US election 2016: Which are the key swing states?

With Americans heading to the polls to vote for their next president, much of the media focus is on the key battleground states that could determine whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump ends up in the White House.

There are several "swing states" which shift back and forth between voting Republican and Democrat each election, making them less predictable than states such as California or New York that traditionally vote blue and Texas that reliably votes red.

This year the election is being "fought hardest" in ten states, says the Financial Times: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

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Clinton can afford to lose traditional battlegrounds such as Florida and Ohio, as long as she can claim states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina, says the newspaper, but if Trump does not win in Florida and Ohio, "his chances of victory will be slim".

The New York Magazine says one of the key points about this year's election is that "Clinton has many paths to victory, while Trump has few and each of those is a bit of a stretch".

He has a "decent" chance of breaking through the so-called "Clinton Firewall", a group of states that up until recently seemed very likely to vote blue: Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

"The basic math of getting to 270 electoral votes requires Trump to take Florida, Nevada and North Carolina," the magazine says. "But even if he wins them all plus the second congressional district of Maine, he'd still need one 'Clinton Firewall' state to get to 270. Late polls showing Trump pulling even or near-even in New Hampshire have given him his first really plausible 'path to 270'."

With just four electoral votes, New Hampshire is the smallest state in the firewall so Clinton would have a chance to fill that void elsewhere – and, if Clinton wins any more states than predicted, Trump would have to win more than one firewall state.

The Clinton camp has stepped up advertising and campaigning in those states as the race has tightened, but "nervous Democrats" are now wondering whether she should have invested in firewall states much earlier on to better protect her flank from a surprise late surge by Trump, says Vox.

For months Hillary Clinton has directed the "vast bulk" of her ad money to states such as Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio and lately Arizona – states that are unlikely to be the ones to put her over 270 electoral votes, given their demographics and public polling, says the website. And if those states slide out of reach, the contest could come down to whether she can protect her firewall.