With 2024 election so tight, a reminder how few votes decided the 7 swing states in 2020
In 2020, two battleground states were decided by fewer than 12,000 votes.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are heading into Election Day neck-and-neck in national and battleground state polls.
As of Nov. 1, Harris and Trump were separated by just 1.2% in nationwide polling averages compiled by 538.
At the state level, neither candidate has a lead greater than 2 percentage points any of the swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Those seven battleground states will determine who clinches 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
How close the swing-state margins were in 2020
President Joe Biden narrowly won six out of the seven states in 2020, some by just 11,000 or 12,000 votes.
Biden defeated Trump by flipping the "blue wall" states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that Trump won in 2016.
Biden also won Georgia and Arizona, two states that were longtime Republican strongholds.
Trump won North Carolina by 74,481 votes, which was smaller than his margin of victory there over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Overall, 386,769 votes in those seven states determined the outcome of the 2020 election out of 158 million cast nationwide.
Signs point to another close race
Harris and Trump have never been separated by more than 3 percentage points in national polling averages compiled by 538 since Harris took over for President Biden as the Democratic frontrunner in late July.
The two are in a dead heat in Nevada and Pennsylvania, according to 538.
Pennsylvania is considered a possible tipping point for who will win the Electoral College. If Harris wins the state, along with the rest of the Midwest “blue wall” and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, she will clinch 270 votes. If Trump wins Pennsylvania, and holds all the states he won in 2020, he would need to also flip Georgia to win.
In Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris has a 1-point lead over the former president. Polling averages show Trump ahead by a single percentage point in North Carolina and by 2 percentage points in Georgia and Arizona.
Those margins, however, would fall in a typical poll’s margin of error.