The importance of swinging

New series of articles starts this week in the Economist focusing on the states that may detrmine the outcome of this year’s race for the White House

I have ploughed through this morning’s papers with nothing significant to report, so make no apologies for a heads up about a new series of articles commencing in this week’s Economist.

These should be of particular interest to students of American Politics.

Like most of the recent presidential elections, this year’s contest is likely to be determined in a number of key ‘swing’ states. Remember, of course, that the presidency is determined not by the national popular vote, but by an ancient anachronism called the Electoral College. Here the candidate who takes the largest number of votes in each state carries that state. (There are a couple of states that in theory allocate their votes proportionally but have not done this in practice.) Since a large number of states lean strongly Republican or Democrat, a number of ‘battleground’ states are most likely to receive the most attention from the respective campaigns.

One of these states is Ohio, in the mid-west.

The Economist describes the state thus:

‘Ohio is the quintessential battleground state. Bill Clinton won it by some of the narrowest of his margins for any big state—just two points in 1992 and six in 1996. In 2004 George Bush won Ohio, with its precious 20 of the 270 electoral college votes needed to secure the presidency, by a mere 118,600 votes. Had 60,000 Ohioans gone the other way, John Kerry would have been president.

Ohio is also a bell-weather state as it has voted for the winning candidate in all 11 presidential elections since 1960. In doing so, it has deviated from the national vote shares by only a couple of points. In 2004 it matched the national average exactly.

The reason is that it is such a microcosm of America. Ohio is a surprisingly diverse state—with everything from big cities to rolling fields, rustbelt industries to Appalachian poverty. In the Cup-o-Jo Cafe in Columbus, the state capital, 20-somethings sit around eating vegetarian food and talking about how much Mr Obama inspires them to hope for a better world. Out in the rural areas the signs on the road tell a different story—“Hell is real,” reads one, and then, a few miles later, “Repent!”.’

I’ve said before that given the unpopularity of the current president that it is surprising that the candidate hailing form the same party is not further behind in the polls. Indeed, a number of polls have John McCain dead even or ahead in some key states. Much of this is to do with Barack Obama’s apparent inability to win over a key demographic, white working class voters.

Obama was significantly outpolled by Hillary Clinton amongst this group in the primaries and he continues to struggle now the general election campaign has started.

The Economist confirms that this is also a problem within the state of Ohio. The question now of course is what Obama does about this. It may not matter if the Democrats can energise the vote, and in particular the thousands of new voters who registered for the first time in this year’s primaries. Or if McCain can’t motivate the evangelicals in his party to support him as they have done for Bush on two successive occasions. Or if Obama outscores McCain by a big margin amongst Hispanics. But there are a lot of ifs, and Ohio may, as it did in 2004, hold the key to the White House.