Memo: Why Joe Biden Doesn’t Need to Win Pennsylvania

By Charlotte Swasey VP of Data & Polling, Data For Progress

Key Takeaways

  • An early Biden victory is possible, even if Pennsylvania takes a long time
    to produce results

  • Biden has a path to 270 electoral votes through Florida, without Pennsylvania

  • He could also get to 270 with Arizona and either North Carolina, Georgia, or a Nebraska/Maine combination

  • We’ll be tracking live results over at the Election Night Integrity Project:
    2020.dataforprogress.org

Our final numbers show a strong Biden lead nationally. Of course, the popular vote is not the final determinant of who wins the presidency, as we all saw in 2016. Most forecasters have Pennsylvania as the tipping point state, where Biden would earn that crucial 270th electoral vote. This is complicated not because of any disagreement over the likely Pennsylvania results, but because of the fear that legal challenges in the state could lead to an extremely slow count and the possible omission of absentee ballots. 

However, according to our final polls, we see a path to victory for Biden that does not require final Pennsylvania results to have 270 EVs allocated. 

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