As Democrats and Republicans try to woo voters ahead of November’s presidential election, both parties’ nominees are focusing on campaigning in a handful of swing states.
A swing state is a state where both parties have similar levels of support and can play a key role in the outcome of a presidential election, according to The Merriam-Webster dictionary. Swing states, also called battleground states, are politically divided and often sites of frequent campaign rallies and campaign targets.
“In most states, the outcome in a two-person contest will be clear, and the campaign will take that for granted,” Alex Keyssar, a history professor at Harvard University, told share.america.gov, US State Department website.
In the “swing states, that’s not true,” he said.
After the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, With a lot of focus on campaign strategies in swing states, a number of people have been searching online to find out if Illinois is a swing state.
While swing states change over time, Illinois hasn’t been one in recent decades.
When it comes to presidential elections, Illinois has voted Democratic in the eight elections since 1988. But in 1988 and the five presidential elections before that, Illinois voted Republican.
This time, the candidates are focused on seven swing states, including two in the Midwest – Michigan and Wisconsin, according to Center for Politics at the University of Virginia’s, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a partisan political newsletter. The other states are Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona.
Each of those seven states were decided by 3 points or less in the 2020 presidential election, and six of them—except North Carolina—were won by President Biden. However, the results were very different in 2016.
Six of the aforementioned states — excluding Nevada — went to Trump, helping him win the presidency.