How the Swing States Works

During presidential elections, campaign coverage often focuses on states whose populations are divided between candidates. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the fact and fiction surrounding the electoral college and swing states.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by my guest Jane mcgrounds.
Right here. How's it going, Jane good? How are you good?

(00:21):
I have to tell you, Jane, I'm so glad you're here.
I have a pretty contentious topic to deal with today.
Swing states and you may call them battleground states, or
you may call them purple states, and that's because they
bleed both red and blue. But no matter what you
call them, tension is high there, that's right. And you
notice the news probably lately it's all about McCain or
Obama in one particular state or another. In those states

(00:43):
aren't random, No, you're right, they're incredibly deliberate. And we've
talked a bit before in another podcast about the electoral College,
but it's worth mentioning again just to bring you guys
up to speed about why these swing states are so important.
And the electoral College essentially has created an indirect voting
system in the United States. That's right. And when you

(01:04):
vote for McCain or Obama or whoever you vote for
in the voting booth, it's not actually directly going towards, uh,
the count towards those presidents, those um that candidate. Rather
it goes towards an electoral vote. Is that correct. That's
absolutely correct. And all states follow this policy except for
Maine in Nebraska and they have a district system, and
this is a little bit more complicated, but essentially what

(01:25):
happens here is that two of their electoral vote go
for the popular vote statewide, and then the rest of
the electoral votes represent the popular vote in each different
congressional district. And there's been talk before about applying that
system to the whole United States, but it hasn't happened yet.
So for now, when you vote, you're voting for an
electoral vote, which is voting for the president, and it

(01:46):
takes a majority of two seventy electoral votes to win.
That's right. And it seems kind of interesting because America
like surprise self and democracy, whereas if you look at it, uh,
someone voting in a swing state, for instance, might see
to their vote count more than if you were if
you were living in a safe state. Seems sort of
anti democratic to some people. Yeah, and you may want

(02:08):
to explain a little bit more about safe states for
everybody out there. I think that there's a popular misconception
that if you live in a safe state that's Republican
and you vote Democrat, then you've just negated your voice. Yeah,
it's not really true because you know, swing states can
always change. If you look at the last election. In
this election, there's a lot more swing states it looks
like now. And also the the idea of reapportionment. Whenever

(02:32):
there's a sensus done, uh, you know, the number of
electoral votes could shift, and so you know, the state
you live in could be generations and generations vote Republican
and then all of a sudden this election it's more
of a swing state. And I think that they're about
nine states and in the past ten years have voted
Republican each time, and then there's five states to have
a really strong Democratic showing consistently. But it doesn't always

(02:57):
depend on tradition. There's any number of factor that could
persuade a state to get a different way. Um. Take
North Carolina for instance. Back in the carry Edwards ticket,
people were kind of worried that North Carolina wouldn't go
red again because Edwards wise from North Carolina. They thought
that the Republicans there could be persuaded to vote Democrat
to support Edwards. Okay, yeah, and it's interesting if you

(03:18):
look at this this election. You look at Colorado, for instance,
and it's typically Republican, but if you notice the Democrats
actually held their convention there this year, and that wasn't
an accident. It's because it's getting a little bit more purple.
And whether the issues and the population change, and it's
always always up for grabs. And just to clarify, if
you're trying to envision a map of the United States

(03:39):
and you're trying to look at which states could be
red or blue or purple, primarily Republican safe states are
in the South and the plains areas, and Democrats are
more concentrated, and then northeast along the Pacific Coast and
the Upper Midwest. And that can be deceptive because it
might look like the most of the United States is
going red for Republicans, whereas those states tend to be

(04:01):
less populated than We've got to remember population that is
such a big deal, and that's why you typically don't
see the candidate it's going to states with small populations.
That's true. That whether it's a swing state might not
matter if that state happens to have leap three electoral
boats for instance, precise light. Now, sometimes you know, they'll
go where the money is, and if there's a lot

(04:22):
of money coming from that state, they'll get down there.
They'll kiss some babies, they'll shake some hands, they'll eat
some barbecue, and then and then take off. And we
mentioned before that there is such a careful and calculated
strategy the candidates have to use when picking which stage
to visit. And I don't use calculated to have a
negative connotation. I'm in calculated to make you guys think

(04:45):
about the fact that there's tons of political analysts out there,
you know, crunching numbers and working for these campaigns and
deciding where they need to spend their time and focus
their energy. And this election has been so strange because,
like you said, Jane, there's some dates this year that
aren't so safe anymore, and it's really making them ruttled,

(05:05):
it is. And there's been a lot of jabs thrown
from these particular states. You know, when candidate spends a
day there and seems to gain some ground, and then
he leaves and someone else comes in and there's some
new shake up. So in the two thousand and eight election,
things are looking a little bit shifty. We're not quite
sure how it's going to play out. But if we
look back at elections of the past, we can see

(05:26):
how some of these calculations may or may not have
worked in the candidate's favor. And sometimes when these candidates
around the campaign trial, they make promises that don't exactly
pan out. That's true if you look back the election
of nineteen sixty Um Nixon was battling it out with
Kennedy at the time, and uh, he and Nixon actually

(05:47):
pledged to visit every single state to campaign everyone. And
you know, it's in laon theory. It's it's it's nice
to hear that that a candidate cares about everyone. But
as you and I probably realize the it didn't turn
out as well as he planned and ended up being
a big waste of time actually, because because there are
lots of states that he visited that he didn't have to,

(06:07):
like states that were solid for Kennedy or states so
we're solid for himself. They were just so a waste
of his campaigning time and he ended up spending the
last weekend before the election in Alaska, which you know,
it actually was kind of a battle girl state at
the time, but it didn't have a lot of electoral
votes and he did end up winning the state, but
he lost the election. It's too bad. I admire his

(06:28):
his initiative theories. Again, it seemed like a good idea
and theory. And you know, that's it's so funny about
these swing states as you just never know. Like one
of the most famous cases that is in our very
recent US history is the two thousand election and we
look at what happened with Florida and um, gosh, you

(06:48):
know that came down to five thirty seven votes. That's
zero point zero one percent. Isn't that crazy? And a
lot of these swing states they operate on a margin
of about point one percent, but the point zero one
that's kind of unbelievable. Yeah, And this year there's so
many more uh factors in the equation that are influencing

(07:11):
people one way or the other. Something that's come up
pretty recently is this voter purge. And what's going on
here is that there's a lot of names being deleted
from the voter registry and whether that's because they think
that someone has has been has been deceased, and whether
that's because a person is thought to have died or
has moved to another state, or his or her name

(07:33):
no longer matches up with what's in the registry, or
this person has been declared unfit to vote for whatever reason.
These people they're not always being informed ahead of time.
So if they're showing up for early voting, some of
them are being turned away. And this isn't just happening
to a couple of hundred or a couple of thousands,
happening to a couple of million. And again, the numbers
are showing right now that a lot of these people

(07:53):
who are being turned away from polls they may have
been leaning blue and so we're not sure how that's
going to play out. And the but the swing states, Yeah,
this voter registration for it is really mucking everything up,
isn't it is it is? And there's a nonpartisan advocacy
group called fair Vote, and they're saying that there's so
much anticipated voter turnout for this selection that some of

(08:14):
the swing states aren't prepared to handle the huge influx
of voters. That's really interesting. It's good to hear in
a way because you know, you look back a past election,
I think two thousand four, only six of voting each
population ended up showing up to the polls. So it's
kind of disheartening that so many people seem to not care,
you know. But this year, I don't think that's going
to be the case, and analysts are saying that it's
likely going to be the swing states that hold the

(08:36):
key to the winner of the selection. And there were
actually three states in the last election that had incredibly
close margins. Those were Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Mexico. So
for all of our listeners there, make sure you vote.
And if you need more information about the candidates they're running, mates,
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(09:00):
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