Red or blue? The bellwether counties that could swing the US election

Pundits are keeping a close watch on key counties across the US whose results could play a major role in the outcome

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With recent election polling showing a dead heat - or slim victory for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris within the statistical margin of error - seven swing states are all but certain to decide the race.

As pollsters scramble to make sense of these results, amid questions about reliability given bad calls over support for Trump in 2016 and 2020, analysts are taking an even more granular approach in interpreting battleground state voters, focusing on a handful of counties in these hotly contested regions.