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Heavy television advertising by candidates in a swing state can bring out supporters for the candidates more than in other states. These yard signs in a residential district of Grosse Pointe, Michigan during the 2004 Presidential election show the difference in opinions between two neighbors.
In the presidential elections of the United States, the U.S. Electoral College system means that only the winner of a state receives any benefits from it (i.e. electoral votes). If a campaign wins a plurality of the popular vote in a state, the candidate receives all of that state's electoral votes; no benefit is gained from receiving additional votes above the margin necessary to win (this is true of 48 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; the two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska, are explained below). This fact produces a very particular set of circumstances that explains the existence of swing states.
Since a national campaign is interested in electoral votes, rather than the national popular vote, it tends to ignore states that it believes it will win easily; since it will win these without significant campaigning, any effort put into them is essentially wasted. A similar logic dictates that the campaign avoid putting any effort into states that it knows it will lose. For instance, a Republican candidate (the more conservative of the two major parties) can easily expect to win TexasTexas joined the United States of America as its 28th member state in 1845. It has the postal abbreviation TX . The state name derives from a word in a Caddoan language of the Hasinai, tejas meaning friends or allies Spanish explorers mistakenly applied t and several other Southern states, which historically have a very conservative culture and a more recent history of voting for Republican candidates. Similarly, the same candidate can expect to lose CaliforniaCalifornia is a state located in the western United States, bordering the Pacific Ocean. The most populous and third largest state in the U. California is both physically and demographically diverse. The state's official nickname is "The Golden State", wh and MassachusettsMassachusetts is a state of the United States of America, part of the New England region. postal abbreviation is MA and its traditional abbreviation is Mass . It is properly called the Commonwealth of Massachusetts although there is no legal distinction b, traditionally liberal states, no matter how much campaigning is done in that state. The only states which the campaign would target to spend time, money, and energy in are those that could be won by either candidate. These are the swing states.
Only two states— Maine and Nebraska—violate this winner-take-all rule. Under their system, two electoral votes go to the person who wins a plurality in the state, and a candidate gets one additional electoral vote for each Congressional District in which they receive a plurality. Both of these states have relatively few electoral votes (for the 2004 election, Maine has 4 and Nebraska has 5; the minimum is 3) and are usually not considered swing states. Despite their different rules, neither has ever had a split electoral vote.
In the 20042004 is a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 2004 calendar), and has also been designated the: International Year of Rice International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition Elections are to be held in 73 co elections Colorado voted on an initiative that would have allocated the state's electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote in the state. The initiative would've taken effect immediately, applying to the selection of electors in the same election. However the initiative failed and Colorado remains under the winner take all system that is present in 48 states.