Could somebody please try to explain to me, preferably in basic junior high school level English, how this whole swing state phenomenon works? I can easily understand how an entire state can be consistently Democrat (MA, NY, CT, RI, CA) or consistently Republican (AL, TX, OK, ND, SD). But I really have a hard time figuring out the same population can vote completely differently every four years (OH, PA, VA, IA, FL).<\/p>\n
I mean, since the 2000 Bush v. Gore election things have become so polarized that what each party stands for completely contradicts the other party’s beliefs.<\/p>\n
You’re either pro-choice or anti-abortion<\/p>\n
You’re either for same-sex marriage or against same-sex marriage<\/p>\n
You’re either for tax reform or against tax reform<\/p>\n
You’re either for decreased military spending or against decreased military spending<\/p>\n
The list goes on and on. And generally speaking, you’re likely to share most of your beliefs with one particular party, although there are obviously large numbers of people who, for example, may be anti-abortion yet for same sex marriage. I get that. My beliefs don’t always fall down party lines, either.<\/p>\n
However, my core convictions are consistent. If a candidate (or party) is consistently against the majority of my strongly held beliefs, it’s fairly obvious for which party I’ll tend to vote. And with both parties for the past 12 years consistently maintaining such opposing platforms, I don’t understand how votes in swing states can fluctuate so much? The way I see it, you either believe what you believe or, to be blunt, you have no spine and can be easily bought. In which case, I feel sorry for you (and this country). But there must be more to it than that, but I truly cannot figure it out.<\/p>\n
My rant is neither pro-Democrat and anti-Republican (nor anti-Democrat and pro-Republican). I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this drama we deal with every four years where only a handful of states get to essentially control the election.<\/p>\n
I look forward to the comments. Seriously!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Could somebody please try to explain to me, preferably in basic junior high school level English, how this whole swing state phenomenon works? I can easily understand how an entire state can be consistently Democrat (MA, NY, CT, RI, CA) or consistently Republican (AL, TX, OK, ND, SD). But I really have a hard time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2882,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2881\/revisions\/2882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}