Although the term “swing state” was not used in early American history, the seeds of modern electoral competition, where even the smallest of states could decide the outcome of a national election, were soon sown across the national timeline. It would not be long before states with diverse electorates could grant their electoral votes to either of the major parties, dictating the campaigns of those ambitious enough to reach for the nation’s highest office.
Swing States Origins
The term “swing state” was not widely used until the mid-twentieth century—and even then, it is hard to pinpoint exactly. Regional preferences and later state size characterized America’s early political arena of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The deeply contested election of 1824, which featured four critical candidates from the same Democratic-Republican party, resulted in an unclear electoral vote majority.
After the House of Representatives had to decide the outcome, in a controversial decision that granted Adams the presidency, Americans began to see the volatility of American politics. While not yet swing states in a modern sense, the importance of certain states over others—in this case, larger states with more electoral votes over their smaller counterparts—showed that states could influence the outcomes of elections. Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but failed to secure states with higher populations, hence an outright majority of the electoral college.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the United States was divided along a two-party system: first the Republicans and the Democrats, and later the latter versus the Whigs and then the Republicans. As the nation expanded into the Midwest and its population grew, large electoral vote states such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio asserted themselves as critical cogs in national elections.
By the time of the 1844 election, it was evident that President James K. Polk would never have garnered enough of his 170 electoral votes to his opponent, Henry Clay’s 105, had he not taken New York’s 36. If not the name, the idea of swing states, or states that help determine national election winners on the whim of their volatile electorate, was now a fact of the American political landscape.
Civil War and Reconstruction
Certain states, particularly those with high populations, being more critical than others in national elections was on full display in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln won the election with 180 electoral votes to his opponents’ combined 123, despite not appearing on the ballot in the Southern states. The result, which would see the latter’s secession and signal the start of the American Civil War, demonstrated the power of the North’s growing population and subsequent electoral vote prowess.
Still, it would not be until the election of 1876 and the controversial Compromise of 1877 that the importance of key states in determining the outcome of a close presidential contest was on full display. As the political alignment had settled along geographical lines, with the North primarily supporting the Republicans and the South favoring the Democrats, the national attention turned to the three Southern states still under federal military occupation due to the ongoing Reconstruction.
Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina became the first “swing states,” in the modern sense of a state that either of the two main parties could win. The presence of federal troops protecting recently enfranchised African American voters amid other heavily Democratically controlled Southern states made the three areas unique, as nobody knew which way they would go come election day. As fate would have it, neither candidate secured the necessary 185 electoral votes to win outright.
Although the three states only had 19 electoral votes between them (there was also one contested elector in Oregon), neither the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes nor the Democrat Samuel Tilden could have won the presidency without them. Tilden won 184 electoral votes, just one shy of winning the presidency, as Hayes ended with 165. Both parties claimed the disputed states; thus, their 19 electoral votes did not factor into the totals. The Republicans and the Democrats had set up rival electoral boards in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina and reported conflicting results, leading to a constitutional crisis.
Having established a special Electoral Commission, Congress controversially awarded Hayes the disputed electoral votes (plus one from Oregon), giving him the needed 185 electoral votes to Tilden’s 184. In what became known as the Compromise of 1877, an informal and unwritten agreement between the Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans, Hayes conceded the presidency to his opponent in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction and allowing the Southern Democrats to regain control of the contested states. For the first time in history, a presidential election came down to swing states, where the outcome could have tossed the presidency to either of the opposing candidates.
The Twentieth Century
The term “swing state” was first widely used in one of the most remarkable elections in American political history. The incumbent President Harry Truman faced an uphill battle in 1948 as labor unrest, inflation, and growing dissatisfaction with his civil rights policies were splintering his Democratic Party, already reeling from Republican success in the 1946 midterm elections. All polls and political analysts had conceded the election to New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Undeterred, Truman launched an aggressive nationwide campaign, allowing his train to pass through small towns in America, where the president could directly connect with the voters.
Of particular interest were the states of Ohio, Illinois, and California. The two former held critical voting blocks of industrial laborers and farmers, whose support Truman hoped to gain. Yet, even more importantly, the media identified the three swing states as having large and diverse electorates, where gathering enough support would tip them into either camp. In Ohio, the president sought the support of working-class voters, specifically unionized workers; in Illinois, it was the urban voters and the rural base; and in California, the progressives who supported his Fair Deal domestic program of continuing FDR’s New Deal policies. Come election day, all three contested states fell into Truman’s camp by slim margins; in Ohio, with just 7,000 votes. The president’s unlikely victory in 1948 demonstrated the importance of swing states, particularly in the Midwest and the West, where populations were diverse enough to hinder the regions’ alignment to a specific party platform.
Just twelve years later, the 1960 election between Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK) and the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon was one of the closest and most dramatic in United States history. With the race incredibly close, both candidates set a precedent followed by most candidates in subsequent elections by forgoing big events and appearances in states already firmly in their respective political parties’ grasp. Instead, they focused their efforts on the critical swing states, identified at the time as Illinois, Texas, and Michigan, with 27, 24, and 20 electoral votes, respectively. With the population sentiment so close, and later proven by Kennedy’s and Nixon’s popular vote margin of less than 0.1%, the electoral vote count would prove decisive in winning the election.
In each key state, Kennedy’s campaign targeted a specific demographic to swing the state in the Bostonian’s favor. In Texas, JFK appealed to the liberals and minority voters and used the influence of his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson to sway the state’s conservative Democrats. In Michigan, the targets were organized labor and urban voters, while in Illinois, the focus was on Democratic political boss Richard J. Daley. Ultimately, Kennedy won all three key swing states and garnered enough electoral votes, 303 to Nixon’s 219, to secure the presidency, proving that one did not need to traverse the entire nation on their campaign trail.
George W. Bush Elections
The 2000 US presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore is considered one of the most contested and significant in American history—especially in highlighting the importance of swing states in close races where the outcome hinges on a single state’s results. While Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin were all classified as the swing states up for grabs, it would be the foremost that became the election’s most decisive battleground.
It came down to Florida on election night and its 25 electoral votes, which would determine the winner. All eyes were on the state’s extraordinarily close vote count, and the networks even prematurely called the state for Gore, only to retract the statement and declare Bush the winner. Florida’s vote margin was so slim that it triggered an automatic recount, plunging the southern state into the center of legal and political controversy.
Both campaigns filed lawsuits over the process, claiming the election was stolen from their candidates. After the US Supreme Court stopped the manual recount in a landmark case, Bush v. Gore, on December 12, 2000, Florida granted its 25 electoral votes to Bush, bringing him 271 votes to Gore’s 266. Despite winning the popular vote, Gore lost the election by a razor-thin margin of 537 votes in Florida, demonstrating the impact of every vote within a swing state determining national presidential contests.
By 2004, all of the swing states from four years before could once again swing in either party’s direction. With Florida secured early in the campaign this time, President Bush poured his resources into Ohio to ensure the state’s critical 20 electoral votes. While Democratic nominee John Kerry focused on the state’s urban centers, the incumbent targeted Ohio’s rural and evangelical voters. With the state facing significant job losses and deindustrialization, the economy seemed more important to its citizens than the ongoing and unpopular Iraq War that Kerry accused the Bush administration of dragging out. The president would go on to win Ohio by about 118,000 votes, reaffirming the importance of Ohio as one of the most significant swing states in American politics.
Ohio is the very epitome of a swing state that can wield outsized influence in close national elections. Like other swing states, its historic unpredictability comes from demographic diversity, economic makeup, and geographical location. The Midwestern state is a mix of large urban areas of Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati voting Democratic, large rural areas leaning toward conservative Republicans, and suburban areas around its large cities continuously shifting allegiances depending on national trends. Add to this the state’s large industrial, manufacturing, and farming sectors, which foster an electorate sensitive to trade, policy, and economic inequality, and you have a blueprint of topics to appeal to in winning the area’s voters. Like with any other swing state at a given time, Ohio’s evenly divided electorate makes the states alternate between supporting Democrats and Republicans, with neither party ever taking it for granted during campaign season.
While the list of swing states can change from election to election, the most consistent to play a crucial role in national elections are Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada—all competitive, like Ohio, due to their diverse electorate. As shown in history, swing states are characterized by volatility and closely contested elections where neither party holds a dominant advantage, and the smallest margin of victory could determine the ultimate winner, for better or for worse.
