How Kamala Harris Could Win Election Despite Losing Pennsylvania

Most political experts agree that Vice President Kamala Harris’ likeliest path to victory in the Electoral College lies through Pennsylvania—but there is a way for her to win without the swing state.
Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is the biggest battleground state this year and is expected to play an outsized role in deciding the election between Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Polls show the two candidates locked in a dead heat in Pennsylvania. FiveThirtyEight’s polling average shows Trump ahead by just 0.2 points as of Sunday.
Most experts say that whoever wins the Keystone State is likely to go on to win the White House and that Harris’ easiest path to victory is by carrying Pennsylvania and the other two “blue wall” states—Michigan and Wisconsin—that President Joe Biden won in 2020.
But it is possible for Harris to lose Pennsylvania and still reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes and win the election by carrying a combination of some of the other battleground states: Arizona (11 electoral votes), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), North Carolina (16), Nevada (six) and Wisconsin (10).
Harris is projected to secure at least 226 electoral votes from the non-battleground states, so she needs at least 44 of the votes from the battleground states to reach 270.
“Right now, she’s slightly ahead only in Michigan and Wisconsin, so if she wins there she could still get past 270 by adding a combination of as few as two of the remaining battlegrounds,” Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek.
“Winning any three of these would guarantee winning an Electoral College victory. So Harris has several paths to 270 even if she loses Pennsylvania,” he said.
If the vice president loses Pennsylvania, her likeliest path would be to win Michigan and Wisconsin—where polls show her narrowly leading Trump—as well as a combination of at least two other battleground states: either Arizona and Georgia; Arizona and North Carolina; Georgia and North Carolina; or Arizona, Nevada and either Georgia or North Carolina.
Harris could also win if she carries Michigan but not Wisconsin as long as she also wins either Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada or Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
If she wins Wisconsin but not Michigan, she must also carry either Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina or Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada.
Another, albeit unlikely, path for Harris to win the presidency even if she loses all three of the blue wall states would be by carrying the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
A Harris win without Pennsylvania “would be hard but doable,” Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, told Newsweek.
It would be unlikely for Harris to lose Pennsylvania but carry Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina, Reeher said, adding, “Stranger things have happened.”