A report on Swing state, United States Electoral College and Political parties in the United States

State races by 2020 United States presidential election margin.

Electoral votes, out of 538, allocated to each state and the District of Columbia for presidential elections to be held in 2024 and 2028, based on representation, which depends on population data from the 2020 census. Every jurisdiction is entitled to at least 3.

Popular votes to political parties during presidential elections.

In the 2020 presidential election (held using 2010 census data) Joe Biden received 306 and Donald Trump 232 of the total 538 electoral votes.
In Maine (upper-right) and Nebraska (center), the small circled numbers indicate congressional districts. These are the only two states to use a district method for some of their allocated electors, instead of a complete winner-takes-all.

Political parties derivation. Dotted line means unofficially.

Cases of certificates of the electoral college votes confirming the results of the 2020 US election, after they had been removed from the House Chambers by congressional staff during the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack.

After the popular election in November, a state's Certificate of Ascertainment officially announces the state's electors for the Electoral College. The appointed Electoral College members later meet in the state capital in December to cast their votes.

Population per electoral vote for each state and Washington, D.C. (2010 census). By 2020 estimates, a single elector could represent more than 700,000 people or under 200,000.

When the state's electors meet in December, they cast their ballots and record their vote on a Certificate of Vote, which is then sent to the U.S. Congress. (From the election of 1876)

This cartogram shows the number of electors from each state for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Following the 2010 Census, New York and Ohio lost two electoral votes, 8 states lost one, 6 states gained one, Florida gained two, and Texas gained four.

This graphic demonstrates how the winner of the popular vote can still lose in an electoral college system similar to the U.S. Electoral College.

Bar graph of popular votes in presidential elections (through 2020). Black stars mark the five cases where the winner did not have the plurality of the popular vote. Black squares mark the two cases where the electoral vote resulted in a tie, or the winner did not have the majority of electoral votes. An H marks each of two cases where the election was decided by the House; an S marks the one case where the election was finalized by the Supreme Court.

These maps show the amount of attention given to each state by the Bush and Kerry campaigns (combined) during the final five weeks of the 2004 election: each waving hand (purple map) represents a visit from a presidential or vice presidential candidate; each dollar sign (green map) represents one million dollars spent on TV advertising.

Half the U.S. population lives in 143 urban / suburban counties out of 3,143 counties or county equivalents (2019 American Community Survey)

Due to the winner-take-all method most states use to determine their presidential electors, candidates often campaign only in competitive states, which is why a select group of states frequently receives a majority of the advertisements and candidate visits.

- Swing state

In recent U.S. political history, political behavior correlates with the urban–rural political divide; whereby more voters living in urban areas gravitate towards the Democratic Party, voters living in more rural areas gravitate towards the Republican Party, whilst suburban electoral districts are battleground marginal seats which also influence the outcomes of battleground swing states in the Electoral College system of United States presidential elections.

- Political parties in the United States

Further objection is that instead of spending equally on each voter in the nation, candidates focus their campaigns on just a few swing states.

- United States Electoral College

However, this projection was not specific to any particular election cycle, and assumed similar levels of support for both parties.

- Swing state

The custom of allowing recognized political parties to select a slate of prospective electors developed early.

- United States Electoral College

2 related topics with Alpha

A 2016 general election ballot, listing the presidential and vice presidential candidates

United States presidential election

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Comparison of the popular vote totals since 1900.

The hand-written copy of the natural-born-citizen clause as it appeared in 1787

A 2008 Democratic caucus meeting in Iowa City, Iowa. The Iowa caucuses are traditionally the first major electoral event of presidential primaries and caucuses.

Madison Square Garden in New York City, the site of the 1976, 1980, and 1992 Democratic National Conventions; and the 2004 Republican National Convention.

The floor of the 2008 Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

A Texas voter about to mark a selection for president on a ballot, 2008 Election Day

John Adams was the first of 26 presidents who have been lawyers.

The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not directly for those offices, but instead for members of the Electoral College.

As almost all states mandate the winner of the plurality of its constituent statewide popular vote ('one person, one vote') shall receive all of that state's electors ("winner-takes-all'), instances such as the presidential elections of 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive the most votes in the general election; these were presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote due to the outsized effects of close and narrow pluralities in numerous swing states.

The nomination process, consisting of the primary elections and caucuses and the nominating conventions, was not specified in the Constitution, but was developed over time by the states and political parties.

Democratic Party (United States)

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Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States (1829–1837) and the first Democratic president.

Martin Van Buren was the eighth president of the United States (1837–1841) and the second Democratic president.

The 1885 inauguration of Grover Cleveland, the only president with non-consecutive terms

Leaders of the Democratic Party during the first half of the 20th century on 14 June 1913: Secretary of State William J. Bryan, Josephus Daniels, President Woodrow Wilson, Breckinridge Long, William Phillips, and Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, 32nd and 33rd presidents of the United States (1933–1945; 1945–1953), featured on a campaign poster for the 1944 presidential election

John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, 35th and 36th presidents of the United States (1961–1963, 1963–1969)

Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States (1977–1981), delivering the State of the Union Address in 1979

Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), at The Pentagon in 1998

Barack Obama speaking to College Democrats of America in 2007

President Barack Obama meeting with the Blue Dog Coalition in the State Dining Room of the White House in 2009

Eleanor Roosevelt at the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago

President Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law at the White House on March 23, 2010

Secretary of State John Kerry addressing delegates at the United Nations before signing the Paris Agreement on April 22, 2016

Shirley Chisholm was the first major-party African American candidate to run nationwide primary campaigns.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Immigration Act of 1965 as Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and others look on

Then-Senator Barack Obama shaking hands with an American soldier in Basra, Iraq in 2008

President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with President Barack Obama at Ben Gurion Airport in 2013

Self-identified Democrats (blue) versus self-identified Republicans (red) (January–June 2010 data)

Higher percentages of Democrats than Republicans are members of union households.

Elected at age 33, Jon Ossoff is currently the youngest member of the U.S. Senate.

Hillary Clinton was the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg

Julián Castro served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

U.S. opinion on gun control issues is deeply divided along political lines, as shown in this 2021 survey.

The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States.

They support reforming the electoral system to eliminate gerrymandering, abolishing the electoral college, as well as passing comprehensive campaign finance reform.

Jewish Americans as an important Democratic constituency are especially politically active and influential in large cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago and play critical roles in large cities within presidential swing states, such as Philadelphia, Miami, and Las Vegas.