Washington, Nov 6 (PTI): As tens of millions of Americans cast their votes in the presidential election, the Kamala Harris Campaign said it felt “good” about early voting in the Keystone state of Pennsylvania and other battleground states.
With Pennsylvania emerging as the most critical of the seven swing states with 19 electoral college votes, Harris spent the final few hours of her canvassing in the state and even went door-knocking in some residential areas.
Vice President Harris, whose mother is from India, is locked in a historically tight electoral contest with Republican leader Donald Trump in the race for the White House to succeed President Joe Biden.
“Listen, we feel good about what we’re seeing in Pennsylvania and across the battleground states,” Harris’ communications director Michael Tyler said.
“I think when you look at the early vote data, yes, there has been a mode shift because Republicans — they used to disparage early voting and claim it was fraud,” Tyler told Fox News.
“They have now embraced it and have encouraged their voters to do so. So, you’re seeing a little bit of a mode shift,” he said.
According to the Harris Campaign, it knocked nearly 100,000 doors in Pennsylvania on Monday.
In the last few weeks of her campaign, Harris majorly focused on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the states identified with Democratic Party’s colour of blue.
In 2020, Joe Biden had won all these three “Blue Wall” states which have a total of 44 electoral college votes. If Harris manages to win the three states, then she is likely to become the next American president.
The US has 50 states and most of them vote for the same party in every election except the swing states. Based on the volume of population, the states are assigned electoral college votes.
Overall a total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs. A candidate with 270 or more electoral votes is declared winner in the election.
If both candidates register victory in all the states that historically support the same party, then it will leave Harris 44 electoral college votes short of victory and Trump 51 votes short.
In that situation, the 93 votes of the swing states will decide who the next American president will be.
The swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, known as part of the ‘Rust Belt’, have been traditionally the strongholds of the Democratic Party. However, Trump won the three of them in 2016. The states returned to the Democratic fold in the 2020 election.
The four swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina are called ‘Sun Belt’ with a total electoral college vote of 49.
The Republicans have a stronger support base in the Sun Belt states. Even if Trump wins all the four Sun Belt states, he will still require to win one more in Rust Belt. PTI MPB GSP GSP
(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)