These 5 'bellwether' counties could make or break presidential election — here’s why

Vice President Kamala Harris in Glendale, Arizona on August 9, 2024 (Gage Skidmore)
Alex Henderson
September 17, 2024AlterNet Exclusives

Many national polls released after Vice President Kamala Harris' September 10 debate with former President Donald Trump in Philadelphia are showing Harris with small single-digit leads.

Trump trails Harris by 4 percent in polls from Yahoo News, ABC News/Ipsos and Forbes/HarrisX, while Trump is ahead by 3 percent in an Atlas Intel poll. But Harris continues to describe herself as the "underdog" in the race, and veteran Democratic strategist has cautioned that battleground state polls are the ones to pay especially close attention to — as the Electoral College, not the popular vote, will ultimately decide the election.

In a listicle published by the conservative website The Bulwark on September 16, journalist Daniel McGraw names five counties in key swing states that will offer "signs of which way the state will go."

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"Seven swing states will decide the presidential election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin," McGraw explains. "Two of those states are dominated by huge counties home to their largest cities: Clark County, home to Las Vegas, in Nevada; and Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and environs, in Arizona."

McGraw goes on to list five counties that merit especially close attention — and they are: (1) Erie Country, Pennsylvania, (2) Oakland County, Michigan, (3) Door County, Wisconsin, (4) Union County, North Carolina; and (5) Cobb County, Georgia.

"Both vice presidential candidates, Tim Walz and JD Vance, have visited Erie recently, a sign of how important this old industrial county (population 270,876) on Lake Erie is to both campaigns," McGraw notes. "Donald Trump won Erie by 2 percent when he won Pennsylvania in 2016 and lost it 1 percent in 2020 when the state went for Biden. The county is home to many of the white, working-class Rust Belt voters both parties have been competing over for years, but there's not much either side can do to restore its former industrial glory."

McGraw describes Oakland County, Michigan as a "Democratic stronghold," noting, "Unlike Erie County, the question isn't who wins it, but by how much." And he points to Door Country, Wisconsin as a "bellwether" that "has voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1996, and all but one since 1980."

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"If you want to see how Georgia turned blue in the last election, look no further than the Atlanta metro area," the journalist argues. "And if you want to drill a little deeper, look to Cobb County, a growing area with 766,149 people. Clinton won the county in 2016 by just 2 percent, and Biden won it in 2020 by 14 percent. Put another way: Trump never would have needed to pressure and threaten Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to 'find' him 11,780 votes if he hadn't lost Cobb County by a whopping 56,000 votes."

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Read Daniel McGraw's full Bulwark listicle at this link.