Harris’s picking Walz over Shapiro was all about electoral votes

Many commentators have said that VP Kamala Harris should have selected Josh Shapiro,

Governor of Pennsylvania rather than Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The most repeated reason for selecting Shapiro was that he could have probably secured Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes. They assume that Harris cannot win the election without winning that state.

Their logic is faulty when it comes to adding electoral votes.

Those commentators ignore that Michigan and Wisconsin have a total of 25 electoral votes, six more than Pennsylvania. Harris and Walz must win them just as much, if not more, than Pennsylvania.

A critical battleground for electoral votes is the swing states that hug the Great Lakes region. The voters there have two key constituencies that the Democrats need to reach out to. The first are white working-class men, and the second are rural residents.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have chosen VPs who could attract those groups. On paper, JD Vance seems to be a perfect candidate. His childhood personal story aligns with both of those groups.

When Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate, it was assumed that Biden would remain the Democratic nominee for president. That allowed Vance to run against Harris, whom the Republicans tagged as a liberal Californian — worse yet, she was from San Francisco.