It is barely three weeks until it is decided whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States. There are several factors that could play a significant role – one of these being the new distribution of electoral votes.
In this year’s election, 13 states received fewer or more electoral votes, based on the latest US Census. And this redistribution could benefit Donald Trump, as several of the new electoral votes are in states that had a majority of Republican voters.
– There are all kinds of things and this is one of the factors that can have much greater importance this time than it had in previous elections, says USA expert Andreas Utterström.
That’s how electoral votes work
The party that receives the most votes in a state receives all of the state’s electoral votes. To win the election, it is necessary to have a total of 270 electoral votes or more.
How many electoral votes each state gets is determined by the latest census, and this year the playing field is therefore being changed. Some of the states that receive more electoral votes are Florida and Texas, states where Republicans have historically won. Meanwhile, California, Illinois and New York lose one electoral vote each, states where Democrats won.
Overall, more Republican states are gaining votes, while Democratic states are losing.
– This favors Trump because these are states he won last time. On the other hand, voters are more unpredictable than you might think, especially in some states. It is not certain that Trump will win the same states again, but it is clear that this is an advantage for him, says Andreas Utterström.
So Trump can use the change in case of a loss
In some states where the electoral votes have increased, it is uncertain whether Trump or Harris will win, so-called Swing States – an example is North Carolina.
If it’s the Democrats who win there and it ultimately results in Harris winning, Utterstrom believes Trump will try to use the change in electoral votes to create conspiracies and question the result.
– If Trump loses, I have considered it completely unlikely that he would recognize the election result. Then I think he’ll grasp at every straw to claim it’s cheating. He could very well take up this matter if it would be to his disadvantage and not to his advantage as it now appears.
That will decide
Although the redistribution of the electoral votes could play a role, Utterström believes that the election will mainly be decided depending on which party gets people to go and vote.
– The biggest threat to both Trump and Harris is the couch potato, that people don’t like either of them and then stay home. So everything now is about getting people in swing states to register as voters and then bother to vote. Since there are such small margins, it is a very small number of voters who will decide everything.