Northampton and Erie: The Pennsylvania counties that could define the presidential election

With the presidential election just days away, Pennsylvania is expected to be the key swing state. According to pollster Nate Silver, the winner of The Keystone State has more than a 90% chance of making it to the White House, making its importance even higher when it comes to defining the winner between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. In turn, within Pennsylvania, there are two counties that could define both the winner of the state and the election.

The latest polls show a scenario of almost total parity, albeit with the trend in Trump's favor. He recently moved into the lead in Fivethirtyeight's forecast and is increasingly supported by betting markets such as Polymarket.

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by just 80,555 votes, or 1.17 percentage points. With respect to the 2016 election, where Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 0.72 points, the only counties that switched from Republican to Democrat were Northampton and Erie.

Although it may seem like an isolated and even anecdotal change, it turns out that these two counties have been correctly predicting the Pennsylvania winner since 1992, which in this case could also define the election.

Swing counties

In 1988, Democrat Michael Dukkakis won Erie County, while George H.W. Bush prevailed in Northampton County. That was the last time these counties voted separately and the state winner did not take both.

Since then, they have acted as the state's barometer, located in the winner-take-all column of Pennsylvania. In turn, with the exception of 2004, when Democrat John Kerry won The Keystone State but did not make it to the White House, these counties have been accurate predictors of the winner of each presidential election:

As for Erie County, it is an industrial county geographically close to Buffalo, N.Y., and Cleveland. Northampton County is mostly white demographically and located near the Philadelphia suburbs.

"These are the counties that changed from Obama to Trump from Trump to Biden these are the places that will tell us what is going to happen on election night," explained from NewsNation in an election analysis.