The 2024 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States elections in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia will participate.
Pennsylvania voters will choose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes in the Electoral College, following reapportionment due to the 2020 United States census in which the state lost a seat.
A purple to slightly blue Northeastern state partly within the Rust Belt, Pennsylvania has not backed a Republican for president by double digits since 1972, when 49-state landslide winner Richard Nixon won it by nearly 20 points; and the last Republican to win the state’s electoral votes twice was Ronald Reagan. Between 1992 and 2012, Pennsylvania voted Democratic in every presidential election, although doing so by single-digit margins in each of them apart from Barack Obama’s 10.31% victory in 2008.
In 2016, Republican Donald Trump (whose home state was neighboring New York in said cycle) narrowly carried the state by 0.72% in his upset sweep of the Rust Belt and the first Republican presidential victory in Pennsylvania since 1988, but four years later lost the state to Democrat Nominee Joe Biden by 1.18% as the latter defeated the former nationwide. Pennsylvania is considered to be one of the most important, if not the single most important swing state in 2024. It is generally believed that the candidate who wins Pennsylvania is almost certain to win the entire election. Most major news organizations mark it as a tossup.
In 2022, no-excuse mail-in voting was upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Automatic voter registration was enacted in 2023, helping to register citizens when getting a driver’s license. On July 13, 2024, Trump was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt while holding a campaign rally west of Butler, Pennsylvania. The former president was struck in the right ear while on stage and was surrounded by Secret Service agents until the shooter was killed by members of the Counter Assault Team. One rally-goer died and two others were critically injured.
Add Comment