Well, here it is: Election Night 2024. Millions of Americans have already cast their ballots, and it might take a few days to learn who the next president will be. But tonight, the polls will close on one of the most unpredictable elections in recent history. An election that was posed to be a rematch between two elderly men who had faced off in 2020 turned into one defined by assassination attempts and a surprise change at the top of the Democratic ticket.
As always, it’s impossible to decode what precisely will happen and who will win by how much. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. But there are always indicators.
A few weeks ago, Inside Washington broke down House races to watch that might show who wins the whole thing. In the same vein, because of the electoral college, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump need to focus on specific counties in each of the seven swing states.
Without further ado, here are the seven most important counties to watch on Election Night if you want an early sense of who’s going to win overall.
Maricopa County, Arizona
Of all of the swing states, Arizona might be the state where Trump has the best chance. Even though he trashed favorite son John McCain, his numbers still look good. But if he is to win Arizona, he will need to make sure he cuts into Harris’s lead in Maricopa County.
The home of Phoenix, Maricopa is McCain country. Trump narrowly won it in 2016, but it flipped to Joe Biden in 2020.
It’s full of the old-school Republicans and independents. It also has plenty of high-income earners in places like Paradise Valley, which has a median income of $221,333.
As Democrats become the party of high-income earning white voters, Harris will need to run up the scoreboard here. But also expect this county to decide Arizona’s Senate race between Ruben Gallego and pro-MAGA election denier Kari Lake.
Erie County, Pennsylvania
All eyes are on Pennsylvania. Harris held her final rally on Monday evening in Philadelphia, where she needs to maximize turnout from Black voters. She also campaigned in Allentown, home to a large Puerto Rican population, after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a joke at Trump’s rally calling it a “floating island of garbage.”
But both Harris and Trump campaigned heavily in Erie, a classic white working-class county that had hollowed out in recent decades thanks to factories closing. Trump’s mad-as-hell populist rhetoric resonated with voters there but “Scranton Joe” pro-worker approach won over Erie’s voters last time around.
John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro performed well there in 2022. Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate JD Vance hails from Ohio, which is right on the border with the county.
Waukesha County, Wisconsin
When Harris held a series of events in the Blue Wall with Liz Cheney, her decision to hold an event in Waukesha did not fall out of a coconut tree. One of the “WOW Counties,” alongside Ozaukee and Washington County, Waukesha has historically been a bastion for white conservatives. But as a heavily suburban county, it’s slowly shed Republican voters.
In 2008, John McCain won about 62 percent of the vote. But in 2020, Trump won 59.7 percent of the vote. In a state that Biden only won by 20,682 votes, those small margins matter.
Other places to watch include Milwaukee, where Harris must run up the scoreboard with Black voters; Dane County, home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and therefore plenty of college students; and Brown County, where the Green Bay Packers play and where Trump held his garbage truck stunt.
Oakland County, Michigan
Plenty of people have wondered whether Michigan’s Arab American population will deliver the state to Trump, given the Biden-Harris administration’s unconditional support for Israel during Netanyahu’s war in Gaza. They may, but Arab Americans make up a sliver of the population.
Whether that happens or not, Harris — or Trump, for that matter — will have to do well in Oakland County.
Oakland includes some of the white upper-class suburbs of Detroit. In 2016, Hillary Clinton barely got a majority of the vote there when Trump won Michigan. Biden built on her lead when he put Michigan back in the Democratic column.
Almost a third of voters in the 2024 Republican primary voted for Nikki Haley instead of Trump. If Arab Americans do wind up sitting out this election or even voting for Trump, Harris will need to make it up in places like Oakland and Macomb Counties, or she’s toast.
Clark County, Nevada
Followers of The Nevada Independent’s editor Jon Ralston may also know Clark County as the Democratic Firewall. That’s because Democrats, largely buoyed by the work of late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have built their party machine around maximizing turnout in the county that includes Las Vegas.
The state’s Culinary Union Local 226 engages in an aggressive door-knocking and voter turnout operation. By contrast, much of the rest of the state’s other more rural counties are vote banks for Republicans.
The GOP have done better at maximizing early voter turnout this year. The Covid-19 pandemic battered the state’s economy and it has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country, after the District of Columbia. It also has a large Latino working-class population — just the type of voter Trump has courted in recent years.
Forsyth County, Georgia
When Fox News held its women’s town hall with Trump last month, it chose to have it in Forsyth County for a reason.
The heavily white county has long been a Republican stronghold. It also has a darker history, given that after Reconstruction, it kicked out its Black residents and the Ku Klux Klan operated openly there as late as 1987.
But in recent years, it has slowly diversified and even though it remains staunchly Republican, Democrats have cut into Republican margins.
Other places to watch include the Black Belt of Georgia in the southern part of the state that helped elect Raphael Warnock and the suburbs of Atlanta.
Union County, North Carolina
Just like how Republicans have wanted to flip Nevada for years, Democrats have not quite figured out how to win North Carolina again since Obama’s 2008 victory. But if it does finally flip, it will be because of places like Union County.
he Bulwark’s Daniel McGraw broke down some fascinating statistics about Union recently. North Carolina has seen an influx of northerners moving in from out of state and Union epitomizes this shift. Located just east of Mecklenburg County, which houses Charlotte, in 2010 it had only 201,292 residents. As of 2023, that number hovers around 256,452, according to the US Census Bureau.
In 2016, Clinton won only about 32 percent of the vote. In 2020, Biden won about 37 percent of the vote.
In addition to Union, watch Cabarrus County, just north of Charlotte, which shifted significantly to the left in 2020. And keep an eye on the Piedmont Triad, where Trump campaigned heavily, and Robeson, which he won twice after it had voted Democratic for more than a century.
For Harris, see how well she does not just in the Triangle that houses colleges like the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University and Duke, but also the northeastern Black counties.