These 9 suburban counties could be Harris' key to the White House: analysis

The easiest path for Vice President Kamala Harris to win 270 Electoral College votes will go through the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (also known as the "Blue Wall"). And a new analysis breaks down exactly where she could focus her resources to add those states to her win column.

On Wednesday, the New Republic's Greg Sargent interviewed veteran journalist Ronald Brownstein of the Atlantic, who recently broke down exactly how Harris could carry the Blue Wall states. According to Brownstein, the vice president could secure the critical swing states by going all-in on not just major urban centers, but on nine suburban counties that each house significant numbers of voters.

Perhaps the biggest prize of the Blue Wall states is Pennsylvania, which carries 19 electoral votes and has been characterized as the most critical battleground state by the Wall Street Journal in addition to Georgia. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are both Democratic strongholds and Harris will obviously need to juice turnout in both cities if she hopes to win the Keystone State.

But Brownstein pointed out that the four suburban counties outside of Philadelphia — Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties — were crucial for President Joe Biden when he flipped the state from red to blue in 2020.

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"The four suburban counties outside of Philly, Biden won them by 290,000 votes, maybe she has to win them by 305 [thousand]," Brownstein told Sargent.

Michigan carries the second most electoral votes, with 15 going to the eventual winner. Harris will need large turnout not just in Detroit proper, but in neighboring Oakland County. In 2020, Biden won Michigan by getting 155,000 more votes across the Mitten State than former President Donald Trump. A large chunk of his margin of victory came from winning Oakland County, which he carried by roughly 109,000 votes.

"Oakland County outside of Detroit — the white collar bookend to Macomb County, which is the blue collar suburb of Detroit that became famous in the 1980s as the home of the Reagan Democrats; we, at some points in the ’90s, talk about Oakland as the home of the Clinton Republicans, and it’s moved further toward the Democrats," Brownstein said. "Biden won that by about twice as big a vote margin as Hillary Clinton did."

Brownstein also identified four major counties in Wisconsin where Harris needs to build up a big lead in order to keep the Badger State in Democratic hands. Dane County, which houses the capital city of Madison, is a major source of Democratic votes, provided 260,000 votes for Biden in 2020. But his narrow 21,000-vote margin of victory came by turning out Democratic voters in the three so-called "WOW counties" — Waukesha, Ozakee and Washington Counties — outside of Milwaukee. Those suburban counties all went for Trump, but Biden still managed to turn out more than 156,000 Democrats there. Brownstein estimates Harris will need to beat those margins if she hopes to take Wisconsin.

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"The pincer movement from Trump [is] stronger in the small towns, maybe a little bit stronger in the central cities. How does Harris respond? She has to max out in those big inner suburbs," Brownstein said. He also emphasized the importance of Harris piling up votes from women voters.

"In 2022, all of the governor candidates in those states — [Gretchen] Whitmer, [Josh] Shapiro, [Tony] Evers — ran better among not only ... especially they ran better among college educated white women than Biden had done two years earlier," he continued. "They generally ran a little better among college men than Biden had done two years earlier, and most of them ran even better among college, non-college white women who are plentiful in these suburbs too."

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