Swing State
- Won by the Republicans with less than 5% of votes behind the Democrats (Missouri, Montana)
- Of the Democrats won with less than 5% of votes distance to the Republicans (Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, second election district of Nebraska)
Swing State is a term from the presidential campaign of the United States.
If in a state the election to a presidential election between the Democratic candidate and the Republican expected to be scarce, this is called a " swing state " (also toss -up state, battleground state or purple state called ).
" Winner takes all " principle and the swing states
The President of the United States is not directly elected by popular vote, but by an electoral meeting, the Electoral College. Each state elects a certain number of electors in the Electoral College. How many electoral territory a State depends on the size of its population. It is crucial that the party of the candidate who receives a simple majority of votes in a state that still provides all the electors of the state. This also means that the voter votes for the defeated candidate of the other party fall ( winner- takes-all principle) under the table. The only exceptions are Nebraska and Maine here who choose some of their electors in each electoral districts. In some states, the result from the outset seems clear: For example, the Republicans can since the 1960s almost always post the more conservative southern states like Georgia or Texas and most of the thinly populated states of the Midwest for themselves while out the democrats it able that the liberal states of the West Coast such as California or Washington and the densely populated states will vote on the northeast coast for them what in all these cases means that they get all the electoral votes of those states. These are not swing states (sometimes one finds for these states, the term "safe states" ).
In contrast, in the swing states, the result is open, because here basically none of the two parties has a greater structural majority. As with regard to the national final additional electoral votes that can go beyond the "safe" and thus decide the overall result can be skimmed off only here, the presidential campaign focused only on those states. This happens even if they only have a few choice men, because here a few voters must also only be obtained relatively to win the state, and thus to obtain the votes of all the electors of that state. The most important swing states in the presidential elections of 2004 were Florida ( won George W. Bush ), Ohio ( Bush), New Mexico ( Bush), Pennsylvania ( won John Kerry), Wisconsin (Kerry) and Nevada ( Bush).
An indication of whether a state is a swing state or not, can be inferred from the distribution of seats in the U.S. Senate. Each state provides two senators, elected time offset from the presidential election to a part. Some states provide two Democratic senators, two other Republican senators. The countries that send a Republican and a Democrat in the Senate are, tend to the swing states attributable. However, there are states such as West Virginia, which tend in presidential elections often to other candidates than in Senate elections. West Virginia elects two Democratic senators and preferably also in gubernatorial elections Democratic candidates, but does not apply to presidential elections as a swing state but as a Republican state.