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Minnesota Now with Cathy Wurzer
Cathy Wurzer and Alanna Elder

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

A map showing electoral college votes and the state's current leaning
Analysis by Domenico Montanaro | Graphic by Juweek Adolphe via NPR
Graphic and analysis via NPR

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In the presidential race, 270 is the magic number — 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency. A states’ allocation of electors, such as Minnesota’s ten 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 like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Each campaign needs to win those state’s electoral college votes for victory.

A number of organizations have created models to predict the result based on some combination of recent polling, demographic information and other data. It’s complicated. To parse it out, Hamline University political science and law professor David Schultz joins MPR News host Cathy Wurzer to chat about how each candidate could get to those 270 votes.

Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.

Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.