With the US presidential elections on November 5 and opinion polls putting Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris neck and neck, their campaigns are focusing on electorally important swing states.
Trump recently held a rally in the east coast state of Pennsylvania, while Harris was out west to address supporters in Nevada on Sunday (September 29). These states, and a few others, have always played a determining role in election outcomes. Here’s why.
First, why states matter in US elections
Although American voters vote for their preferred presidential candidate on Election Day, their votes do not directly elect the president.
Instead, votes count toward a body known as the Electoral College, made up of “electors” – party leaders and loyalists, activists, etc. Each state is assigned a number of electors equivalent to its representation in the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
Voters in each state voted to “directly” elect the president in the truest sense of the word. To win the presidential election, a candidate must win 270 votes out of a total of 538 electoral college votes.
So, what is the relevance of the participation of the general population? Voters vote essentially to relay their choice of candidate to voters in their state. The results of this “popular vote” are known in November, allowing the political party of the winning candidate to select the voters.
In December, voters meet to vote for their party’s candidate and the election results are officially announced.
What are swing states?
In American politics, states have been described as “red” (favoring Republicans) or “blue” (favoring Democrats) for consistently voting for that party’s candidate. In the book Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten MatterAuthors Stacey Hunter Hecht and David Schulz have written that several factors are responsible for such orientations.
One is strong party identification, thanks to a party being better organized in a state. This results in the other party devoting fewer resources to it. The chances are then enhanced, to the extent that voters of the other party may feel less inclined to register their support due to its lack of presence. For example, Texas has voted Republican in every presidential election since Ronald Reagan in 1980. As the party’s power grew, the Texas Democratic Party organization weakened.
Second, voters may be more ideologically oriented in one direction, making the state more liberal or conservative. The state’s political history and demographics (such as whether women or college-educated voters are more likely to vote for Democrats) play a role in influencing ideology.
On the other hand, the “swing states” are not clearly aligned with either party. Therefore, parties focus on them during the election campaign because they could “swing” one way or the other. “Candidates travel, parties spend money, and (swing states) are where the balance of power and the winner of the presidential election are actually determined,” the authors write.
According to The New York TimesThe largest swing state this time around is Pennsylvania with 19 electoral votes – “the one battleground widely considered essential to each candidate’s most direct path to victory.” Groups supporting both candidates will spend more than $138 million on television and radio ads between the end of September and Election Day. Trump and Harris also spent the most time there.
While Swing states have been discussed for decadesHunter Hecht and Schulz argued that use of the term has increased since 2000, amid a decrease in competitive state electoral races since then. “The roots of this phenomenon may have something to do with the polarization of American politics and changes in the political makeup of the two major parties,” they write.
Are swing states fixed?
Local political issues, unique demographics, and party campaigns make contests in some states more competitive. Because these factors are dynamic, states can shift their support from one sector to another over time. The state of Georgia is a prominent example of state flipping. After regularly voting for the Republicans between 1992 and 2016, he supported Joe Biden in the 2020 elections.
According to the poll analysis site FiveThirtyEightthis is due to anti-Trump sentiments, greater acceptability of Biden among a wide range of Democratic voters, and a growing share of non-white populations in the region over the past two decades. In general, Asian, Black and/or Hispanic voters are more likely to vote for Democrats.
Additionally, local leaders such as Stacey Adams “have implemented a specific turnout-based strategy in Georgia for nearly a decade and pushed the Democratic Party to join in implementing it.” This included mobilizing voters from key demographic groups who had been disengaged from the electoral process.
