Electoral College Votes and Swing States

Electoral College Votes and Swing States
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Electoral College Votes and Swing States
The presidential elections are normally complicated. There are traditionally blue and red states that would vote for Democrats and Republicans no matter what happens. There are also swing states that are normally crucial in the determination of the winner. These states are described as being in the air and could be grabbed by either party (Duquette, Mixon & Cebula, 2017). The candidate that wins several of the swing states would be assured of victory. Without winning the major swing states, it would be nearly impossible to reach the required 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. There are 22 states leaning towards the democrats, 14 leaning towards the republicans, and 14 look to be competitive. The 14 competitive states, which I call the swing states, are listed in the table. Some of these states are major while others are minor. The major ones have Electoral College votes of 15 and above. Florida will particularly be closely fought. History favors the presidential candidate who wins Florida because there is a 90% chance that they would win the presidency. Pennsylvania is another that should be closely watched. Whoever wins Florida and Pennsylvania will certainly win the presidency. Where one candidate wins Florida and another wins Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan will become important because they would bear the destiny of the presidency.
Candidates that want to be favored in the major swing states must have a workable strategy of recovering the many jobs that were lost in the last 3 years. They must also have a good tax plan with a strategy to relieve the tax burden from the middle class. In this election, youthful voters might just be the secret key. Whichever candidate will be able to appeal to the young voters will certainly have an upper hand. It is therefore imperative on the presidential candidates to concentrate their energies in campuses and send out a message that would get the young voters moving.
In the swing states, the candidates must work hard to win the middle class. Moreover, they should not ignore the retirees, the blacks, the Hispanics, and other non-white voters. The message should be focused on lightening the tax burden on these people.
Before the election, we would expect the respective parties to hold national conventions for their respective candidates to help sell them to the electorates. Moreover, the candidates are expected to make multiple stop-overs in various states, mostly swing states, to sell their agendas and woo voters. It is expected that the candidates would steer clear of certain areas known to be either red or blue because no matter what they do, those areas would always vote along party lines (Gelman, 2009). However, certain sta...