The winner of the US presidential election will govern a nation of more than 330 million people, but the contest will almost certainly be decided by just tens of thousands of voters — a tiny fraction of the populace — in a handful of states.

According to Reuters, among the seven of the 50 states that are truly competitive this year, Pennsylvania, the most populous, stands out as the most likely state to determine whether Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump will be the next president.

There are seven states that could swing either way on November 5: the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and the Sun Belt quartet of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

As of Oct 16, according to a New York Times public poll tracker, all seven battleground states were in a virtual dead heat. Trump held a narrow 2-percentage-point lead in Arizona; the other six swing states were all within a point on average, the tracker showed.

With 19 electoral votes, more than any other battleground, Pennsylvania is widely seen as critical to either Harris’s or Trump’s chances of winning the White House and is considered the most likely “tipping point” state — the one that carries a candidate past 269 electoral votes.

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