By admin 
While several swing states could influence the outcome of the 2024 election, political scientist, lawyer and American election expert Dr. David Schultz that Kamala Harris’ path to victory likely depends on Pennsylvania. According to the Hamline University professor, the election will likely be decided by a narrow margin of 150,000 to 200,000 votes spread across seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Kamala Harris campaign has adopted a strategy that aligns with Dr. Schultz. Last week, Harris’ campaign manager, Jen O’Malley-Dillon, released a video outlining how the vice president has multiple paths to victory in these states.
During our interview, Dr. Schultz points out that while the other Blue Wall states, Michigan and Wisconsin, are also crucial battleground states, Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes make a Harris victory much more likely.
“For Harris, her math becomes much more complicated if she can’t win Pennsylvania”, explained the political scientist. For Donald Trump, Pennsylvania is helping push him across the finish line. However, “as he crosses North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona”, he could afford to lose Pennsylvania and still surpass the magic number of 270 electoral college votes.
The politics of vice presidential choice
Some may emphasize the are closing polls in Pennsylvania and questioning whether the Harris campaign made a mistake by not choosing Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate. Dr. Schultz, however, does not believe Governor Shapiro’s choice would have guaranteed the vice president a victory in Pennsylvania. “One of the conventional wisdoms, which is actually not true in general, is that vice presidential candidates matterSchultz said in our conversation when asked directly about the circumstances of Harris’ VP choice.
Dr. Schultz cited the 2008 race as a recent example of a race where a VP pick made a difference.
In recent American history, 2008 was the only vice presidential candidate that really mattered. It was Governor Palin and Palin actually hurt John McCain.
Dr. David Schultz
While that may sound surprising, Dr. Schultz on that “About 40% of Americans cannot name who the sitting vice president is at any timeT.” When such a large portion of the population is unaware of who the person is, Dr. Schultz sees it as a challenge that a significant percentage of the voting public would make a decision based on a person’s running mate of the major parties.
The election expert’s only caveat was that in this particular race, where it is expected to be so close, electing Governor Shapiro “might be enough in that state,” even if he “only mobilized 2, 3, 4000 voters.However, when you make these kinds of decisions and try to target such specific voters, you are risking what Dr. Schultz described it as ‘the logic of small numbers’.