Pennsylvania could tip the election. Where Trump and Biden stand now in the polls

Pennsylvania could decide the winner of the presidential race — and Democratic nominee Joe Biden is leading President Donald Trump in Election Day polls.

The state, which went for Trump in 2016, is considered a key battleground with 20 electoral votes up for grabs. Poll analysis site FiveThirtyEight ranks it as the state most likely to “deliver the decisive vote” in the Electoral College, with a 36.5% chance.

The second most likely state is Florida, with a 14.3% chance, followed by Michigan with a 7.7% chance, according to FiveThirtyEight.

In Pennsylvania, Biden is leading Trump in the polls by an average of 4.7 percentage points as of Tuesday morning, according to FiveThirtyEight.

The former vice president has been faring better than Trump in the state’s polls throughout the election season, FiveThirtyEight shows, though his margins have varied.

Poll aggregator RealClearPolitics shows Biden leading Trump in Pennsylvania by an average of 1.2 percentage points as of Tuesday morning. The site also shows him consistently ahead throughout the election.

Pennsylvania has been a topic on the national debate stage, where Trump has accused Biden of wanting to ban hydraulic fracturing, which has boosted the state’s economy. Biden, who spent part of his childhood in Scranton, has repeatedly said he would not ban the practice, which involves drilling for oil or gas.

Biden has an 84% chance and Trump has a 16% chance of winning Pennsylvania, according to FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast, meaning Biden is “favored” to win.

The site predicts Biden will win 52% of the vote share compared to Trump’s 47.3%.

Trump scraped by in Pennsylvania in 2016 with 48.2% of the vote compared to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 47.5%, according to Ballotpedia. It was the first election in which Pennsylvania was won by a Republican since 1988, when President George H.W. Bush beat Democrat Michael Dukakis.

Despite Biden’s advantage in the polls, experts say Trump could still win Pennsylvania.

The former vice president’s lead in the state is “solid but not spectacular,” Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, wrote on the site.

“Without Pennsylvania, Biden does have some paths to victory, but there’s no one alternative state he can feel especially secure about,” Silver wrote.

On election night, results in Pennsylvania will likely skew Republican, FiveThirtyEight predicts, as they’re likely to be “disproportionately made up of Election Day votes.” Officials weren’t permitted to start counting absentee ballots — which many voters cast due to the pandemic — until 7 a.m. Nov. 3.

“As absentee ballots are counted in the ensuing days, the state will probably experience a blue shift,” FiveThirtyEight says.

Pennsylvania’s absentee ballot laws have been the center of a legal battle leading up to the election. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling from the state’s highest court that said mailed ballots received up to three days after Election Day can be counted.

But Trump and his campaign have indicated they will fight to prevent those ballots from being counted — meaning the rule could end up in the Supreme Court “especially if those ballots could tip the outcome,” The Associated Press reports.