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Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump dances during a rally at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Arizona, U.S. October 24, 2024.
Election Countdown: 15 key counties that could determine the outcome
With four days to go before Election Day, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were in Nevada and Arizona on Thursday to shore up support in the critical western swing states. At dueling rallies, the candidates made bids to win over Latino voters and focused on border security.
In Nevada, home to a large number of service workers and an economy that has struggled to rebound from COVID, Trump and Harris touted their plans for exempting tips from taxes.
In Arizona, both candidates are banking on ballot initiatives to boost turnout. Republicans are rallying around a ballot initiative making illegal border crossings a state crime, while Democrats are hoping a measure enshrining the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution will spur pro-choice voters to the polls.
Arizona is likely to come down to just one county: Maricopa.
There has been no shortage of attention paid to the seven swing states that are likely to decide this hyper-close election. But within those states, there are counties that are key indicators of how each state will end up.
“The counties to watch in the election are a mixture of bellwethers that tend to go the way of their states, big counties that have an outsized impact on state results, and counties that will provide key information on how the candidates are performing among particular demographic groups,” explains Eurasia Group’s Noah Daponte-Smith.
So, without further ado, here are the counties to watch as the results roll in on Tuesday night.
In Arizona, whoever wins Maricopa, which encompasses Phoenix and its surrounding areas, is likely to win the state’s 11 Electoral College votes. The whole election could hinge on this county because of how long it is expected to take to tally all of its votes.
Maricopa has a population of over 4.5 million residents, more than the populations of nearly half of the states in the US, and Republican-pushed voting laws are going to slow down the count. Because of this, election officials are warning that it could take up to 13 days to count all the ballots, which, if the election is close, could mean the winner isn’t known for nearly two weeks.
Pennsylvania has four bellwether counties that will serve as signals for whether the state – which has a 90% chance of determining the election – is going red or blue. Harris needs to excel in democratic stronghold Philadelphia, at least outpacing Biden’s 2020 performance, if she is going to win the Keystone State. Erie, Pittsburg, and Scranton are also key indicators of how the winds are blowing.
Pennsylvania is unlikely to be decided for a day or two because of rules that forbid counting absentee ballots before Election Day.
In Georgia, all eyes will be on Atlanta’s Fulton and DeKalb counties, as well as its surrounding suburbs of Gwinnett, Henry, and Cobb. The key thing to look for is Harris’ margins with Black voters, which not only are likely to determine whether she wins the state but will also shed light on how she is tracking with Black voters nationwide.
Wisconsin is anyone’s game and may depend on whether the margins in Milwaukee and its surrounding suburbs of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington are closer to 2016, when Trump won, or 2020, when Biden took back the state.
North Carolina is expected to be the first swing state to be decided. As early results roll in, look at the Charlotte suburbs of Union and Cabarrus, which will show how Harris is faring among suburban voters.
Republicans have held the state in every election since Obama in 2008, when he won in large part because of high Black voter turnout. Harris needs to drive similar volumes of Democratic turnout, which is likely to come from the suburbs outside of cities like Charlotte, to offset Trump’s dominance in rural parts of the state.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk reacts next to Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump during a campaign rally, at the site of the July assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024.
Musk embraces “Dark MAGA” with race in a dead heat
Billionaire Elon Musk joined Donald Trump on stage in Butler, PA, on Saturday — where the former president was shot in July — to deliver a grim vision of America’s choice in the coming election, which he claimed “will be the last” if Trump loses.
Musk falsely claimed Democrats would “take away your freedom of speech … your right to bear arms … your right to vote,” and nodded at his extreme and conspiratorial tone. “As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, used the weekend to make a micro media blitz, appearing on the extremely popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast and CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday. She’s hitting both younger and older demos with those platforms, and is scheduled to talk to Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern, and “The View” this week.
With polls showing a race too close to call, every vote in the key swing states matters. It looks like it will come down to three crucial states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. If Trump wins any one of the three, he’s likely to win the election, while Harris will probably need to hold all three to secure victory. She’s leading but well within the margin of error, according to 538’s poll aggregator: She’s ahead 1.6 percentage points in both Wisconsin and Michigan — and just 0.6 in Pennsylvania. We’ll see if Musk’s performance makes a difference.
The worst time to enter Congress: Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace
Freshman Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina joined Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to recount her harrowing experience on Capitol Hill during the January 6 riots and to explain why she did not support impeaching a president she strongly condemned. She'll also discuss where she thinks Democrats and Republicans in Congress can come together in 2021.This is an extended interview from the recent GZERO World episode: After the insurrection: will Congress find common ground?
Mace referenced Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's account of the January 6 riots in a tweet on February 4. In late January, she told Ian Bremmer about her own experience on Capitol Hill that day. "I started to make my way back to my office, but I was unable to get to my building because of threats at the Capitol. In fact, there was a pipe bomb that was found just steps away from the Cannon Office building at C and First Street. And looking back at it now, I walked by a pipe bomb where that was to get into my office that day."
Mace recalled how she was stuck in a tunnel underneath the Capitol, trying to get back to her office. "I read police reports this week of rioters that knew that there were some members stuck in the tunnels underneath the Capitol, and they were trying to go down, find a way to get down there to find us and capture us. And so it was a very scary day. It's a day I will never forget. Our lives were at risk and were put in grave danger," she told GZERO World.
Rep. Nancy Mace's Firsthand Account of the Capitol Riots | GZERO Worldyoutu.be
Why Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace voted against impeachment
"I voted to certify the electoral college for the same reason that I voted against impeachment, for Constitutional reasons." Freshman Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace is not your typical conservative. Though a longtime supporter of President Trump, not only did she vote to certify Joe Biden's electoral win, she also strongly condemned his role in the January 6th Capitol riots. But when it came to impeaching the former president a second time, that, Rep. Mace said, was a bridge too far. She tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World why a vote against impeachment was consistent with her guiding principle of "constitutional conservatism." This episode of GZERO World also features an interview with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
Georgia Senate election is a game changer for Biden; Trump's effect on GOP's future
Jon Lieber, who leads Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, offers insights on US politics:
First question. What do the results of the Georgia Senate election mean?
Well, this is a real game changer for President Biden. He came into office with the most progressive agenda of any president in modern history and the Republicans controlling the Senate were prepared to block all of that. That meant no education spending, no healthcare spending, very little green energy spending and probably no stimulus spending, further COVID stimulus spending this year. Now the Democrats seem to have a majority in the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives. All of that can get done as well as tax increases in order to finance it. The concern now for the Democrats is overreach that could lead to backlash. They have very thin majorities in the House, and the trend has been that in the first midterm for a new president, you almost always lose seats in the House. Democrats can't really afford to lose too many. That may cause them to moderate some of their plans.
Second question. What's the future for President Trump and the Republican party?
Last night's Georgia elections were not good for President Trump. He really campaigned hard for the two Republican candidates. They really embraced him and ran as Trump Republicans in a state that's rapidly moderating and turning purple-ish, if not all the way blue. But the problem is for the Republicans is that President Trump has a strong base of voters who are very loyal to him. Many of them are here in Washington this week to protest the counting of the electoral college votes. Ultimately that will be a futile effort, but the fact that they're here, they're passionate supporters, they make up a big chunk of the Republican base, it's going to create problems the Republican party in the 2022 primaries. And you've got seats in the Senate in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, traditional swing states where they're going to have either vulnerable Senate Republican incumbents or open seats. And the primaries there are going to be quite competitive. If a Trump backed person emerges from those primaries, they're probably going to lose in the general election the way Loeffler and Perdue did in Georgia. It's going to be hard for Republicans to take back the majority in the Senate as long as that dynamic persists.
Quick Take: Russian cyber attacks, the Electoral College & Dr. Jill Biden
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hey everybody, Ian Bremmer here. Yet another week of your Quick Take. What the hell is going on?
Well, first, I mean, the news that we really didn't want to hear, these massive cyber attacks, almost certainly from Russia against the Department of Treasury, Department of Commerce and other places. So what do we make of this? Well first of all, this is not about timing to hit right before Biden becomes president. These attacks have been going on for months, we only just found out about them so they've been engaged. We could have found out after the election, before. The Russians were, in this case, they didn't know if Trump was going to win or not. They did it anyway. I think what's more relevant is that there are just an enormous number of vulnerabilities that the United States has in all of its critical infrastructure.
There's all sorts of attacks and espionage that are going on at the hands of the Russians, the Chinese to a lesser degree, Iran and some other actors, and we just don't find out about many of them. And that's a problem, that's an enormous vulnerability. Now, I guess the good news is that the U.S. has offensive capabilities that are every bit as robust as what the Russians and Chinese have. So even though we don't know how to deter, and we don't really know how to defend, the presumption is we also are engaging in these attacks ourselves. So, one thing that I think is relevant, I mean, this will be a serious issue, even a crisis that will be on incoming President Elect Biden's to do list as soon as he takes over, but that doesn't mean that he's going to take very serious action, and I think there are a bunch of reasons for that. One is because historically the Americans have not had very good ideas of what to do in response to cyber attacks when they're hard to identify, when there's a lot that's going on.
And when escalation is comparatively easy, you don't necessarily want to take a large measure that could lead to a major conflict. Furthermore, if the Americans are doing same, the potential that you could end up with a serious amount of mutual exposure of massive assets on both sides, that could lead to a lot of people being outed that are working in classified situations, that could have their lives ruined, their families ruined, maybe even get killed, something that you're reluctant to do, so it's not mutually assured destruction. It's not like the nuclear balance the Americans and the Russians have, but it is important to understand that we hear about few of the Russian and Chinese acts because we don't know about them. We hear about virtually none of the American cyber attacks on Russia and China because they're authoritarian states and they don't want to tell anyone that they have those vulnerabilities. So, the fact that we only have limited news here doesn't mean that we understand the full extent of the engagement.
Okay. That's one point. Secondly, today, big day today, we've got the electoral college actually making the President Elect, certifying, if you will, closing that election. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, which has been pretty consistently very pro-Trump, has come out and said, okay, it's it. It's over. You're done. Come on, concede now, President Trump. He's not going to do that. He's not going to do that because he sees no reason. He's raising a lot of money, he has the biggest megaphone in the Republican Parties, the most powerful person, and his ability to continue to have that influence after the elections are over grows if his story is the election was stolen against me, and a majority of Republicans who voted for him actually believe it. And they do.
That's a major problem for U.S. democracy. It's a major problem for the erosion of U.S. political institutions and for the divisions inside the United States politically, and of course, socially and economically. But there's no reason politically why Trump would change a strategy that is working, I mean, unless you think that he has some broader motive that he cares about, the sustainability of U.S. democracy or the wellbeing of the citizens as a whole, and I don't think anyone really buys that. So, this is a challenge, and it's going to continue to be a challenge, even though it's very clear that come January 20th, President Elect Biden becomes President Biden. And a final point, just something that I think I felt like weighing in on. I was sort of bemused, since we're talking about the Wall Street Journal, by this op-ed that got a massive amount of attention from this guy, Joe Epstein, that was quite disparaging and pretty misogynistic saying, Jill Biden, why don't you not call yourself a doctor?
And I say that because it was disparaging to her, referred to her as kiddo. I don't know why the editorial types would allow that to go through. It only talked about; it was disparaging about what she wrote her doctorate education on as opposed to other folks that could have easily been called out on that on the Republican side. I mean, why not say it's also wrong for Dr. Kissinger? Why not say it's wrong for Dr. Sebastian Gorka, who has a pretty silly PhD and always demands that you refer to him as that? But I will also say that I do personally feel like there are a lot of people out there that use credentials in ways that are kind of off-putting and disparaging. And I see it a lot in academe, especially with folks that haven't necessarily done a lot in their field, that they want everyone to call them doctor.
And it's kind of like the guy that you see at a party who immediately has to tell you how important they are, what they've accomplished in life, real blowhard and you try to avoid those people at all means. And I kind of feel like if you can do it, you don't necessarily need to show it. Having said that, there's a real issue of gender and race that is going on, which is that, I mean, when you are in an environment, especially academe, which is largely white and male dominated, and a society in the United States that's largely white male dominated, and you have an advanced degree and a lot of people are already finding ways to disparage you and put you down, that you definitely want to use that degree to force yourself into the dialogue, make it harder for people to say that you don't necessarily matter.
So, in other words, it's very easy for me to say, you don't have to call me doctor, and I don't like it when my students do it. And Ian is just fine, because I'm a white guy with a company and a job. But if you aren't necessarily in that situation, I'm a little bit more sympathetic. In fact, a lot more sympathetic. So anyway, those are my views. I think it's a complicated topic. And it was unfortunate that Epstein wrote such a stupid piece, because it's a piece that actually deserves a broader real conversation in lots of its manifestations. What I will say is that if you have a degree, or Lord knows a peerage, or a knighthood, or some other title, and you don't really need to be using it to stuff it in people's faces all the time, maybe take a step back. I think that generally speaking, anything we can do to create a greater sense of community and kinship is probably something that makes this world slightly better right now. A little bit less crazy, we always like that.
Anyway, good to talk to everybody. Hope everyone has a good week. It's Christmas coming up, and let's be well and avoid people. Talk to you soon.
Two key dates before Inauguration Day; Biden's first moves
Get insights on the latest news in US politics from Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington:
With the transition of power formally beginning now, what can we expect between now and inauguration day?
Well, there's a couple of important deadlines between now and Inauguration Day. The first is the December 14th meeting of the Electoral College, which will make the state certifications official and will make Joe Biden officially president-elect in the eyes of the US government. Another really important date is going to be January 5th, which is when Georgia has its runoff for the two Senate seats that will determine majority control in the Senate. If the Republicans win one of those seats, they'll maintain their majority, although very slim. If the Democrats win both of the seats, they'll have a 50/50 Senate with Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote and slightly more ability to enact Joe Biden's agenda next year. Also, between now and Inauguration Day, we're going to see Joe Biden announce his cabinet and senior staff. Most of whom will probably get confirmed fairly easily early, earlier ... Excuse me, later in January or early in February. And of course, we're going to see what President Trump is going to do next. I think that it's still a little bit up in the air what his post-presidency plans are. He has yet to concede the election. So, anything is possible from him, including a lot of new executive orders that could try to box Biden in and limit his options when it comes to economic policy, foreign policy, and social policy.
What can we expect out of the Biden administration's first 100 days?
Well, the biggest priority of the Biden administration first is going to be to confirm all of their cabinet appointees, and that should be pretty easy at the cabinet head level for the most part, even with a Republican controlled Senate. It's going to be a little more difficult once you get below the cabinet head, because then you're going to start to see some more ideological tests and some more policy concerns be flushed out by Republicans in the Senate. The second thing you're going to see is Biden start to undo as much of the Trump legacy as he can, and his primary vehicle for doing this is going to be executive orders, which is a lot of what president Trump used in order to enact policy. Expect Biden to reenter the Paris Climate Accord on day one and expect him to start undoing things like Trump's immigration orders and perhaps reversing some of his decisions on trade. Yet to be determined is if Congress is going to have fully funded the government for the entire year in December in the lame-duck session, and if they haven't, Biden's going to have to work out a deal probably in March or so to do that.
An election for these interesting times
Ian Bremmer talks about how the "interesting times" of this election match up to those of the late 1960s and it has become harder for many Americans to vote in recent decades.
Watch the episode: What could go wrong in the US election? Rick Hasen on nightmare scenarios & challenges