Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by my guest Jane mcgrounds.
Speaker 1: Right here. How's it going, Jane good? How are you good?
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, Jane, I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1: I have a pretty contentious topic to deal with today.
Speaker 1: Swing states and you may call them battleground states, or
Speaker 1: you may call them purple states, and that's because they
Speaker 1: bleed both red and blue. But no matter what you
Speaker 1: call them, tension is high there, that's right. And you
Speaker 1: notice the news probably lately it's all about McCain or
Speaker 1: Obama in one particular state or another. In those states
Speaker 1: aren't random, No, you're right, they're incredibly deliberate. And we've
Speaker 1: talked a bit before in another podcast about the electoral College,
Speaker 1: but it's worth mentioning again just to bring you guys
Speaker 1: up to speed about why these swing states are so important.
Speaker 1: And the electoral College essentially has created an indirect voting
Speaker 1: system in the United States. That's right. And when you
Speaker 1: vote for McCain or Obama or whoever you vote for
Speaker 1: in the voting booth, it's not actually directly going towards, uh,
Speaker 1: the count towards those presidents, those um that candidate. Rather
Speaker 1: it goes towards an electoral vote. Is that correct. That's
Speaker 1: absolutely correct. And all states follow this policy except for
Speaker 1: Maine in Nebraska and they have a district system, and
Speaker 1: this is a little bit more complicated, but essentially what
Speaker 1: happens here is that two of their electoral vote go
Speaker 1: for the popular vote statewide, and then the rest of
Speaker 1: the electoral votes represent the popular vote in each different
Speaker 1: congressional district. And there's been talk before about applying that
Speaker 1: system to the whole United States, but it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1: So for now, when you vote, you're voting for an
Speaker 1: electoral vote, which is voting for the president, and it
Speaker 1: takes a majority of two seventy electoral votes to win.
Speaker 1: That's right. And it seems kind of interesting because America
Speaker 1: like surprise self and democracy, whereas if you look at it, uh,
Speaker 1: someone voting in a swing state, for instance, might see
Speaker 1: to their vote count more than if you were if
Speaker 1: you were living in a safe state. Seems sort of
Speaker 1: anti democratic to some people. Yeah, and you may want
Speaker 1: to explain a little bit more about safe states for
Speaker 1: everybody out there. I think that there's a popular misconception
Speaker 1: that if you live in a safe state that's Republican
Speaker 1: and you vote Democrat, then you've just negated your voice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not really true because you know, swing states can
Speaker 1: always change. If you look at the last election. In
Speaker 1: this election, there's a lot more swing states it looks
Speaker 1: like now. And also the the idea of reapportionment. Whenever
Speaker 1: there's a sensus done, uh, you know, the number of
Speaker 1: electoral votes could shift, and so you know, the state
Speaker 1: you live in could be generations and generations vote Republican
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden this election it's more
Speaker 1: of a swing state. And I think that they're about
Speaker 1: nine states and in the past ten years have voted
Speaker 1: Republican each time, and then there's five states to have
Speaker 1: a really strong Democratic showing consistently. But it doesn't always
Speaker 1: depend on tradition. There's any number of factor that could
Speaker 1: persuade a state to get a different way. Um. Take
Speaker 1: North Carolina for instance. Back in the carry Edwards ticket,
Speaker 1: people were kind of worried that North Carolina wouldn't go
Speaker 1: red again because Edwards wise from North Carolina. They thought
Speaker 1: that the Republicans there could be persuaded to vote Democrat
Speaker 1: to support Edwards. Okay, yeah, and it's interesting if you
Speaker 1: look at this this election. You look at Colorado, for instance,
Speaker 1: and it's typically Republican, but if you notice the Democrats
Speaker 1: actually held their convention there this year, and that wasn't
Speaker 1: an accident. It's because it's getting a little bit more purple.
Speaker 1: And whether the issues and the population change, and it's
Speaker 1: always always up for grabs. And just to clarify, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to envision a map of the United States
Speaker 1: and you're trying to look at which states could be
Speaker 1: red or blue or purple, primarily Republican safe states are
Speaker 1: in the South and the plains areas, and Democrats are
Speaker 1: more concentrated, and then northeast along the Pacific Coast and
Speaker 1: the Upper Midwest. And that can be deceptive because it
Speaker 1: might look like the most of the United States is
Speaker 1: going red for Republicans, whereas those states tend to be
Speaker 1: less populated than We've got to remember population that is
Speaker 1: such a big deal, and that's why you typically don't
Speaker 1: see the candidate it's going to states with small populations.
Speaker 1: That's true. That whether it's a swing state might not
Speaker 1: matter if that state happens to have leap three electoral
Speaker 1: boats for instance, precise light. Now, sometimes you know, they'll
Speaker 1: go where the money is, and if there's a lot
Speaker 1: of money coming from that state, they'll get down there.
Speaker 1: They'll kiss some babies, they'll shake some hands, they'll eat
Speaker 1: some barbecue, and then and then take off. And we
Speaker 1: mentioned before that there is such a careful and calculated
Speaker 1: strategy the candidates have to use when picking which stage
Speaker 1: to visit. And I don't use calculated to have a
Speaker 1: negative connotation. I'm in calculated to make you guys think
Speaker 1: about the fact that there's tons of political analysts out there,
Speaker 1: you know, crunching numbers and working for these campaigns and
Speaker 1: deciding where they need to spend their time and focus
Speaker 1: their energy. And this election has been so strange because,
Speaker 1: like you said, Jane, there's some dates this year that
Speaker 1: aren't so safe anymore, and it's really making them ruttled,
Speaker 1: it is. And there's been a lot of jabs thrown
Speaker 1: from these particular states. You know, when candidate spends a
Speaker 1: day there and seems to gain some ground, and then
Speaker 1: he leaves and someone else comes in and there's some
Speaker 1: new shake up. So in the two thousand and eight election,
Speaker 1: things are looking a little bit shifty. We're not quite
Speaker 1: sure how it's going to play out. But if we
Speaker 1: look back at elections of the past, we can see
Speaker 1: how some of these calculations may or may not have
Speaker 1: worked in the candidate's favor. And sometimes when these candidates
Speaker 1: around the campaign trial, they make promises that don't exactly
Speaker 1: pan out. That's true if you look back the election
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty Um Nixon was battling it out with
Speaker 1: Kennedy at the time, and uh, he and Nixon actually
Speaker 1: pledged to visit every single state to campaign everyone. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's in laon theory. It's it's it's nice
Speaker 1: to hear that that a candidate cares about everyone. But
Speaker 1: as you and I probably realize the it didn't turn
Speaker 1: out as well as he planned and ended up being
Speaker 1: a big waste of time actually, because because there are
Speaker 1: lots of states that he visited that he didn't have to,
Speaker 1: like states that were solid for Kennedy or states so
Speaker 1: we're solid for himself. They were just so a waste
Speaker 1: of his campaigning time and he ended up spending the
Speaker 1: last weekend before the election in Alaska, which you know,
Speaker 1: it actually was kind of a battle girl state at
Speaker 1: the time, but it didn't have a lot of electoral
Speaker 1: votes and he did end up winning the state, but
Speaker 1: he lost the election. It's too bad. I admire his
Speaker 1: his initiative theories. Again, it seemed like a good idea
Speaker 1: and theory. And you know, that's it's so funny about
Speaker 1: these swing states as you just never know. Like one
Speaker 1: of the most famous cases that is in our very
Speaker 1: recent US history is the two thousand election and we
Speaker 1: look at what happened with Florida and um, gosh, you
Speaker 1: know that came down to five thirty seven votes. That's
Speaker 1: zero point zero one percent. Isn't that crazy? And a
Speaker 1: lot of these swing states they operate on a margin
Speaker 1: of about point one percent, but the point zero one
Speaker 1: that's kind of unbelievable. Yeah, And this year there's so
Speaker 1: many more uh factors in the equation that are influencing
Speaker 1: people one way or the other. Something that's come up
Speaker 1: pretty recently is this voter purge. And what's going on
Speaker 1: here is that there's a lot of names being deleted
Speaker 1: from the voter registry and whether that's because they think
Speaker 1: that someone has has been has been deceased, and whether
Speaker 1: that's because a person is thought to have died or
Speaker 1: has moved to another state, or his or her name
Speaker 1: no longer matches up with what's in the registry, or
Speaker 1: this person has been declared unfit to vote for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: These people they're not always being informed ahead of time.
Speaker 1: So if they're showing up for early voting, some of
Speaker 1: them are being turned away. And this isn't just happening
Speaker 1: to a couple of hundred or a couple of thousands,
Speaker 1: happening to a couple of million. And again, the numbers
Speaker 1: are showing right now that a lot of these people
Speaker 1: who are being turned away from polls they may have
Speaker 1: been leaning blue and so we're not sure how that's
Speaker 1: going to play out. And the but the swing states, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this voter registration for it is really mucking everything up,
Speaker 1: isn't it is it is? And there's a nonpartisan advocacy
Speaker 1: group called fair Vote, and they're saying that there's so
Speaker 1: much anticipated voter turnout for this selection that some of
Speaker 1: the swing states aren't prepared to handle the huge influx
Speaker 1: of voters. That's really interesting. It's good to hear in
Speaker 1: a way because you know, you look back a past election,
Speaker 1: I think two thousand four, only six of voting each
Speaker 1: population ended up showing up to the polls. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of disheartening that so many people seem to not care,
Speaker 1: you know. But this year, I don't think that's going
Speaker 1: to be the case, and analysts are saying that it's
Speaker 1: likely going to be the swing states that hold the
Speaker 1: key to the winner of the selection. And there were
Speaker 1: actually three states in the last election that had incredibly
Speaker 1: close margins. Those were Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Mexico. So
Speaker 1: for all of our listeners there, make sure you vote.
Speaker 1: And if you need more information about the candidates they're running, mates,
Speaker 1: the electoral college and other stuff relating to politics and government,
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