'Pretty narrow window': Here’s how the 2024 election will be decided by razor-thin margins

20 July 2024

Despite more than 160 million Americans casting ballots in the 2020 election, it was ultimately decided by tens of thousands of votes across a small handful of states. 2024 may be even closer.

According to a recent CNN analysis of current Electoral College math, there are only a few small paths to victory for both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. In order to win the election, a candidate will need to win 270 electoral votes, and most states are leaning strongly toward one candidate or the other. The most competitive swing states like Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin will determine the winner.

One expert told the network that because voters' opinions are already mostly locked in, the election will likely come down to which campaign is more successful at turning out voters in the final months before ballots are cast.

"I still think that this is a race where we are not going to see the polls move outside a pretty narrow window," GOP pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson told the network. "If you liked Donald Trump last week, you still like him this week. If you liked Joe Biden last week, you still like him this week."

2020 provides the most recent example of how a few thousand votes in a few counties in a few states can influence an entire election. In Arizona, for example, Biden carried the state by less than 11,000 total votes. He won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes. And he took Wisconsin by fewer than 21,000 ballots. Those three states, combined with Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District (Nebraska and Maine allocate electoral votes by congressional districts) are what decided the Electoral College for Biden.

Likewise, Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 came down to less than 78,000 votes across the three so-called "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those three states' combined 46 electoral votes made it possible for Trump to win the presidency and appoint Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court — who then helped overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022 and give presidents absolute immunity from criminal prosecution in the recent Trump v. United States decision.

In 2024, CNN's analysis found that 152 electoral votes across 12 states that swung from Republican to Democrat, or from Democrat to Republican, in the 2016 and 2020 elections are up for grabs. More recently, states thought to be solidly Republican — like Florida and Ohio — are competitive for Democrats due to high-profile Senate races and ballot questions. And states previously considered safe for Democrats, like Minnesota and Virginia, are now in play for Republicans as doubts linger over Biden's viability as a candidate.

While both presidential campaigns will be spending large sums of money on voter outreach and advertising, what may drive voter turnout are other non-candidate issues in key states. Florida, for example, has a ballot initiative on abortion rights coming up in November. As a result, more recent polling trends show women voters gravitating toward the Democratic ticket.

Other battleground states with ballot measures include Ohio, where voters will decide on whether to have a citizen-led redistricting commission after each new Census (Ohioans voted to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution last fall). And in Arizona, there are numerous ballot initiatives to be decided in November on various issues including pay for tipped workers and term limits for supreme court judges, among others.

Click here to read CNN's full analysis.

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