Political Education 101

I have recently received from some Craigorian Chant readers (I have readers, happy dance!) requests to explain this whole Red State/Blue State/Swing State thing. So, rather than try and understand weird polling results or worry about terrorism, I will try and explain what's up with Red States/Blue States/Swing States. First of all, Red States/Blue States refer to this election map of 2000. Blue States are states that Gore carried and Red States are states that Bush won. The reason we care is that states vote in the electoral college and actually pick the president. It is possible to win the popular vote and lose the state by state contest, a fact which keeps Al Gore awake at 3:00 a.m. to this very day. For an exploration of the cultural differences between red and blue read this guy. Swing states refer to states that could go either to Bush or Kerry in the coming election. Thus, they get all the attention as far as advertising, candidate stops and so on. So, by an accident of demographics, geography, etc., some states are going to get all the attention. The classic swing states are in the Industrial Mid-west: Pennsylvania, Michigan and most of all, Ohio. Gore won the first two by 4 points and lost Ohio by 4. These states are important because they have a lot of electoral College votes. Ohio has 21 (You need 270 to win.) while New Hampshire, which was also close (Bush won by 1), only has 4 electoral votes. Thus, something like the GDP of Sweden will be spent in places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh on ads. A good chunk of the country is securely in the hands of one of the parties. California, New York and most of New England are sure-fire Kerry states and Texas, the deep South and the Mountain West will surely go for Bush unless he suffers a total election landslide. So people like me in California will hardly ever see the campaigns. Other swing states may include the Southwest and the Pacific Northwest. I put may be swing here because a lot of factors go into where these states end up. If Latinos go big for Kerry then the southwest could be his going away. If Nader gets on the ballot in the Pacific Northwest he could steal tree-hugger votes from Kerry. How will the Edwards pick affect North Carolina? There is also a lot of strategy that goes into this. Look for head fakes. Kerry does not have a good chance in Colorado and Virginia and Bush has no real shot at New Jersey but they have both made a show of campaigning in those states to make the other side play defense. But, really, who are we kidding? It's all going to come down to Florida again and the rest is just noise.

Any questions?