Swing state Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
In United States presidential politics, a swing state (also, battleground state) is a state in which no candidate has overwhelming support, meaning that any of the major candidates have a reasonable chance of winning the state's electoral college votes. Such states are targets of both major political parties in presidential elections, since convincing winning these states is the best opportunity for a party to gain votes. Non-swing states are sometimes called safe states, because one candidate has strong enough support that they can safely assume they will win the state's votes. In these states, candidates often focus on swing voters, who could conceivably vote for either candidate.
| Table of contents |
|
2 Determining swing states 3 Historical swing states 4 2004 swing states 5 Other terms for swing state 6 See also 7 External links |
Origin of swing states
during the 2004 Presidential election show the difference in opinions between two neighbors.]]
In the presidential elections of the United States, the U.S. Electoral College system means that only the winner of a state receives any benefits from it (i.e. electoral votes). If a campaign wins a plurality of the popular vote in a state, the candidate receives all of that state's electoral votes; no benefit is gained from receiving additional votes above the margin necessary to win (this is true of 48 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; the two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska, are explained below). This fact produces a very particular set of circumstances that explains the existence of swing states.
Since a national campaign is interested in electoral votes, rather than the national popular vote, it tends to ignore states that it believes it will win easily; since it will win these without significant campaigning, any effort put into them is essentially wasted. A similar logic dictates that the campaign avoid putting any effort into states that it knows it will lose. For instance, a Republican candidate (the more conservative of the two major parties) can easily expect to win Texas and several other Southern states, which historically have a very conservative culture and a more recent history of voting for Republican candidates. Similarly, the same candidate can expect to lose California and Massachusetts, traditionally liberal states, no matter how much campaigning is done in that state. The only states which the campaign would target to spend time, money, and energy in are those that could be won by either candidate. These are the swing states.
Only two states—Maine and Nebraska—violate this winner-take-all rule. Under their system, two electoral votes go to the person who wins a plurality in the state, and a candidate gets one additional electoral vote for each Congressional District in which they receive a plurality. Both of these states have relatively few electoral votes (for the 2004 election, Maine has 4 and Nebraska has 5; the minimum is 3) and are usually not considered swing states. Despite their different rules, neither has ever had a split electoral vote.
Separately, Colorado will be voting on an initiative this November which would allocate the state's electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote in the state. The initiative would take effect immediately, applying to the selection of electors in the same election.
The actual procedures for deciding which states are swing states in any particular election varies across campaigns and across disciplines. Many political scientists use historical voting patterns: the more often a state has been won by candidates of one party in the past, the more likely it is to vote for that party in the future. Other factors that can help determine which states are swing states are:
The swing states of Illinois and New York were key to the outcome of the 1888 election. The swing states of Illinois and Texas were key to the outcome of the 1960 election; however, today Illinois (D), New York (D) and Texas (R) are not considered swing states. Ohio has often been considered a swing state, having voted with the winner in every election since the 1950s except for 1960. The most reliable swing state of the last 100 years has been Missouri which has voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1904, save for its support of Adlai Stevenson in 1956.
. The solid Bush states total 172 electoral votes, while the solid Kerry states total 165 electoral votes. The swing states total add up to 201 votes, with 270 needed to win the presidency.]]
While the swing state of Florida received much press with regard to the outcome of the 2000 election, several other states had similarly close outcomes and could have changed the outcome of the election. The following is a list of the states with the lowest margins of victory, sorted by the margin percentages and color-coded for Bush or Gore:
Traditionally, labor unions have had a strong grassroots network in the state. However, since 1970, Ohio's manufacturing base has taken one hit after another, with more big blows coming during the George W. Bush administration. A weakened union organization is accompanied by an Ohio Democratic Party that is in shambles. While the Kerry campaign must build its Ohio campaign from the ground up, the Ohio Republicans have spent months building a grassroots campaign modeled on multi-level marketing schemes such as Amway. [1]
This is an Article on Swing state. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Swing state Determining swing states
Swing states tend to have a fairly equitable balance of city and country-dwellers; states that are highly urban or highly rural are less likely to be swing states.Historical swing states
2004 swing states
In a recent article, the Washington Post defined swing states as those that were decided by less than three percentage points in the 2000 presidential election. Using those criteria, the swing states for 2004 are Oregon, New Mexico, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Florida. The Los Angeles Times, in a pre-Super Tuesday evaluation of the Democratic slate, also named Ohio and Missouri as other critical swing states. Bloomberg adds West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan and Nevada and says the two major parties believe 18 states are in play in 2004. Molly Ivins, in an April 3, 2004 column, also lists Louisiana. In an April 28 Washington Post feature on the red state-blue state split in America, potential 2004 swing states listed as: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin. In John Kerry's presidential campaign, many consider Virginia a swing state.Alphabetical order
A survey conducted by a firm for the Bush campaign also gave a figure of 19 states, but with slightly different results. It cited these states as "the 19 battleground states in which the Bush and Kerry campaigns have focused their paid media efforts to this point". The states were:Other terms for swing state
See also
External links