Washington — Pennsylvania is a critical battleground state for both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, and both candidates and their running mates have been blitzing the Keystone State for months.
Pennsylvania, the fifth-most populous state with 13 million people, has 19 electoral votes. That’s the most electoral votes of any battleground state.
Results in Pennsylvania likely won’t be known on Election Night. Pennsylvania law doesn’t allow the early processing of mail-in ballots, which dragged out the state’s 2020 ballot counting process. Pennsylvania election officials are bracing themselves for conspiracy theories and protests.
“Elections in Pennsylvania have never been more safe and secure with a voter verified paper ballot record of every vote that’s cast, whether you vote in person on Election Day or you vote by mail,” Al Schmidt, a Republican and the state’s top election official, told “60 Minutes” in October.
Read more on the vote-counting process in the state here.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016, and President Biden, who was born in Pennsylvania, won it in 2020. The state, which is really a commonwealth, has a strong cohort of White, blue-collar workers, as well as a diverse population in Philadelphia. Unions still have a strong presence in Pennsylvania, especially in the western part of the state.
As of late October, polls showed Harris and Trump virtually tied in the state. A September CBS News/YouGov poll showed Harris with 50% of the vote in Pennsylvania and Trump with 50%.
Polling places in Pennsylvania closed at 8 p.m. ET across the state.
