New York has taken part in all U.S. presidential elections since 1792, and has cast the majority of its electoral votes for the nationwide winner in 47 elections, giving a success rate of 81 percent. New York has generally voted for the more liberal candidate in U.S. elections, and has been a safe Democratic state since the 1988 election. In the 2020 election, New York was a comfortable win for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who carried the state by a 23 percent margin; however, the native New Yorker, Donald Trump, won in several of New York's more rural districts with around seventy percent of their popular vote, showing a stark contrast between urban and rural districts. Presidents from the Empire State A total of five U.S. presidents were born in New York; these were Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Donald Trump. These five men ran for president in eleven different elections, and carried their home state in six elections; Donald Trump is the only New Yorker to have won the election without carrying his home state. Several other losing candidates have carried their home state, with the most recent being Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 (both held public office in New York, but were born elsewhere).

Declining significance Throughout most of U.S. history, New York was the most populous state, and therefore had the largest share of electoral votes. This began in the 1812 election, where New York had 29 electoral votes; the allocation then fluctuated throughout the rest of the 1800s and early 1900s, peaking at 47 votes in the 1930s and 1940s. Since the 1950s, however, New York's allocation of electoral votes has gradually declined, and it was overtaken by California in the 1972 election, and then Texas in 2004. This is due to differing population growth rates across various regions of the U.S., as growth rates along the southern border tend to be much higher than in states along the east coast. In the 2020 election, New York's allocation of electoral votes is 29; this is expected to fall again to 28 votes in the 2024 election, where it will likely be overtaken by Florida as the third-most populous state.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2024 - 2024 New York: Trump vs. Harris

Florida was admitted to the union in 1845, and has taken part in 43 U.S. presidential elections since this time. In these 43 elections, Florida has voted for the overall winner thirty times, giving a success rate of seventy percent. Since 1928, Florida has voted for the winning candidate in 21 out of 24 elections, and is considered a key battleground state in modern elections. Florida has voted for a major party nominee in every election, backing the Republican nominee 17 times, Democrat 25 times, and the only time it did not vote Republican or Democrat was in 1848 when it voted for the Whig Party's Zachary Taylor. Florida did not take part in the 1864 election due to its secession from the Union in the American Civil War, and like most other southern states it primarily voted Democrat until the mid-twentieth century, when it then started leaning more Republican. No U.S. President has ever been born in Florida, or resided there when taking office; although Donald Trump declared himself a resident of Florida in 2019, therefore making it his official home state during the 2020 election. The 2020 election in Florida proved to be a surprise for many, as Donald Trump won the popular vote by a 3.4 percent margin; most polls had favored Biden going into election day, however intensive campaigning and increased Republican support among Cuban Americans has been cited as the reason for Trump's victory in Florida.

Florida's importance

In 1920, Florida's population was fewer than one million people; however it has grown drastically in the past century to almost 22 million people, making Florida the third most populous state in the country. With this population boom, Florida's allocation of electoral votes has surged, from just six in the 1920s, to 29 in recent elections (this is expected to increase to 31 votes in the 2024 election). Unlike the other most populous states, such as California and New York, which are considered safe Democratic states, or Texas, which is considered a safe Republican state, presidential elections in Florida are much more unpredictable. Florida is a southern state, and its majority-white, rural and suburban districts tend to vote in favor of the Republican Party (Republicans have also dominated state elections in recent decades), although, Florida is also home to substantial Hispanic population, and is a popular destination for young workers in the tourism sector and retirees from across the U.S., with these groups considered more likely to vote Democrat. However, the discrepancy between voters of Cuban (58 percent voted Republican) and Puerto Rican (66 percent voted Democrat) origin in the 2020 election shows that these traditional attitudes towards Hispanic voters may need to be re-evaluated.

2000 controversy The 2000 U.S. presidential election is one of the most famous and controversial elections in U.S. history, due to the results from Florida. The election was contested by the Republican Party's George W. Bush and the Democratic Party's Al Gore; by the end of election day, it became clear that Florida's 25 electoral votes would decide the outcome, as neither candidate had surpassed the 270 vote margin needed to win nationwide. While Florida's early results showed Bush in the lead, Gore's share of the results in urban areas then brought their totals close enough to trigger a recount; after a month of recounts and legal proceedings, Bush was eventually declared the winner of Florida by a margin of 537 popular votes (or 0.009 percent). Although Gore did win a plurality of the votes nationwide, Bush had won 271 electoral votes overall, and was named the 43rd President of the United States; this was just one of five elections where the candidate with the most popular votes did not win the election. In the six most recent U.S. presidential elections in Florida, the difference in the share of popular votes between the Republican and Democratic candidates has been just two percent on average.

Pennsylvania has taken part in every U.S. presidential election, correctly voting for the nationwide winner in 47 out of 59 elections, giving a success rate of eighty percent. Since 1828, Pennsylvania has voted for the Democratic nominee in twenty elections, and the Republican Party's nominee in 26 elections (including all but one elections from 1860 to 1932). The only time where Pennsylvania did not vote for a major party candidate was in 1912, where it granted its 38 electoral votes to Theodore Roosevelt, who was running as the candidate of the newly-formed Progressive Party. After voting Democrat in all elections between 1992 and 2012, Pennsylvania voted red in 2016, as Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by less than one percent of the popular vote. In 2020, Joe Biden flipped Pennsylvania blue again by 1.2 percent of the popular vote. Pennsylvania proved to be the decisive state in the week following the 2020 election, as the returns of mail in ballots gradually swung the result in Biden's favor, following a strong early showing from Donald Trump; the development of these results eventually signaled that Joe Biden had (provisionally) obtained the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election, leading all major news outlets to declare him the winner.

Pennsylvanians in office Prior to the 2020 election, James Buchanan is the only U.S. president to have been born in the Keystone State. Several other major party nominees have been born in Pennsylvania, including three of the losing candidates who ran between 1864 and 1884. Although he is more commonly associated with Delaware, Joe Biden's victory in 2020 made him the the second U.S. president to have been born in Pennsylvania, having spent the first ten years of his life in Scranton. Biden will, most likely, want to be remembered more favorably than Buchanan, who is consistently ranked as the worst U.S. president in history. Weakening influence From 1804 until 1964, Pennsylvania had the second-highest allocation of electoral votes in every U.S. presidential election (usually behind New York), with the number peaking at 38 electoral votes between 1912 and 1928. Since then, Pennsylvania's allocation of electoral votes has fallen gradually, and is expected to be just 19 votes in the 2024 election; half of what it was one century previously. The reason for this drop in electoral votes is due Pennsylvanians migrating to other parts of the country, while growing populations across the border and Midwestern states has seen a shift in population distribution across the country. Nonetheless, with 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is likely to remain one of the most valuable battleground states in future elections.