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What Keir Starmer’s victory means for Kamala Harris
By Will Marshall
Founder and President of the Progressive Policy Institute
for The Hill
Vice President Kamala Harris has righted her party’s capsized ship and opened a small but consistent lead over Donald Trump in national polls. Now comes the decisive test: Charting a winning course in the Electoral College.
To attain a majority of 270 votes or more, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), must carry at least three, and in some scenarios four of the seven battleground states. All look like dead heats today.
They can count on a strong turnout by a reenergized Democratic base, but that won’t be enough. You can’t win swing states without winning swing voters. The campaigns are spending prodigiously in these states to sway roughly 3 million voters who tell pollsters they’ve yet to make up their minds.
The fence-sitters tend to be moderate, independent and working-class (non-college). New research on swing voters by my organization estimates that undecided voters without college degrees range from about 13 to 16 percent of the population in the battleground states.
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