What States Does Donald Trump Need to Win?

The race to 270 is officially underway, and former President Donald Trump is currently in the lead to get the Electoral College votes that either candidate needs to take the White House.
None of the seven battleground states in the 2024 presidential election—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—have been called yet.
As of 10:48 p.m. ET, Trump leads in Georgia with 51.1 percent of the vote. Vice President Kamala Harris has 48.2 percent of the vote. An estimated 88 percent of the votes have been counted in the Peach State, which means Harris could still catch up in an election expected to be one of the closest in American history.
However, if things continue to trend this way, that would give Trump Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. Brad Raffensperger, the state’s Republican secretary of state who famously denied Trump the 11,700 votes he needed to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State, said just before 11 p.m. ET that he predicts Georgia will go for the former president.
“If you look at who’s leading the race right now, Donald J Trump has an insurmountable lead, with the number of votes outstanding,” Raffensperger said. “It looks like this is done.”
Here’s which other states Trump would need to clinch 270 before Harris:
The short answer is yes.
The long answer? Trump is projected to win Arizona’s 11 electoral votes. With Arizona and Georgia under his belt, Trump could be elected to a second term if he takes North Carolina in addition to just one of the three Great Lakes states.
With Georgia and North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes each, he would not need Pennsylvania to win.
There is also a chance that Trump could flip Virginia, a state that Joe Biden carried by a margin of 10.1 percent in 2020. Biden’s performance in the last election was the best performance for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.
With an estimated 64 percent of votes in, Trump has 49.7 percent of the vote. Harris trails with 48.4 percent as of 10 p.m. ET.
What happens if Trump loses North Carolina?
In that case, he would have to carry the crown jewel of the swing states, Pennsylvania, to win the White House.
With 19 electoral votes, the Keystone State has the highest number of electoral votes up for grabs. Without North Carolina, Trump cannot afford to lose Pennsylvania to Harris because if she takes both states, she would need only one more swing state to go her way. That could be Michigan, Wisconsin or even Nevada, which has the fewest electoral votes of the seven battleground states with just six votes.
Plus, there’s still a chance that Harris could take Georgia.
As of 10:45 p.m. ET, 21 states have been called for Trump, giving him 207 electoral votes.
The former president has won Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. Trump has also won Florida, which was once a swing state but is now reliably red.
Trump is watching the election from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Even though the state was called for the Republican early into the night, his watch party loudly cheered when the Sunshine State’s trove of electoral votes went to Trump.
Florida has become increasingly red in recent elections. Trump won the state by just over a percentage point in 2016. In 2020, he expanded his margin of victory to more than three points, and he’s expected to win by an even larger margin this year.
Update 11/05/24, 10:23 p.m. ET: This article was updated with the latest vote count.
Update 11/05/24, 10:48 p.m. ET: This article was updated with the latest vote count.
Update 11/05/24, 11:07 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.