Swing states and the US presidential election

Even after highly controversial and sometimes unconstitutional and, speaking generally, unpalatable statements by the Republican nominee Donald Trump, and continuous internal and world-wide condemnation for quite some time, there is still almost a consensus amongst the poll analysts that the US Presidential Election 2016 will be a contest to the end, with both sides spending considerable time and money in almost all the 11 swing states.

It is more or less true that the endless election campaigns - including televised presidential debates, one vice-presidential debate and many TV advertisements - have registered immensely on the race. But all available signs and indications suggest that it will take almost hand to hand political combat to make even small gains by November 8, the Election Day. That means that the two sides - Democrats and Republicans - are poised for fierce fights, especially in all the swing states.

Today, roughly two-thirds of the states are written off as the province of one party or the other before the first primary votes are even cast. The reason is simple: 33 states have voted for the same party in the past five presidential elections and 40 of the 50 states have voted for the same party since 2000. As such, it is quite difficult at this stage to say which states will really decide who amongst Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will become the next US president.

One can reasonably argue that US presidents are determined by the Electoral College. Candidates need 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win. Most states show a strong preference for one party or the other from election to election. Those that don't are known as swing states, battleground states or purple states.

That is because the president is selected via a quirky mechanism called the Electoral College, created by the nation's founders as a compromise between those who favoured a direct popular vote and those who wanted lawmakers to pick the president. Every state in the US is assigned as many electoral college  votes  as it has members of Congress, a formula that amplifies the importance of  small states.

The electoral votes of many states - including Democratic  California and Republican Texas - can be taken for granted. As such, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina favour both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

The winner-take-all system caused the Electoral College to choose presidents who did not win the overall vote in 1876, 1888 and 2000, when Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore after a week-long recount.

POLITICO has identified 11 states where the 2016 election could be won or lost - Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Another feature that is important today is the battleground states polling average, based on the most recent public polls from each of the 11 states and weighed by each state's representation in the Electoral College. The states were selected after weighing a variety of factors including polling, demography, voter registration, early advertisement spending, campaign staffing, and recent and past electoral history.

Together, the11 battleground states will deliver 146 electoral votes - more than half of the electoral votes necessary to win the presidency. The list includes the bellwether behemoths of Ohio and Florida; the fast-growing Mountain West states of Nevada and Colorado; increasingly diverse North Carolina and Virginia, both altered by Hispanic population growth; and slower growing Iowa, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. According to another report, Michigan and Pennsylvania, neither of which has voted for a Republican for President since 1988, have also been included largely because of Donald Trump. If there is a path to victory for the GOP nominee, it will likely go through these Rust Belt manufacturing giants, where his message on trade and economy could take hold.     

As a result, both the candidates and their campaign strategists have already taken up several attractive programmes designed to draw the attention and sympathy of the voters of swing states, who could practically determine the fate of the presidential race. Following the outcome of the televised debates, the campaign strategists of both contenders have started reassessing their respective position, particularly in the swing states, for framing their promotional content and other campaign materials for those areas.

There are a good number of affluent undecided voters in other states and big cities as well. Eyeing them, particularly keeping in mind the November 8 presidential race, the Hillary campaign has recently started emphasising on business friendly stances, such as opposition to runaway deficits, although as a politician  she previously consistently backed expansion deals as part of an effort to court the union voters. The Republicans face similar challenges, especially when appeals to its socially conservative base become too strident.

On the other hand, the campaign advisers of Republican candidate Donald Trump have, of late, started counting on economic growth to hold more socially liberal and affluent voters in line. His campaign strategists have been, however, trying from the very beginning to exploit the Democrat nominee's balancing act to press its charge that Hillary Clinton flip flops on her views, depending on the political circumstances.

Several Democrats and their supporters, whom I have had the opportunity to have many a discussions with at a Manhattan based Senior Citizens Centre in New York during my recent eight-month stay in the US, think that to win  the election, Hillary needs to expand her beachhead with fence sitting voters to turn her bounce into a lasting shift with a stunning 84 percent of voters already certain of whom they will back. This slice of the electorate, ranging from 4 percent to 10 percent of likely voters, yearns for change but is not necessarily sold on Hillary.

Now the question arises: who are these people? They are independents. They are up-scale suburbanites who are turned off by the Republican Party's ties to the "religious Right". They are also alienated blue-collar workers who feel left-out of the GOP's "ownership society". Finally, they are the turned-off young voters who worry about their job prospects.

The writer is an analyst and a former executive chairman of BOI.