United States presidential election swing states, 2004

The "Washington Post" defined swing states for the 2004 election as those that were decided by less than three percentage points in the 2000 presidential election. Using those criteria, the swing states for 2004 are Oregon, New Mexico, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Florida. The "Los Angeles Times", in a pre-Super Tuesday evaluation of the Democratic slate, also named Ohio and Missouri as other critical swing states. Bloomberg added West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan and Nevada and said the two major parties believed 18 states were in play in 2004. Molly Ivins, in an April 3, 2004 column, also listed Louisiana. In an April 28 "Washington Post" feature on the red state-blue state split in AmericaFact|date=February 2007, potential 2004 swing states listed as: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin. In John Kerry's presidential campaign, many also considered Virginia a swing state.

Alphabetical order

#Arizona: 10 Electoral votes
#Arkansas: 6 Electoral votes
#Delaware: 3 Electoral votes
#Florida: 27 Electoral votes
#Iowa: 7 Electoral votes
#Louisiana: 9 Electoral votes
#Maine: 4 Electoral votes
#Michigan: 17 Electoral votes
#Minnesota: 10 Electoral votes
#Missouri: 11 Electoral votes
#Nevada: 5 Electoral votes
#New Hampshire: 4 Electoral votes
#New Mexico: 5 Electoral votes
#Ohio: 20 Electoral votes
#Oregon: 7 Electoral votes
#Pennsylvania: 21 Electoral votes
#Washington: 11 Electoral votes
#West Virginia: 5 Electoral votes
#Wisconsin: 10 Electoral votes

A survey conducted by a firm for the Bush campaign also gave a figure of 19 states, but replaced Delaware with Colorado. It cited these states as "the 19 battleground states in which the Bush and Kerry campaigns have focused their paid media efforts to this point".

Ohio

Some observers labeled Ohio as the most important battleground state. The Gore campaign in 2000 gave up on Ohio with weeks to go before the election, but some statistics seem to indicate that Gore was gaining ground there and might have won the state had he persisted. With Ohio's 21 electoral votes, Gore would not have needed Florida to win as he would have otherwise had 287 electoral votes verses Bush's 250. No presidential candidate has lost Ohio but won the election since 1960, when John F. Kennedy lost Ohio to Richard Nixon but won the presidency.

Traditionally, labor unions have had a strong grassroots network in the state. However, since 1970, Ohio's manufacturing base has taken one hit after another, with more big blows coming during the George W. Bush administration. A weakened union organization was accompanied by an Ohio Democratic Party that was in shambles. While the Kerry campaign tried to build its Ohio campaign from the ground up, the Ohio Republicans were able to spend months building a grassroots campaign modeled on multi-level marketing schemes such as Amway. [ [http://lrm102.securednshost.com/pipermail/nationalvoicenews_voicelists.org/2004-April/000365.html Dead link as of (June 1, 2008)] at lrm102.securednshost.com]

By actual result

As predicted by some, Ohio turned out to be the key state -- although Bush won two states with a lower margin of victory, Bush's victory in these states would have been irrelevant had Bush lost in Ohio, and a Kerry victory in them would have been irrelevant as long as Bush won in Ohio.

References