump está ganando en la carrera de registro en la mayoría de los campos de batalla.
Pensilvania
El estado más crítico en la llamada muralla azul, en referencia a los estados que los Demócratas, el partido azul, ganaron en las elecciones presidenciales de 1992 a 2012. Trump rompió la muralla en 2016, pero los Demócratas ganaron estos estados nuevamente en 2020. Cada uno de ellos ahora tiene un gobernador Demócrata popular.
Pensilvania (19 votos electorales) se extiende desde Filadelfia cerca de la costa este hasta la ciudad industrial de Pittsburgh en el oeste. Es el campo de batalla más poblado, más frecuentemente encuestado y el premio más grande de toda la elección.
Harris y Trump han visitado Pensilvania con frecuencia y han gastado mucho más en anuncios allí que en cualquier otro lugar: $187 millones y $146 millones, respectivamente. Trump resultó herido en julio en un intento de asesinato cerca de Butler, en el oeste rural.
El éxito de Harris dependerá de movilizar a los votantes Demócratas en las ciudades más grandes y de obtener ganancias en los suburbios más ricos mientras limita sus pérdidas ante Trump en las áreas rurales y conservadoras. Los Republicanos han estado ganando la batalla de registro de votantes en las últimas semanas.
Both campaigns have courted blue-collar voters in a state where manufacturing and energy production are big employers. Harris and Trump sided with the steelworkers’ union in opposing the takeover of Pittsburgh-based US Steel by a Japanese company. Harris has disavowed her previous opposition to fracking, the drilling technique crucial to Pennsylvania’s huge shale gas industry. But Trump has pummelled her on the issue.
Michigan
Michigan (15 electoral votes), home to Detroit and the hub of the US car industry, went to Biden by less than 3 points in 2020. Democrats performed strongly there in the 2022 midterm elections, when governor Gretchen Whitmer was re-elected and voters overwhelmingly backed a measure to protect abortion rights.
But Michigan has also emerged as a hub of resistance to the Biden administration’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza, where the huge Palestinian death toll has angered Michigan’s relatively numerous Arab-American voters and progressives in college towns such as Ann Arbor. Harris might need to make up for defections from her party.
Blue-collar workers are also a focus of both campaigns in Michigan. While Harris touts her support for a new electric vehicle industry and the federal support for manufacturing, Trump has attacked Democrats for jeopardising Michigan jobs to fight climate change. Affluent suburbs surrounding Detroit and Grand Rapids will be pivotal.
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Wisconsin
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) is an especially heated blue wall battleground with high political engagement and fierce ideological divisions: in 2020, it had highest voter turnout of any swing state.
The Republican party chose Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, for its convention to nominate Trump, and Harris flew into Milwaukee during the Democratic convention in Chicago to hold her own rally. The electorate in Wisconsin is disproportionately white compared with other battleground states, but a strong tradition of union organising could benefit Harris. She will also need to secure strong support in the capital, Madison, among state employees and University of Wisconsin students.
Both campaigns will also focus on the traditionally Republican Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha county, where Biden in 2020 improved on Hillary Clinton’s vote in 2016, and in crucial Demoratic-leaning cities near the border with Minnesota.
One factor in Wisconsin’s farmland areas will be attitudes to Trump’s planned tariffs. The state’s farmers were hit hard by Republican trade policies during his term in the White House.
Georgia
Biden was the first Democrat to win Georgia (16 electoral votes) since Bill Clinton in 1992. His party followed up by winning two pivotal Senate races in 2021, giving Democrats control of the chamber.
Democrats have gained from growing support in Atlanta’s once-Republican suburbs and strong get-out-the-vote operations in the city itself, as well as Savannah and Augusta. Democratic US Senator Raphael Warnock, the pastor at the Atlanta church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr used to preach, has become a pivotal motivator for the Democratic base.
But the rest of Georgia remains overwhelmingly conservative. Trump has also made inroads with Georgia’s Black population, especially on the economy. He has a tense relationship with Republican governor Brian Kemp, who refused to help him overturn the 2020 election result, although Kemp has now endorsed Trump.
North Carolina
Barack Obama won the presidential vote in North Carolina (16 electoral votes) in 2008, but no Democrat has since.
Polls show that Harris is running as strongly in North Carolina as in Georgia, propelled by her strength in the so-called Research Triangle university cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill as well Charlotte and Greensboro, the other big metropolitan areas.
The Republican campaign has been rocked by a scandal involving Mark Robinson, who Trump has praised and endorsed in the run to be North Carolina’s governor. On a pornographic message board Robinson referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and supported reinstating slavery, along with many other graphic comments, according to a CNN report.
Beyond that, a big wild card in the battle for North Carolina is whether the devastation in the western part of the state due to Hurricane Helene will affect voting patterns or turnout.
Arizona
If either Harris or Trump sweep the “blue wall” and the south-eastern battlegrounds, the election will be over by the time the focus turns west. But if the result is split east of the Mississippi River, two states with fast-growing populations and a big share of Hispanic voters could settle the race.
Biden brought once reliably conservative Arizona (11 electoral votes) into the Democratic fold in 2020.
But as the only battleground state bordering Mexico, Arizona is on the frontline of a fight over immigration — among the election’s biggest issues. Trump has consistently attacked Harris for presiding over a surge of immigration, and promised mass deportations of undocumented people if he wins.
Harris, who visited a border town in Arizona late last month, has criticised Trump for blocking a bipartisan compromise in Congress this year that would have toughened immigration policy, just so he could campaign on the issue.
Democrats have succeeded in recent years in capturing votes from mainstream Republicans disenchanted with Trump. But Republicans have been gaining ground among Latinos. The fate of Maricopa county, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, is likely to be crucial to the state’s result.
Democrats also hope that a measure on the ballot in November to include the right to an abortion in the state constitution will drive turnout for Harris. Currently, state law allows abortions up to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Nevada
Nevada (six electoral votes), home to gambling meccas Las Vegas and Reno, has voted for Democrats in every presidential election since 2004.
But it is vulnerable for Harris, partly because of the gains Trump is making among Hispanic voters, and because the state’s economy has been particularly tough on middle- and lower-income households.
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Inflation in the region has outpaced the nationwide rate in recent years, while the unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent is the highest of any US state, undermining Harris’s economic pitch.
Democrats’ successes in Nevada stem from a successful turnout operation around Las Vegas mobilised by the Culinary Workers Union. If it works again, it could help Harris offset some other weaknesses in Nevada. But with just a month left before election day, the result in Nevada — and the presidential race itself — is as uncertain as a Caesars Palace crapshoot.
Additional data visualisation by Jana Tauschinski
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