ELECTORAL COLLEGE

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Swing State Major/Minor Number of Electoral Votes

Colorado Minor 9

Florida Major 29

Ohio Major 18

North Carolina Major 15

New Hampshire Minor 4

Virginia Major 13

A swing state, also known as battleground state or a purple state is seen in the presidential politics of the United States of America. These are states that no candidate or political party has a promised massive support towards securing the Electoral College votes of that particular state. States of this nature are targeted mostly by leading political parties in the presidential candidate elections because winning the majority vote in these states places the party in a better position to achieve the electoral votes.

In a state like Florida that has a total of 29 electoral votes; it automatically qualifies to a major swing state whose effect will impact this campaign greatly. Considering the key issues in the state of Florida at the moment, our strategy would mainly focus on the citizen’s out roars so that in turn they would consider giving us the vote. The current situation of pollution in Lake Okeechobee by the large ranches would be our first target. We would make sure to promise the implementation of state involvement towards instituting pollution limits and a set of rules curbing these and restoring the waters. This would give us votes of the citizens living around the lake and all others who were being affected by the pollution. We would also set focus on the program that is working towards repowering Florida with clean energy. With the fact that solar energy could light up half a million homes, if the state boosted this program it would increase our chances of winning the electoral votes because we are targeting the citizens who view the program as effective. There are more Republican States in this region as shown in the below voting history.

2000 D (45%) R (50%)

1996 D (37%) R (50%)

1992 D (32%) R (43%)

1988 D (48%) R (50%)

1984 D (43%) R (56%)

Demographic Breakdown: 78% White, 14% Black/African American

However much the state of New Hampshire has only 4 electoral votes therefore a minor swing state we would also want to win as it adds up to the overall count. With the key issues of economy and conservations of both sociality and evangelical Christianity, they are a kind of discrete minority. The groups in target in this region would be the Christians because of their presence with large numbers.

New Hampshire has a voting history of:

2008 D (55%) R (45%)

2004 D (58%) R (42%)

2000 D (48%) R (52%)

1996 D (63%) R (37%)

1992 D (51%) R (49%)

Demographic Breakdown: 76.4% White, 1% African American, 2.8% Hispanic

Following to the above statistical and strategically analyzed data, it is clear that in this region the majority states are Republican however due to somewhat reasons Democrats often take the majority vote. In this presidential election the state of Ohio is most likely to face the closest races with North Carolina because they have almost the same number of electoral votes and are both major swing states. Therefore the candidates will be making all sorts of promises throughout the campaigns to improve the current states the citizens are in aiming to gain their vote and win over both the majority and minority swing states. With the pre-election candidates night coming up there will be the declaration of the initiation of the campaigns and as the trend always is, everyone will be trying to win over swing states.

But in my perspective, I think voters will vote for a candidate of their choice not according to how well the campaigns are conducted or what improvements are to be made but according to how promising, focused and determined the candidate is to moving the nation forward.

Bibliography

White, Deborah. US Liberal Politics. About.com. HYPERLINK “http://usliberals.about.com/od/” http://usliberals.about.com/od/

BattlegroundStates2012/a/New-Hampshire-In-2012-Elections.htm

Catherine Jaime, Understanding the Electoral College (CreateSpace Independent Publishing

Platform, 2010), 32-67.