How to win a bar bet on election night

Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”

The odds are you don’t go to sleep at night and dream of precinct maps and tabulation deadlines like NBC’s breathless election guru Steve Kornacki. Watch him on election night and you will be dazzled and exhausted by his machine-gun-like sharing of statistics and crosstabs.

But you don’t need a human copy of the “Almanac of American Politics” to navigate election night.

Here is what you need to know. America’s 50 states have 3,242 counties. But in our latest episode of the “Lost in the Middle“ podcast, we explain why you only need to focus on seven states on election night. Hard to believe but that’s where we are today. Just seven in a shrinking number of swing states.

So where to start? Amy Walter of the prestigious Cook Political Report keeps her eyes on one really large state.

“I play this game a lot, and I really call it ‘If you could ask God one question.’ Now I would hope that if I had one question to ask God it wouldn't be about who won. But, anyway, if he said, ‘You could ask me one thing about the 2024 election,’ I really want to know Pennsylvania,” she told us.

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Pennsylvania ranks sixth in electoral votes and it’s tough for Democrats to win if they lose i,t as Hillary Clinton found in 2016. And chances are you are, “Thinking should I watch Philadelphia or Pittsburgh?” Kornacki would be disappointed in you. The battleground county on Walter’s list is Erie, in the far northwestern corner close to Ohio. Its residents cheer for the Cleveland Browns, not the Steelers or Eagles.

Retiree Mary Buchert has a tough time explaining her neck of the woods, which has an amazing track record of picking winners.

“Well, Erie County itself is strongly Republican, very pro Trump. The city is strongly Democratic,” she said. “It’s just kind of baffling, and actually in much of Pennsylvania, they view us as belonging to Canada. They're just sort of baffled by us. And we are kind of baffled by the election coming up. I have no clue which way it will go. I have no clue what way I'm going to go.”

In “Lost in the Middle,” we profile her neighborhood and the six other counties to watch on election night. Gwinnett County, Ga.: Dane County, Wis. Jackson County, Mich.; Maricopa County, Ariz.; and Washoe County, Nev.

Of course, that’s only five. You don’t have to be Steve Kornacki to remember the 2000 trainwreck that was, and perhaps will be again, Miami-Dade County, Fla.