Stephen Rosenfeld — Forget Swing States: The Presidential Election Will Be Determined by 20 Swing Counties in Linchpin States

In a nation where 130 million people are expected to vote for president this fall, it’s disconcerting to think 96 percent of those ballots won’t count as much as those from swing states and a few key counties. But that’s a result of the Electoral College’s hard math, which since 1988 has seen Republicans likely to win 23 states with 191 electoral votes, and Democrats likely to win 18 states and the District of Columbia, with 232 electoral votes. The remaining 10 states have been considered the swing states—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin—with a total of 115 electoral votes.…

What’s revealing about Schultz’s list of swing counties is that it pinpoints the fulcrums or likely tipping points in states that drive presidential candidates to Electoral College victories. That is not the same as the national popular vote, needless to say. Indeed, when Schultz identified these swing counties, he looked at their 2012 votes, and realized that had Mitt Romney been a little more successful in various combinations of these locales, he would have been elected.

“People don’t realize that the Romney-Obama race was actually far closer than most people think,” Schultz said. “There was an Electoral College blow-out, but if you had a shift of just a few hundred thousand votes across a few states, Romney would be running for re-election this year. We’re really looking at no more than a half-million votes shifting, depending on how you actually define it, and that’s a very small number of votes.” ….

AlterNet
Forget Swing States: The Presidential Election Will Be Determined by 20 Swing Counties in Linchpin States

Stephen Rosenfeld