The Swing States: Explained
So far in the 2020 election cycle, the presidential candidates have spent over $2.6 BILLION on persuading voters to side with them. However, if you live in a state like California or Alabama, you are unlikely to be the target of the vast majority of that spending.
Why? Because Republican strategists know that they can’t possibly persuade enough Californians to vote Republican to win the state this November, and Democrats know the reverse for the state of Alabama. Instead, most of the political campaigns’ persuading power is being laser-focused on a small number of states, known by political pundits as “swing states” (or more evocatively, “battleground states”). A swing state is any state where the Democrats and Republicans have similar levels of support — which means that their share of votes in the electoral college is relatively up for grabs!
Swing states change over the years; once upon a time, Republicans could rely on California’s votes while the Democrats totally controlled the Deep South. In the 2020 election, most political experts consider these states to hold the keys to victory for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden:
Pennsylvania
In 2016, Donald Trump’s electoral college victory rested on narrow wins in the so-called “Rust Belt” states. Until a few years ago, these states had thriving economies based on heavy industry and manufacturing, and large working class populations that reliably voted for Democrats. However, in the past couple of decades the number of manufacturing jobs has decreased in these states, due to global economic conditions and policies implemented by both political parties.
Pennsylvania is the largest of the Rust Belt states that was won by Donald Trump in 2016. Trump won by a very narrow margin, less than 45,000 out over almost 6 million votes cast. In this election it will be much harder for him to win the state; his Democratic opponent Joe Biden is originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and is much more adept at speaking to the state’s white working class voters than Hilary Clinton was in 2016.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is another Rust Belt state that swung narrowly for Trump in 2016 (he won by about 23,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast). The state has been a political battleground for a few years but current polling shows that, much like in Pennsylvania, Joe Biden maintains a solid lead on President Trump. However, recent racial unrest in the state — caused by the shooting of Jacob Blake by the police — has introduced an element of uncertainty to the state’s politics.
Michigan
Michigan is the quintessential Rust Belt state. Its major cities — such as Detroit and Flint — used to be the epicenter of the global car manufacturing industry as well as a center of popular culture and music (as anybody who enjoys Motown music can attest). Today, by contrast, these cities are mainly known as examples of urban decay. In 2016, Trump barely scraped by in the state, but the past four years have not seen the dramatic improvement in the local economy that the president promised. Meanwhile, Trump’s record on racial issues has not impressed the state’s African-American population.
Minnesota
In 2016, Minnesota voted for Hillary Clinton by a very narrow margin (only 1.5%) and Republicans have been searching for a way to flip the state since then. The Trump campaign is currently investing heavily in Minnesota in order to try to win over the state’s ten electoral college votes — although recent polling shows that this will be an uphill struggle.
North Carolina
North Carolina is one of the closest races in the country; polls show a virtual dead heat between Trump and Biden there.
This state is typical of a second grouping of swing states, known collectively as the “Sun Belt.” Sun Belt states are in the southern half of the continental U.S, hence the name — they get much warmer weather than the rest of us (he says as he writes from his chilly apartment in Washington state)! These states’ politics have changed drastically in recent years thanks to major demographic changes: populations in these states are becoming much larger, more racially diverse, and more focused in urban areas.
Arizona
Arizona, another Sun Belt state, has voted for Republicans in presidential elections since the 1990s, but the Democrats have been gradually eating away at their margins. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney won the state by 9%, but in 2016 Donald Trump only won by 3.5%. This change has been mainly driven by the expansion of the state’s Hispanic population — a consequence of the state’s proximity to Mexico. Hispanic voters tend to prefer Democratic candidates to Republicans for a variety of reasons, most importantly their stance on immigration policies.
Florida
Florida has long been considered the ultimate swing state. No president this century has won the White House without winning the state of Florida (although George W. Bush technically got fewer votes than his opponent in 2000, he was given the state’s electoral college votes).
Florida’s quirky politics (and culture) can be confusing to people who don’t live there. The demographics of the state offer contradictory lessons to political observers. The state’s population is growing fast, which is often a good sign for Democrats; however, the growth is mainly driven by retirees seeking a warm climate, and older voters are more likely to vote Republican. The state has a large Hispanic population, which might help Democrats, but many of them are Cuban Americans, who usually prefer Republicans for historical reasons.
In the 2018 midterm elections, voters confirmed the state’s weirdness. While Republicans narrowly won elections for governor and the U.S. Senate (by less than 1% in both cases), Floridians also voted overwhelmingly to restore voting rights to released felons, a policy that Republicans strenuously oppose. The introduction of up to 1.4 million new voters into the system makes predicting the result there in 2020 extremely difficult.
Georgia
Georgia has been a safe state for Republicans for most of the past twenty years, but recently, things have been changing. The state is diversifying rapidly, and the state capital of Atlanta is one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. What’s more, changes in the economy (Georgia’s film industry is booming) are encouraging younger, more politically liberal people to move to the state.
In 2018, the state’s changing voting patterns became national news when a Republican, Brian Kemp, won the race for governor by a mere 1.4%. The race showed how quickly the state is changing: in the previous gubernatorial election four years earlier, the Republican cruised to victory with an 8% lead.
The 2018 election also revealed a complicating factor in predicting the 2020 election. Kemp, in his previous role as Secretary of State (the official in charge of running elections) had cancelled the voter registrations of over 1.4 million Georgians, making them unable to vote. Crucially, Kemp put 53,000 voter applications on hold until after the election — an election he won by about that number of votes. It is possible that such a scenario could play out again in November, making it much harder for Joe Biden to win the state.
Texas
Texas has voted consistently for Republicans since 1980, but Democrats have had their eye on flipping the state blue for the past few election cycles, thanks to the state’s quickly increasing population (especially in urban areas)and higher numbers of people of color. The closest they have come so far was in 2018, when Beto O’Rourke challenged Ted Cruz for a U.S. Senate seat, coming within 3% of the Senator.
Many polls currently show President Trump ahead of Joe Biden, but that his lead is often within margins of error (more on how margins of error affect polls here), adding more uncertainty. If the Democrats were to win Texas in 2020, it would make Donald Trump’s path to reelection almost impossible — Texas is the second largest state by population, and has 38 electoral college votes.
If you want to learn more about how swing states affect the electoral college, check out this interactive electoral college map!
Contributed by Ruairi Vaughan (Multimedia Content Creator, VotingSmarter)
