“Democrats and Republicans think the swing states for the 2020 presidential election will be in the Midwest -- Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania -- and the Sun Belt -- Florida, Georgia and Arizona.” Historical events may change that estimate to include Texas among others.
the Electoral College joins the primary system in diminishing to near zero the attention most states receive from presidential candidates and skewing incentives away from candidates talking to voters all across the country.
If only half of the states were ignored, that would represent a considerable improvement from where we are today. The Electoral College elevates only the handful of states that happen to have a roughly equal number of partisans living there, which is far less than half. Campaigns are only about winning or losing those states that show a chance of flipping between parties.
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What’s more, the smallest states do not tend to be swing states, which for this article we describe as those decided by less than 5 points this cycle or flipping parties over the past two presidential elections. Only three of the smallest 20 states fit this description. The rest of the small states were correctly taken for granted and ignored,…
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Five of the 10 most populous states were swing states, meaning the most time and attention from campaigns was spent in states with above-average population.
Another common defense (and criticism) of the Electoral College is that the extra electoral votes given to small states ensures election outcomes are not only decided by big states. But this does not affect the amount of attention small states receive from candidates. Nobody bothers campaigning in deep-red Wyoming or reliably blue Vermont, even though their electoral votes are vastly out of proportion with their tiny populations. Their electoral votes are taken as given, and with good reason.
commonwealthmagazine.org/…
(June 2019)
Early swing state polls suggest President Trump will have his work cut out for him to win reelection to a second term.
Trump's upset victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin propelled him to the White House in 2016. He was the first Republican presidential candidate to win any of those states since 1988.
Today, most polls show Trump behind former Vice President Joe Biden — the current front-runner in the Democratic race — in all of those swing states.
That's a problem, because if the 2016 map otherwise stays the same, a Democratic candidate who wins those three states will win the Electoral College.
“Wisconsin seems to be a real problem, the 2018 midterms were a disaster for Republicans there, and Biden seems to have unique appeal in Pennsylvania,” said Alex Conant, a partner at the GOP firm Firehouse Strategies.
“Trump appears to be running strongest in Michigan, and he really only needs to hold on to one of these to win reelection. But it’s going to be very competitive and Trump is going to need to spend a lot of time in those three states and hope for the kind of turnout we saw in 2016,” he said.
thehill.com/...
270towin.com is an interactive Electoral College map for 2020 and a history of Presidential elections in the United States.