One of the most crucial, but misunderstood, concepts in politics is that of "swing voters." The term is often confused with undecided voters: those who, at any given moment of a campaign, have not chosen a candidate. And the two categories do tend to overlap. But more precisely, swing voters are those who belong to some category of the electorate with an unstable attachment to the major political parties. They are literally in motion from election to election, which makes them unusually susceptible to persuasion based on each party's message, candidate characteristics, policy agenda, and political effort.
There are dozens of ways to categorize swing voters, just as there are hundreds of ways to slice and dice the electorate. But in terms of Democratic candidate John Kerry's swing voter strategy, there's a simple and compelling method for identifying his targets: comparing the performance in key voter categories of the last successful Democratic presidential candidacy, Bill Clinton's in 1996, with that of Al Gore's near miss in 2000. Clinton beat Bob Dole nationally by 8 percentage points, while Gore essentially tied George W. Bush. (Clinton's percentage of the total vote only marginally exceeded Gore's, but that was attributable to the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot in 1996; had Perot not run, Clinton would have won a solid majority.)
But as the 2000 elections painfully reminded Democrats, presidential elections are won and lost not in the national popular vote, but in the
Electoral College and in the "battleground" states where either candidate has a realistic chance for victory. This article will look at swing voter groups -- those with whom Clinton did significantly better than Gore -- in eight states that are key 2004 battlegrounds: New Hampshire, Florida, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, and Oregon. (There are obviously other battleground states where some of the same categories of swing voters will also be important.) I will also note cases where Gore significantly undershot his national performance in categories that didn't swing nationally. Because of the focus on specific states, I will only use those swing voter categories where there is consistent state election and exit poll data available for both 1996 and 2000. And in closing, I will point out demographic trends that will affect the overall outcome, and note the possible swing status of voting groups where Clinton and Gore did equally well.
Comparing Clinton in 1996 with Gore in 2000, there are several voter categories often thought of as swing among which Gore actually matched or nearly matched Clinton's performance. The two candidates' vote was similar among families earning more than $75,000. They both carried the senior vote (voters over age 60) by 4 points.
There is an expanding gender gap between 1996 and 2000 that suggests a growing weakness for Democrats among men: Clinton carried women by 16 percentage points and lost men by 1; Gore carried women by 11 points and lost men by 11 -- that's a 10-point negative swing among men and a 5-point negative swing among women.
Reflecting Gore's special weakness among non-college-educated, working-class, white families -- despite his "people versus the powerful" message aimed exactly at this segment -- he lost 7 points from Clinton's performance among families earning between $30,000 and $50,000 per year. More alarming, Gore lost voters with only a high school diploma by 1 point, a group that Clinton won by 16. Since
Clinton was far less populist in 1996 than Gore was in 2000, one explanation for Gore's poor performance in this category is the cultural conservatism of "downscale" voters, whom Clinton dealt with deftly and Gore failed to deal with at all.
At a time when partisan polarization has disguised a growing trend toward voter alienation from both parties, it is important to note that Clinton carried self-identified independents by 8 points, while Gore lost them by 2. That reflects Clinton's superior ability to cast himself as a candidate above his party.
Perhaps the most startling statistic is that Clinton carried under-30 voters by 19 points, while Gore won them by only 2. Young voters are a volatile swing group, but, given their tendency to bond with a political party in ways that affect their voting behavior for life, this trend is troubling for Democrats far beyond 2004. John Kerry's relatively strong emphasis on young voters, and his intergenerational appeal to the ethic of service, represents a good sign that he recognizes this problem.
There is one big Clinton-Gore swing group that comes with an equally big asterisk: Clinton won Hispanics by an astonishing 51 points, while Gore won them by "only" 27 percent. The asterisk is the Republican Party's disastrous identification with anti-immigrant legislation in the mid-1990s. Bush's performance among Hispanics was much closer to the historic GOP percentage in this category, and probably cannot get much worse in 2004. John Kerry's realistic goal is to maintain Gore's margin among Hispanic voters while benefiting from a significant increase in the Hispanic segment of the electorate.
Individual battleground states sometimes reinforce these general swing-voter trends, and sometimes represent distinctive problems that Democrats need to address.
Oregon is a state that Clinton won by a nationally typical 8 points, and that Gore won by a nationally typical eyelash margin. Geographically, the state is a battleground where increasing Democratic margins in the high-income suburbs of Portland and the latte-town of Eugene are being offset by increasing Republican margins in rural eastern Oregon. Demographically, several trends stand out: an 18-point downward swing between Clinton and Gore among high-school graduates; a 16-point plunge among independents; and a 14-point loss with men. In addition, reinforcing the Democratic problem in rural areas of Oregon, Gore ran an atypical 9 points behind Clinton among seniors.
Missouri was similar to Oregon in the Clinton-Gore swing: Clinton won the state by 7 points, Gore lost it by 3. Again, the Democratic problem in the electorate is mainly in Missour's rural areas -- especially in the center of the state -- which are actually growing. And as in Oregon, Gore had a special problem with seniors, losing them by 10 percent, while Clinton won them by 9 percent. Gore did nearly as well as Clinton among voters in the $30,000 to $50,000 income bracket, but dropped 12 points among the more-upscale families earning between $50,000 and $75,000, and a surprising 13 points among those earning between $15,000 and $30,000 -- another indication of a white rural hemorrhage, given Gore's strong support from low-income African-Americans in Missouri's cities.
Minnesota is a new battleground state. It was carried by every Democratic candidate from 1960 to 1996, with the sole exception of
George McGovern in 1972. Clinton won it by 16 points in 1996. Yet Gore won the state by only 2 points in 2000, and Republicans won big in the off-year elections of 2002. Geographically, the Republican trend in Minnesota reflects the strong growth of pro-GOP exurban communities surrounding the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and a slow but steady erosion of Democratic strength in the Northern Range and rural counties near Fargo, North Dakota, where culturally conservative voters abound.
Demographically, three numbers leap off the page when comparing Clinton '96 to Gore '00: (1) a 30-point negative swing among families earning between $30,000 and $50,000 -- probably a combination of Democratic losses among culturally conservative rural voters, and GOP gains among young families in the exurbs; (2) a 15-point drop among women; and (3) an astonishing 29-point reduction in the Democratic performance among under-30 voters. This last factor may represent a "Ventura factor" -- a lingering feeling of alienation from the Democratic Party among young voters because of the party's hostility toward Jesse "The Body" Ventura, whom many young people liked -- especially young men.
West Virginia is another traditional Democratic state that has become a battleground, even more dramatically than Minnesota. Clinton carried the state by 15 points in 1996, while Gore lost it by 6 points in 2000.
Given the Bush campaign's heavy emphasis in West Virginia on cultural issues like guns and economic concerns about Gore's environmental record, it's not surprising that Gore lost 19 points from Clinton's performance among voters from families earning between $30,000 and
$50,000, losing by 11 a category that Clinton won by 8 points. The more stunning numbers, however, are among West Virginia independents, whom Clinton won by 3 and Gore lost by 28; and among under-30 voters, whom Clinton won by 22 and Gore lost by 20. It is a good example of how stereotypes about states -- West Virginia being an aging, rural state where an obsessive focus on government programs affecting seniors was considered the key -- may have backfired for Gore.
Clinton won New Hampshire by 10 points, while Gore narrowly lost it after essentially writing the state off. Gore's problem there was precisely with the persuadable elements of the electorate where a more aggressive campaign would have made a world of difference: He won independents by only 4 percent, while Clinton won them by 20, and he won the quintessential middle-class suburban category of $50,000 to $75,000 income by only 2 percent, while Clinton won them by 23.
I wrote about Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida in my last BLUEPRINT
article ("The New Battleground," May 2004), but looking at these states in terms of swing-voter categories may be helpful. Gore, who wrote off Ohio early, ran 14 points behind his own national performance among voters with post-graduate educations, and 8 points behind his own national performance among voters with family incomes between $75,000 and $100,000. Reflecting his national problem with lower-middle-class voters, Gore ran 12 points behind Clinton among voters with family incomes between $30,000 and $50,000.
Clinton won Florida by 5 points, but out-performed Gore there by 13 points among the $30,000 to $50,000 income category, by 8 points among voters with post-graduate educations, and most crucially, by 12 points among seniors. All three voter categories are crucial in the rural and exurban portions of the state, ranging from the Panhandle to the Tampa-St. Petersburg suburbs, which are rapidly trending Republican.
Democratic prospects in Florida are associated with demographic changes that have boosted the non-Cuban Hispanic vote and the
African-American vote. But containing the voter hemorrhage elsewhere would help.
Pennsylvania is a state that both Clinton and Gore won by similar margins, but with some striking differences among specific swing-voter groups. Gore actually ran well ahead of Clinton among Pennsylvania seniors, winning them by 17 points while Clinton split them evenly with Bob Dole. But Gore lost 15 points from Clinton's margin among under-30 voters, and lost Pennsylvania men by 11 points while Clinton won them by 4. The big factor in Pennsylvania is that the increasingly Democratic areas of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are losing population. Philadelphia has lost 6 percent of its population since 1990, and Pittsburgh has lost 10 percent. Some of that loss has been to nearby suburbs, but Republican-leaning areas of central Pennsylvania have been gaining population, along with swing-voter-heavy northeast Pennsylvania.
A few other factors affecting the battleground states are also worth mentioning. As noted earlier, Kerry cannot really expect to improve on
Gore's margins among Hispanics, and will be lucky to hold them. But the growth in the Hispanic citizen voting-age population, while sometimes overestimated as a factor in national politics (since 40 percent of the Hispanic voting-age population is not eligible to vote), should help Democrats in several battleground states. Those states range from Florida, to New Mexico, where Hispanic voting participation levels have been far above the national average, and even Oregon, where a close vote could be influenced by a significant increase in the state's relatively small Hispanic population.
Finally, there are segments of the electorate where Democrats have long maintained hard-to-sustain big margins. The obvious example is among African-Americans, a group where Gore actually improved on Clinton's 84-percent performance in 1996 by winning 90 percent. Ironically, the extraordinary upward mobility of black families during the Clinton years, along with a strong culturally conservative strain, may at some point begin to produce an African-American GOP vote closer to the 20 percent Republican presidential candidates routinely received before Reagan. Given the strongly conservative ideology of the Bush administration, and the polarization of the political climate, significant Republican gains among black voters are unlikely to occur this year.
Among Jews, another strongly Democratic group, Republicans hope to make gains in 2004. Clinton and Gore probably reached the upper limit of Democratic support among Jews, with Gore winning a remarkable 80 percent -- thanks in part to help from running mate Joe Lieberman. The effect of that support was compounded by an exceptionally high Jewish turnout. Prior to Clinton, Republicans typically won one-third or more of the Jewish vote. The Bush campaign hopes that his outspoken solidarity with Israel will help offset his close identification with the Christian Right. While Jews are a relatively small segment of the national electorate, they matter in the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.
The bottom line about swing voters for Democrats in 2004 is simply this: Bill Clinton set the standard for contemporary Democratic presidential politics in 1996 with a message that reached well up the income and educational scales while keeping traditional downscale and minority Democrats happy and energized. Al Gore maintained much of the Clinton upscale appeal, but lost significantly among middle-income and less-educated voters, especially those with conservative cultural views. Gore also suffered large defections from younger voters.
John Kerry should pay attention to the hinges of the swing vote nationally, and in the battleground states. Against an opponent whose whole campaign is predicated on maximum mobilization of his conservative base, the swinging door is wide open to a Democrat willing to walk right through.
Blueprint Keywords: Extra Battlefield
