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Why are they so important? Trump would get to exactly 270 with these two states and the other states currently leaning in his favor — without having to win North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin or Michigan.

The Trump campaign views Pennsylvania and Georgia as must-wins in order to win. You don’t have to look at its ad spending. Since Super Tuesday, Trump and his allies have spent 77% of all their ad money in these two states — $50 million in Pennsylvania and $16 million in Georgia, according to data from AdImpact analyzed by NPR.

1. The Sun Belt options: If Harris is able to win one or multiple Sun Belt states, she could make up for deficiencies in the Blue Wall. Her campaign is optimistic that she could turn around the Sun Belt and points out that her campaign has seen an increase in volunteers.

This will change between now and November 5, and NPR maps will be updated frequently to reflect that. But for now this analysis is intended to give a rough overview of where the race currently stands since Harris has gotten in — and not necessarily where it will be in the end.

For the state polling, NPR’s analysis is based on surveys aggregated by FiveThirtyEight and DDHQ/The Hill. If a candidate had an average lead in both aggregators of 1 point or more, as of Friday afternoon, it is colored a shade of red for Trump or blue for Harris. It is yellow if it was less than that.

This analysis is based on more than just polling. It’s also informed by reporting from the field, conversations with campaigns and also considers the history of how states have voted in the past. We also include a map strictly based on polling (below). That shows a slightly closer 268-241 Trump lead.

Harris is also winning independents and that’s something Biden was not doing. Harris is up 9 points for independents. She was down 14 points with them last month. And in early July, Trump was beating Biden by almost 20 points with the group. That is a huge change.

Since President Biden dropped out of the presidential race and the Democratic Party has coalesced around Vice President Harris, the political world has changed.

That result is 4 points better than just after Harris got into the race two weeks ago when President Biden bowed out. Harris maintains a 3-point lead (48%-45%) when third-party choices are offered, too.

Black voters, white women with college degrees and women who identify as political independents are fueling her rise. She is doing 20 to 30 points better with them than when she first got in, leading to improvement in the suburbs and with white voters overall.

The negative views of the economy are not like what was done to Biden. Trump is still more trusted on the economy, but only by 3 points over Harris (51%-48%), compared to 9 points over Biden (54%-45%) in June.

The survey was conducted from Thursday through Sunday, before Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate. Marist interviewed 1,613 adults via cellphone, landline and online research panels in English and in Spanish. The survey’s margin of error is 3.3 percentage points, so the results could be either higher or lower.

Hispanics have supported Harris in the past. Fifty-eight percent say they would vote for her now, compared to 51% last month. That is still below how much Biden won in 2020.

Biden was seeing double-digit drop offs with Gen Z/Millennials, for example. Harris, on the other hand, maintains and slightly expands her margin when respondents have a choice of candidates other than the two major-party picks.

But now, that’s up to 81% with Black voters, 84% with Latinos and 80% with Gen Z/Millennials, closer to being on par with white voters than in previous surveys.

Since April, all of the third party candidates have seen their scores go down. Robert Kennedy Jr. is running as an independent. Professor West, as an independent, is polling at or below 1%, as is Stein, and Oliver, as a Libertarian.

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People are also more satisfied with their choices, though only 47% say they are compared to 50% who say they are not. A 10-point difference was found between people who were satisfied and people who were unhappy with their choices in June.

While trustworthiness was the most important quality for Democrats and independent voters, a plurality of Republicans said a “strong leader” was most important to them.

In 2022, when they denied Republicans from winning a wave of House seats, Democrats had a 4-point edge over the Republicans in the Marist poll, but they lost House seats, so they made significant gains.

The congressional ballot and change in numbers of seats don’t always correlate well because the most competitive seats are in the same cycle. In this cycle, for example, many are in suburban areas in New York, California and around Philadelphia, where Democrats have advantages in presidential years because of higher turnout among their core voter groups.