Swing State
Swing state ( English for "Schwingstaat" ) is a term for elections in the United States , which is used in particular in presidential election campaigns . The term describes a state in which both major parties ( Democrats or Republicans ) have a good chance of winning the election, so it is, so to speak, on the brink.
Other terms for this situation are toss-up-state ("coin tossing state"), battleground state ("battlefield state") or purple state ("purple state", alluding to the distinction between red states and blue states ).
The President of the United States is not elected directly by the people, but through an electoral assembly called the Electoral College . Each state sends electors to Electoral College, the number of which depends on the size of the population. The candidate who receives a simple majority of the vote in a state always receives all of the state's electorate. This also means that the votes for the defeated candidate of the opposing party have no weight (“winner-takes-all” principle). The only exceptions are Nebraska and Maine , whose electorate is partially determined by the winner in the congressional constituencies .
Some states are considered to be the strongholds of one of the major parties, which is why they are referred to as red or blue states according to the party colors . The Republicans have dominated the more conservative states of the Deep South and most of the sparsely populated states of the Midwest since the 2000s , while the Democrats dominated the more liberal states of the west coast such as California and the densely populated states of the northeast (see Blue Wall ). These states are considered safe for the respective party and are therefore also referred to as safe states .
In contrast, in the swing states, the outcome is open, because here, in principle, neither party has a structural dominance. Therefore, presidential election campaigns concentrate on these states, even if they have only a few electorates, since only relatively few alternate voters have to be won in order to keep all of the state's electorate. For example, in the 2016 presidential election campaign, 99% of all campaign funds went to these states and 95% of all campaign appearances took place there.
The Cook Partisan Voting Index shows how states voted compared to their national share of the vote in the last two presidential elections.
swell
- ↑ Thorsten Denkler, New York: Why the 2020 election could be an easy game for Trump . In: sueddeutsche.de . November 18, 2018, ISSN 0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed November 18, 2018]).