Swing state
In United States presidential politics, a swing state is a U.S. state that "swings" between the two major political parties in presidential electionss, rendering it a very attractive campaign target.
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2 Determining swing states 3 Historical swing states 4 2004 swing states 5 2004 battleground states 6 See also 7 External links |
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, which is a state that has a historically very conservative culture and a more recent history of voting for Republican candidates; similarly, the same candidate can expect to lose Massachusetts, 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. They both have a slightly more complicated system for allocating their electoral votes. 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.
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, New York and Texas 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.
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. Along with Florida, the difference in popular votes between the two major candidates was less than one percent in Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin in 2000, all of which may be considered swing states for the 2004 election. In a recent article, the Washington Post defined swing states as those that were decided by less than 3 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.
The battleground states for 2004 appear to be as follows: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Arizona and Florida are the two Sun Belt states of the bunch, Arizona and Washington are the two U.S. Western states that are in play. The majority of battleground states are in the Midwest, particularly the Upper Midwest, or the trans-Allegheny region.Origin of swing states
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. Swing states with a high number of electoral votes are called battleground states.Historical swing states
2004 swing states
Alphabetical order
2004 battleground states