The path to 270: How Harris and Trump could gain enough electoral college votes to win

CATHY WURZER: OK, think of this number-- 270. It's a magic number. 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency. As you know, a state's allocation of electors, such as Minnesota's 10 electors, is based on population. There are 538 members of the Electoral College, which means a presidential candidate must secure the backing of 270 electors to win.

This election cycle, a lot of attention has been paid to the importance of seven battleground states-- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And each campaigns need to win those states electoral college votes. To chat more about the road to 270 is Hamline University political science and law professor David Schultz. Welcome back to the program, Professor. Happy election day.

DAVID SCHULTZ: Happy election day to you, too. And by the way, there's no evidence that stormy weather keeps voters away from the polls.

CATHY WURZER: Really? I did not know that. I did not know that.

DAVID SCHULTZ: I did that-- at least in Minnesota, we're hardy. I've done studies looking at the weather on election day, and there's no connection between how much snow, how much rain, or how cold in voter turnout. So we show up no matter what.

CATHY WURZER: Good to know. Good to know. Well, as you know, a number of organizations have created models to predict the result based on some combination of recent polling, demographic information, and other data to get to 270. It's pretty complicated. What are the possible pathways for Donald Trump to get to 270?

DAVID SCHULTZ: Well, it could be similar to what he had eight years ago when he was able to get to 270 by winning all the safe Republican states that he has, and then picking up Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And that would be one path to do it.

Another path to do it would be to pick up the southern states, which would be the Arizona's, the North Carolina's, and Georgia's. And, perhaps, maybe have to pick up, let's say, Nevada, and that would be a pathway for him. Actually, we could go through lots of scenarios, but both of the candidates really have several viable scenarios in terms of getting to 270, depending on how you add up that combination of seven swing states.

CATHY WURZER: OK. So when it comes to Kamala Harris, can she win if, say, she loses Pennsylvania? Is there other paths for her to win?

DAVID SCHULTZ: If she loses Pennsylvania, it's very, very hard for her to do so. She would probably, at that point, have to win North Carolina and Georgia to be able to compensate for it. For both candidates, I was going to say, Pennsylvania is really critical. Harris just about unequivocally has to win Pennsylvania to win the presidency and get to 270.

Trump can probably still win the presidency without winning Pennsylvania, but it's complicated for him. But also, keep in mind, just to throw in here, that even if Harris wins all the safe Democratic states and wins those three swing states, she would still need to pick up Omaha, Nebraska, because Nebraska is one of the two states in the country that split their electoral votes somewhat proportionally.

If she were to hold all the safe Democratic states, pick up those three swing states, and win Nebraska's Omaha area, she would have exactly 270 electoral votes. It would be the bare minimum she would need to be able to win the presidency.

CATHY WURZER: Now, for listeners, you've made the prediction that it really isn't seven states at play. Rather, it'll get down to some 10 counties, I believe you said, which is really at the micro level. Can you explain that?

DAVID SCHULTZ: Sure. What we're finding out is that within each of the swing states, there is really one or two counties in each of those states that really drives the election. And we know that because these are counties that are incredibly populous and really can drive the state. And we know by looking at candidates' behavior, they know that also, too.

So let's just run through a few of them here. For example, we're looking at Arizona, it's Maricopa County. In Georgia, it would be Fulton County. We're looking at a place like Michigan, it would be Wayne County. Perhaps in Wisconsin, Brown County. In North Carolina, Wake County. Clark County, Nevada.

And Pennsylvania, it's a hard call. Some people are saying Bucks County right outside of Philadelphia. Some are saying Allegheny County, which is Pittsburgh proper. And then if you're looking for bellwethers counties that are giving good signals, it could either be Erie County or Lackawanna County-- Lackawanna County being where Scranton, Pennsylvania is.

So if we add them all up there, we've got somewhere around 10 counties that are going to drive it. And just to make it even better, it's the swing voter in those counties. And so the way I describe it is that it's a few swing voters and a few swing counties and a few swing states that are going to determine this election.

And if we go back over the last two years, public opinion is so fixed, so polarized. Nothing has really shifted in two years right after the midterms, that I've been saying for at least a year and a half, two years, this election comes down to about 150,000 to 200,000 voters. That's it. That's how tight this election is.

CATHY WURZER: You know, I wonder then, if some people hear that and think, well, what's the point of my voting if the whole thing comes down to 10 counties or a handful of states? As a political scientist, what do you tell those people?

DAVID SCHULTZ: What I tell them is, nobody shows up to vote, and then all bets are off. It all changes. All these predictive models are based upon assuming that people adhere to their normal behavior, that they show up and vote, and they perform the way they normally do.

Plus, even if it turns out, for example, that Minnesota's not a swing state at the presidential level, we have eight congressional races, a US Senate race. We have a state legislature that's up for election. The vote still really does matter even at that level there. So you still want to show up. You still want to cast your ballot for all kinds of prudential reasons, but also for all kinds of reasons.

As I say to my students that we had a lot of our ancestors who fought hard for this right to be able to do this, and the least we can do to honor their legacy is to show up to vote. But, certainly, at the end of the day, every vote, especially in this election across the country, still is going to matter for control of Congress, for the presidency, for state legislatures across the country.

CATHY WURZER: So what's your most likely scenario in terms of when do you think we might have a presidential winner? What are you betting on?

DAVID SCHULTZ: I am betting on, probably-- unless something goes completely unpredictable in terms of how the returns are coming in or the mobilization is coming in-- I'm going to say somewhere around Thursday or Friday. And because there's over two million outstanding ballots in Pennsylvania that will not be counted until starting tomorrow. That's going to take quite a bit of time to count those.

And everybody's predicting that Pennsylvania will be razor thin. But if I'm going to give people some benchmarks just for some signs here, that, if for example, Harris is either in the lead by midnight tonight, in the lead in Pennsylvania, or very, very close to being in the lead, she's probably won Pennsylvania, she's probably won the presidency.

Tonight, if we're going to look at a couple of states-- I think it is Georgia, polls close at 7 o'clock, and 8:00 to 7:30 for North Carolina-- look to see what's going to happen there. North Carolina actually counts pretty quickly. We could probably note mid to late evening in Minnesota what's going to happen in North Carolina.

And if Trump were to lose North Carolina, that's going to be a very, very difficult night for him tonight. So those would be my benchmarks. But in terms of official, in terms of something that looks like official counting, I think it's going to be the end of the week. But remember, what I always want to tell people is a couple of things.

That with all the early voting, we have to add together early voting, plus votes on election day, plus anything that's counted afterwards that's allowed to come in, that's the total count. And that's going to take a few days. And then, still, we've got about two to three weeks out, depending on what state we live in, before what's called the canvassing boards meet. And those canvassing boards actually certify the count. So we still have ways to go. And I actually call election day the rough draft, the first draft.

CATHY WURZER: All right. We'll see what happens when the final draft is written. Thank you, David Schultz.

DAVID SCHULTZ: My pleasure. Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Professor Schultz is at Hamline University. He's a political science and legal studies professor at Hamline. He's also an adjunct law professor at the University of Minnesota and the University of St. Thomas.