A reader, Phil from Virginia, wondered if there was a way to indicate more clearly on The Upshot’s presidential forecasting model which states were likely to be the “tipping point” ones.

This idea of the tipping point was first popularized by our friend Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight: If you line up the states in order of their two-party vote margin, from most Republican-voting to most Democratic-voting, it’s the one that pushes the winning candidate over the Electoral College threshold (270 votes are needed).