‘Swing’ States Are Decisive

Those considered decisive are: Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin

The slogan of the U.S. presidential election may well be “this is not a popularity contest” but very much one of strategy.

In 2020 there were more than 160 million voters in the U.S. presidential election, but the difference between the candidates was less than 2% of the vote in each of six states, now considered “swing” states, where the race for the presidency is expected to be defined.

The situation has already led both parties to plan multimillion dollar investments in advertising and voter outreach operations: The Republicans, for example, announced an investment of at least $100 million in advertising in the swing states during the months of September and October; the Democrats reported $15 million to increase the number of offices and employees in the most contested states.

In the peculiar system that Americans follow to elect the president, national elections are actually 50 state elections — which at election time vote for blocs of electors, as many as their federal legislators — committed to one candidate or the other.

At least 270 electoral votes are needed for a candidate to win, and political operators rely on the history of each state to determine its political proclivity: According to the most realistic estimates, at the beginning of the presidential campaign, Republicans have 235 electoral votes and Democrats have 226.

Based on that certainty, presidential candidates focus their campaign on states known as pendulum or swing states; that is, those that can change direction because they are the ones that can ultimately define the results of the presidential race.

Swing states are also known as “purple states” or “battleground states” because they are those geographic areas that do not have a clear candidate [winning] in the polls.

In fact, they are called purple because they are states that are a mix of Republican (red) and Democratic (blue) voters, and it is difficult to predict their trend clearly in the polls that are released before the election.

Thus, swing states are of vital importance for both Democrats and Republicans since, after all, they are the ones that may end up defining the results of a race that is expected to be very close.

That is why, in the run-up to the election, both campaigns usually make great efforts to captivate the vote in the purple states.

The six states considered defining have 87 votes in all: Arizona (11), North Carolina (16), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Pennsylvania (19) and Wisconsin (10).

But in 2020, the change of a relatively small percentage in votes would have been decisive. In Georgia, for example, Joe Biden’s margin of victory over Donald Trump was just 0.2%, or about 12,000 votes out of nearly five million cast; in Arizona it was just 0.3%, just under 11,000 votes out of three million.

In the last 25 years, the Democrats lost the 2000 and 2016 elections despite winning the popular vote.

And it is believed that this time the situation may be similar.