Q&A of the Day – Are there fewer swing states than there used to be?
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: In your swing state story you said there were fewer four years ago than there used to be. Is that a trend with the country becoming more divided?
Bottom Line: You’re right that in last week’s first Anatomy of a Swing State story for the 2020 cycle, which I’ll be updating weekly on Wednesday’s leading up to the election, I mentioned there was one fewer swing state (those decided by ten points or less) than in the previous election. Still, with 16 swing states, that’s nearly a third of the country. For the comparison and trend, here’s a look at how many there have been in each election starting with the 2000 election – which of course was one of the closest in American history.
- 2000: 22
- 2004: 21
- 2008: 15
- 2012: 17
- 2016: 16
This mirrors what we’d expect. Of the past five cycles the closest election was Bush’s win in 2000 and it features the most swing states as well. Likewise, the largest win over the previous five cycles was Obama’s win in 2008 and it features the fewest swing states but there’s not a clear trend recently or even over the long run. 1960 was the first Presidential election with all 50 states. It also happened to feature the most swing states as well – 34 – reflecting how incredibly close that election was nationally. Having fewer than half of that number in play today might seem to fit the notion that the country has changed along with the perception of more division of late but then consider this...
The 1984 Reagan landslide election featured only eight swing states showing just how thoroughly dominate his win was nationally. Thirty-six years later we have twice that many swing states. To sum it up this is a case of the more things change the more they stay the same. The number of states, and the states themselves, might move around overtime but what we’ve witnessed and are likely to see again this year are consistent with longer term trends and not endemic of something different due to the state of politics today.