Why an election for 330 million-plus people may still come down to so few votes

(CNN) —Anyone who pays any attention to US politics is bound to hear some version of this claim: The& 2024 election, which will pick a president for a nation of more than 330 million people, will be decided by a small number of voters in a few key states.There are concerns, particularly among Democrats, that President Joe Biden is losing support in these key states and they have pressured him to step aside for a different candidate.But even an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and questions about Biden’s fitness to serve another four years might not interrupt the larger dynamic of the race.“I still think that this is a race where we are not going to see the polls move outside a pretty narrow window,” Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson said on CNN during coverage of the Republican National Convention.“If you liked Donald Trump last week, you still like him this week. If you liked Joe Biden last week, you still like him this week,” she said.With those perceptions set, consider just how small the margins were in the 2020 election, consider that the states Biden turned from red to blue to defeat then-President Trump were won by...