About One-Third of Americans Live in a Swing State
I was surprised to find that up to one-third of Americans live in the 11 or 13 closest states. Talks by political scientists had made it sound like a smaller minority of the public that were crucial to the election of the President. The graphs of voter leanings also make it appear as if a very small amount of electoral votes is in the balance.
Let’s start with the summary, for readers like me, who give up on long articles. For the 11 closest states, say by the NY Times and Upshot, there are 98.0 million Americans. Out of 319 million Americans, this is 30.7%. Sometimes, Virginia, with 8.3 million population, and New Hampshire, with 1.3 million, are also included, giving a total of 107.6 million population. This gives a population share of 33.7%.
We now give the swing states with their population, their number of electoral votes (EVs), and the current NY Times estimate of the probability leading candidate taking the state. This is written on Oct. 2, a few days after Clinton’s successful first debate, where Trump’s probabilities have declined. We list the states by population size, in millions. The populations are estimates for July 1, 2014.
State: Population: EV: Probability of winning
Florida 19.9 29 65% Dem.
Pennsylvania 12.8 20 82% Dem.
Ohio 11.6 18 54% Rep.
Georgia 10.1 16 79% Rep.
Michigan 9.9 16 84% Dem.
North Carolina 9.9 15 54% Dem.
*Virginia 8.3 13 93% Dem.
Arizona 6.7 11 75% Rep.
Wisconsin 5.8 10 76% Dem.
Colorado 5.4 9 77% Dem.
Iowa 3.1 6 60% Rep.
Nevada 2.8 6 62% Dem.
*New Hampshire 1.3 4 88% Dem.
Despite close national polls, Clinton has improved to a 76% probability of winning, compared to Trump’s 24%. Before the debate, Trump had slowly risen to 30% probability.
In electoral votes, 156 are contained in the closest 11 states, and 173 are included in all 13 states above. Of the 538 total electoral votes, these are 29.0%, and 32.2%, respectively.
There are five very close states, which have been called toss-ups. They are Ohio at 54% Rep., North Carolina at 54% Dem., Iowa at 60% Rep., Nevada at 62% Dem., and the largest swing state, Florida, at 65% Dem. The total electoral college votes in these five states is 75, which is about half of the 156 in the closest 11 states. The five toss-up states have 13.9% of the total number of electoral votes. This is about 1/7 of the total electoral votes.
The Presidential candidates are obviously concentrating their rallys, ads, mailings, and phone calls into the five toss-ups, and then the eleven swing states. This concentration helps the candidates to save money, making them less dependent on large donors. They also tailor their policies and messages to those that are important in the toss-up and swing states. This is like the concentration of the candidates’ efforts and policies in the four February primary states.
