The term swing state refers to any state that could reasonably be won by either the Democratic or Republican presidential candidate by a swing in votes. These states are usually targeted by both major-party campaigns, especially in competitive elections. Meanwhile, the states that regularly lean to a single party are known as safe states.
About Swing state in brief
The term swing state refers to any state that could reasonably be won by either the Democratic or Republican presidential candidate by a swing in votes. These states are usually targeted by both major-party campaigns, especially in competitive elections. Meanwhile, the states that regularly lean to a single party are known as safe states. Due to the winner-take-all method most states use to determine their presidential electors, candidates often campaign only in competitive states. The battlegrounds may change in certain election cycles and may be reflected in overall polling, demographics, and the ideological appeal of the nominees. States where the election has a close result become less meaningful in landslide elections. Instead, states which vote similarly to the national vote proportions are more likely to be the closest states. For example, the 1984 election with tight results in Minnesota and Massachusetts would not have been meaningful in the Electoral College, as Democratic nominee Walter Mondale would still have won. Similarly, Barack Obama’s narrow victory in Indiana in 2008 inaccurately portrays its status as a battleground in the 2008 election, as Obama lost the state by more than ten percentage points more than the national margin of eighteen percentage points. In 2016, Vermont and New Hampshire, which elected Republican governors even as Hillary Clinton won both states, while Montana and West Virginia elected Democratic governors despite also voting for Donald Trump. In Maine and Nebraska, the apportionment of electoral votes parallels that for Senators and Congressional Representatives.
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 – a total of 4 and 5, respectively. Despite their rules, only twice has each state’split’ its electoral votes – in 2008, when Nebraska gave 4 votes to Republican John McCain, and one to Democrat Barack Obama; and in 2016, when one of Maine’s congressional districts was won by Donald Trump and the other district and the state itself were won by Hillary Clinton. It is far from unheard of for a candidate to secure sufficient electoral votes while not having won the national popular vote. In past electoral results, Republican candidates would have expected to easily win most of the mountain states and Great Plains, such as Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. However, some states that consistently vote for one party at the presidential level occasionally elect a governor of the opposite party. This is currently the case in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Vermont, which all have Republican governors, as well as in Louisiana, Kentucky,Kansas, and Montana, which currently have Democratic governors. Despite the rules, Maine and Nebraska’s 2nd congressional districts are considered to be competitive races in the 2020 Presidential election.
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This page is based on the article Swing state published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
