Swing States Influence

Swing States and There Influence

“A Democrat who lives in Kansas will never cast a meaningful vote in a presidential election in his or her life,” according reporter Ed Grabianowski. With this extreme statement Grabianowski is relaying the idea that in a democratic majority, like Kansas, one single persons vote isn’t significant. However, in contrast, states with where there is no definite majority each individual vote is central to which party the state will fall. These “important” states are called swing states. To the statement posed for this assignment, “only swing states matter”, I am in partial agreement. Swing states are not the “only” votes that matter but they do matter greatly. Swing states matter in presidential elections because

In the 1992 presidential election the candidate that got the most swing state votes also won the election; out of 17 swing states for that year Clinton, the winner, won 11 of them. For every rule there is an exception and the 1996 presidential election is just that. President Clinton ended up winning the election over all; however his opponent won in the swing states. Clinton was only able to win his second term because he won 31 out of 50 states over all. During the following national election, 2000, Bush won the swing states by 72,949 votes. In the following presidential election, in 2004, Bush won again; his victory is similar to that of Clinton in 1996. Bush won 30 of 50 states signaling that he had no real need for the swing states; this type of situation again falls under the exception. During the 2008 elections, Obama won the elections and took the swing states as well. By the same token, President Obama won the following election, 2012, and collected all the swing states. Keeping in mind the one exception to the rule swing states have a history of making a difference which makes them extremely important along with seeming inability for them to be