It's fascinating (and a little scary) that despite the tens of millions of votes cast in a U.S. presidential election, the result comes down to mere tens of thousands in certain key states.

That's because the president is not elected by the popular vote. Instead, they must win a certain number of states, which will give them enough votes in the electoral college for victory. That's how Hillary Clinton got nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump, but ultimately lost the 2016 election.

And there is not a more tantalising prize in American politics today than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and its 19 electoral votes. That's a smaller number than New York's 28 or Texas's 30, but with a big difference — it's a swing state.

PA has gone red (Trump 2016, George HW Bush 1988). PA has gone blue (Barack Obama 2008, Joe Biden 2020). In 2024, it could go either way. And it looks extremely likely that as Pennsylvania goes, so goes the nation.

Tonight was reminder Pennsylvania has a high chance of swinging close election.

Some caveats to conditional probabilities, but *either* candidate winning Pennsylvania gives them > 90% chance of winning overall according to @NateSilver538

Votes in Pennsylvania count almost 8x pic.twitter.com/G0tNH9KgKr

— Nikolai Yakovenko (@ivan_bezdomny) September 11, 2024

The debate (2024)

Vice President Kamala Harris and ex-president Donald Trump took to the stage for their first debate of the campaign in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

America, beset by high inflation, concerns about racial strife, worried about Russia threatening Eastern Europe and troubled by unrest and violence in the Middle East, looked to the debate for answers.

There were outlandish claims, stinging attacks and broadsides on both domestic and foreign policy, as the public have come to expect of presidential debates.

There were also mentions of pets being eaten.

@mothershipsg A spokesperson for the city of Springfield, Ohio told CBS News there have been "no credible reports or specific claims" of pets being harmed by migrants. #donaldtrump #kamalaharris #uspresidentialdebate #fyp ♬ original sound - Mothership

But among the back-and-forth, there was a moment that may have slipped under your radar.

In a question about foreign policy, Trump was asked about his secret plan to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 24 hours.

Trump did not provide specifics, but generally lambasted Europe for not contributing as much in aid as the U.S., and Biden and Harris for being "weak" in negotiations with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia president Vladimir Putin.

Harris was then asked how she would handle Putin, and if she would do so differently from Biden. Harris said if Trump had been president when Putin invaded, "Putin would be sitting in Kiev right now", with his eyes on the rest of Europe, "starting with Poland".

The vice president then elaborated on her seemingly random reference to Poland.

"And why don't you tell the 800,000 Polish-Americans, right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favour, and what you think is a friendship, with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch."

But why appeal to Polish-Americans, specifically?

The answer may lie in another presidential debate, in an ancient and mostly-forgotten age, the year 1976.

The debate (1976)

President Gerald Ford and governor Jimmy Carter took to the stage for their second debate of the campaign in San Francisco, California.

America, beset by high inflation, concerns about racial strife, worried about the Soviet Union threatening Eastern Europe and troubled by unrest and violence in the Middle East, looked to the debate for answers.

Like Harris, Ford was an unlikely incumbent. The genial ex-football player from Grand Rapids, Michigan was not the candidate his party had envisioned four years ago. Richard Nixon had won a landslide victory in 1972 alongside Spiro Agnew.

But Agnew resigned in 1973 over a corruption scandal, and then Watergate broke. Nixon resigned in 1974, leaving the presidency to Ford, who had never even taken part in a presidential election.

Carter was his challenger, a little-known former peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia.

He'd beaten the much more favoured Ted Kennedy to the nomination and was portraying himself as an outsider to Washington, untainted by the Watergate scandal.

Yes, that means I am comparing Carter to Donald "Drain the Swamp" Trump, who'd beaten Jeb Bush to the nomination in 2016.

The gaffe as it happened

Carter had a narrow lead in the polls after the first debate, and Ford was eager to burnish his record. He defended the Helsinki Accords, signed with the Soviet Union and meant to ease tensions, which formalised the post-World War II borders of Europe.

Ford said 35 nations and the Pope backed the accords, and added, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration."

Brent Scowcroft, Ford's National Security Advisor who was watching backstage, was reported to have literally gone white, blood drained from his face as he heard Ford's gaffe. But the president was not done.

After he was asked for clarification, Ford replied that he did not think the Yugoslavians and the Romanians considered themselves to be dominated by the Soviet Union, and added:

"I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous: it has its own territorial integrity and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union."

With Eastern Europe (and Poland) living in the shadow of the Iron Curtain, Soviet interference in their domestic politics and the threat of Soviet invasion, Ford's comment made him look out of touch with reality.

The aftermath

Word spread, particularly among migrant families who had fled Europe to escape Soviet persecution. The backlash grew until Ford made an apologetic call to a Polish-American leader a week later.

But the controversy in the final weeks of the election may have halted Ford's momentum. He would go on to lose to Carter in one of the closest elections in U.S. history

Did the gaffe really hurt Ford's chances? Politico cited the close result of Ohio, back then a swing state with a large population of Eastern European immigrants, where 4 million votes were cast and Carter won by just 11,000.

But the Atlantic cited Ford's poll numbers recovering after a brief dip, and concluded the story of Ford losing the election because of a debate gaffe was just a "myth".

2024 redux

Could Harris's comment have the same impact in 2024? The debate was "top news" in Poland itself, but in Pennsylvania, support for the candidates seemed to remain fairly equal.

Biden won the state in 2020 by just over 80,000 votes, or in other words, one in 10 Polish Americans in the state.

If Harris's deliberate appeal to those voters does sway enough of them to tip the state in her favour...

And Pennsylvania tips the whole election in her favour...

Then Donald Trump will find himself in Gerald Ford's shoes — a one-term Republican president.

There is just one population that you should be polling pic.twitter.com/icPHh06Q5L

— Wojtek Kopczuk 🇵🇱🇺🇦 (@wwwojtekk) September 11, 2024

Top image via ABC News, whitehouse.gov, Canva.