Victory for Trump or Harris comes down to three states in the 2024 presidential election

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are in the fight of their lives with the presidential race neck-and-neck ahead of Election Day on November 5. 

Whoever wins the White House will be able to set the course of the country for a generation.

But while millions of voters will head to the polls on or before Election Day, the presidential race is expected to come down to just a handful of states that will decide the outcome.

 The first presidential candidate to receive 270 electoral votes will become the next President of the United States. 

There are seven swing states that could go either way, but depending on which candidate picks up some of the biggest battleground states, the path to victory dramatically narrows.

The swing state with the most electoral votes up for grabs is Pennsylvania. Win that state and the path to victory is easier for either candidate.

That's why both candidates have been aggressively campaigning in the states.

The other two states that will decide the presidential race and who wins the White House from there are Georgia and North Carolina.   

 Harris' path to the White House

If Harris wins Pennsylvania, she just needs to pick up two or three more battleground states at most to become president. 

But if she loses the Keystone State, her win becomes nearly impossible. Democrats have not won the White House without winning Pennsylvania since Harry Truman in 1948.  

The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows it is a razor-thin race in the state with Harris up just one point over Trump. 

The state went blue for President Biden in 2020 by just 80,000 votes, but the ex-president won it in 2016.

If Trump carries it in 2024, Harris needs to win at least four other states to pull off a victory and that path needs to include at least one of the swing states with sixteen electoral votes meaning the race runs directly through North Carolina or Georgia. 

Without one of those two southern states, the vice president cannot overcome the loss in Pennsylvania even if she wins Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin.

The latest polling shows the races in both Georgia and North Carolina are also statistically tied.

The Real Clear Politics average has Trump up just 0.1 percent in North Carolina. In Georgia, the average of polling has him up two points. 

Trump won North Carolina in both 2016 and 2020 while he lost Georgia by less than 12,000 votes to President Biden in 2020.

Trump's path to the White House 

If Trump does not win Pennsylvania, his path to the White House is also much harder. 

Even if Trump locks in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which have close races, he still comes up short of the necessary 270 electoral votes and cannot win the presidency without either Georgia or North Carolina. 

And even if he wins both the southern swing states, he would still need to pick up a combination of at least two other battleground states to overcome a loss in Pennsylvania.

It is not any wonder both Harris and Trump have made numerous appearances in the Keystone State in the final stretch of the campaign season.

Pennsylvania is also seeing the most ad spending of any state in the presidential race with both Democrats and Republicans dropping tens of millions of dollars on on TV, radio and digital ads in the state as Election Day looms.

Over the course of the final two months of the campaign Democrats are set to spend more than $75 million on ads in Pennsylvania. 

Republicans are sending more than $60 million in the state, according to tracking by AdImpact.

When it comes to North Carolina and Georgia, Democrats are on track to outspend Republicans.

Democrats are set to spend roughly $40 million while Republicans are et to spend roughly $30 million.

In North Carolina, Democrats have more than $30 million in ad reservations for the final two months while Republicans have $20 million.