Selects: What's the deal with swing states?

0:00 Hi, everybody. It's Chuck, and I'm rolling through the year of COVID. This is October 6, 2020, and it's got to be election season because we're talking about swing states. And it's October before the election in November. What's the deal with swing states is the title of this episode. And I know we did a few episodes that were slightly political leading up to the election. And this is one of them, and it was a good one. Swing states are weird to me, but I think we get to the bottom of it. Check it out right now.

0:36 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's over there somewhere, I think in our office.

0:53 And this is Stuff You Should Know, the swinging, super.

0:58 Hip, Cat edition.

1:01 Swing states.

1:04 They're the swinging estates of all.

1:06 They like to sleep with each other.

1:10 Based on keys they took out of a fish ball.

1:14 I should say up front, thank you to HowStuffWorks.com for this article along with Politico, NPR, and I think 538blog I got some stuff from.

1:24 You sound like you're giving an acceptance speech.

1:27 Yeah, for politics. For best election podcast episode.

1:31 That's right. We are not going to win.

1:34 Yeah, so this is on swing states, which are all the rage battleground states these days.

1:41 Everybody loves them.

1:42 And have been for a while, but some of this stuff I thought was even enlightened me, and I thought I kind of knew most of this stuff.

1:50 Yeah.

1:51 It's one of those things that I found interesting.

1:54 That you can make a lot more difficult than it actually is, at least just the general concept of swing states. But there's a lot of detail and info and history to it that makes the whole thing really interesting. So to keep from making the whole thing more difficult than it is, let's just define swing states at the outset.

2:14 Okay, go ahead.

2:15 Swing states are states during presidential elections in the United States here.

2:22 That are– So closely.

2:25 Divided politically that they could go either way. They could vote one way or the other. And based on a lot of, you know, governmental ins and outs that will go over, depending on which way they flip, they could make or break a presidential campaign and elect the president or deny somebody else the presidency.

2:47 At the same time, even, they can do both.

2:49 That's right, and I'm glad you said that because more than anything else in this episode, we want to drive– or I want to drive home at least. I'm sure you're on board.

2:56 Okay.

2:58 A swing state is not just a state that is very closely divided politically among its constituents, and it just could go one way or the other. It is a state where there are people who– there are enough people in that state who can be persuaded to change who they vote for that it can make a state go one way or the other. We're talking down to the thousands or even hundreds of votes.

3:26 Right.

3:26 And that is why it is so, so, so, so important that everybody votes, everybody votes, but especially if you live in one of these swing states, because there are, believe it or not, there are people that still haven't made up their mind in this country.

3:43 Which is really surprising in this particular election because things have gotten super partisan and polarized in America. And they had been going that way for many, many years now. But, I mean, it is, I don't want to say it's reached its apex. I hope it's reached its apex. I'm sure it could get way worse. But things are real polarized here. So it is very surprising that there's undecided voters.

4:06 And I remember from our election polling episode, we were saying one of the reasons that the state polling was so far off is because there were so many undecided voters at the end of 2016. That in and of itself is pretty surprising because the candidates were so different. Things were so polarized then. It's even more surprising now that there's any undecided voters.

4:25 But they're out there. There's not a ton of them, but there's enough of them to swing an election and swing a state. Brookings Institution says 75% or more of a presidential candidate's spending occurs in these swing states. And, you know, they're spending on ads. A lot of it is ad buys and social media ad buys, you know, robocalling, stuff like that.

4:49 Right.

4:50 But we should go over just, you know, I know we did one on the Electoral College, but just for our friends across the many ponds, we should give kind of a quick overview of the very odd way that we do things here.

5:02 Yeah, because everybody thinks in the United States that everybody goes to the polls and during a national election, like the presidential election, and elects the president. One person has one vote. And that is definitely true. Each person does have a vote. But the thing is, we have something called the electoral college. And rather than directly elect the president through a popular vote, we have an indirect way of electing the president, where all those people who go to the polls are going to the polls to cast a ballot, whether they know it or not, for the electors for each party. So if you voted for Donald Trump in 2020, say, what you're voting for is not necessarily Donald Trump. You're voting for your state's Republican Party

5:51 electors to go to the electoral college to cast their vote for Donald Trump, hopefully. That is the indirect way of electing the president that we have. And under this situation, under this indirect electoral college setup that we have, You can actually get elected president without winning the popular vote.

6:12 And that's what happened in 2016. It's happened four times.

6:16 Yes. Twice very recently.

6:18 It happened in the 2000 election where Al Gore, I think, won the popular vote by half a million votes. It happened in 2016 where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, like 2.9 million. Then it happened a couple of times in, I think, the 19th century, didn't it?

6:34 Yeah, four times. Yeah, the other two were pretty far back. And all four times, Republican candidates lost the popular vote and ended up winning the election. And we'll get into changes on the horizon as far as that goes. But to kind of put a pin in the Electoral College, how it specifically works is each senator from each state, which is two senators because each state has two, get a vote. And then... For each representative in the House, they get a vote. And everywhere except for Maine and Nebraska does what's called a winner-take-all. So if everyone in Georgia or, you know, if Georgia votes for, let's say, Joe Biden, then everybody, all the electors would have to vote for Joe Biden and cast that vote. In Maine

7:25 and Nebraska, what they do is I think they– and the goal here, by the way, is 270 electoral votes if you want to win. the presidency. But they do the district system, which is they award two of those electoral votes to the statewide popular vote winner. And then they go, I think, just district by district, don't they?

7:45 Yeah, they do. And so you can win, you know, if you win your statewide election in Maine or in Nebraska, you get two electoral votes automatically. And And then you get one for each district that you won.

8:01 Yeah, which seems a little more fair.

8:04 It does seem a little more fair, but I saw that on fairvote.org, they said if you do the math, it's actually way less fair on the national level. Yeah, like maybe it works for Maine and Nebraska, but if all states did that, you would be able to eke out an even more imbalance between an electoral college win and a loss of the popular vote. I saw somebody put out that, There is a path to 270 electoral votes.

8:34 So you would win the presidency while also getting just like 23 percent of the popular vote.

8:41 Wow.

8:42 You like to think that that could never happen. But apparently mathematically with this setup of the electoral college.

8:48 It could happen.

8:49 And the reason why is because one, the electoral college exists, like you said, and then two, because of that winner take all system to where it doesn't matter whether you win a state by one vote, you get all of the electoral votes for that one state. And so in creating swing states, the electoral college also creates what are called safe states. And a safe state is where so many people so reliably vote for the party that that candidate is running for, that you can just count on that state giving, like winning their electoral votes. And you actually start with a base of that, that like, let's say there's 170 solid electoral votes among like 20 states for Democrats, right? That is what you would rely on,

9:44 not just on election day, but throughout the campaign. And so you're not spending much time or money in those states because those are safe states. You don't need to. It doesn't make any sense to do that. It makes way more sense to spend all of your time and money and attention on those swing states because those are the ones that aren't necessarily safe, but they're also not necessarily leaning the other way either. And you could conceivably put those swing states together to create that 270 or more electoral votes, which should lead you to the presidency.

10:14 Right. But, you know, it's gotten a little tricky here in recent years because... there are a few swing states that are kind of really solidly swingy. And then there have been a few that were more swingy or less swingy. And you have to make a decision as a candidate where you're going to spend your money and your time.

10:32 And that's where polling comes in. A lot of people say that perhaps Hillary Clinton didn't spend enough time in certain states that ended up flipping to Donald Trump. It's all strategy. I think now we can maybe take a little extended sidebar here about this whole blue state, red state thing, which I thought was very interesting.

10:53 Yeah.

10:53 Because here in America, we have blue states and red states. The blue states are the Democratic-leaning states. The red states are the Republican-leaning states. If you are sort of in the mix, maybe a swing state, they might call you purple in the news. If you hear that, that's what that means. But it didn't always used to be these colors.

11:13 And I got this from NPR. I found it interesting to know that when the colors first started being assigned in the mid-1970s, the Democrats were red and the Republicans were blue.

11:29 Yeah, so supposedly blue was traditionally the Republicans' color because it was the color of the Union during the Civil War. And the Union was led by Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican. And then also apparently in Europe, the conservative parties are typically associated with the color blue. So it made more sense, at least at first, to have Republicans be blue and Democrats be red. And supposedly that's where it debuted back in 1976 here in the United States on NBC because NBC was the first network to go full color. And so in election night 1976, they said, check out our amazing interactive map.

12:09 Uh-huh.

12:10 Blue states are going to be ones that Republicans have won. Red states are going to be ones that Democrats have won. And did you see a picture of the map? Yeah. It looks like a giant stained glass window of the United States. It does not look super flashy or anything now, but at the time it was like knock your socks off, technologically advanced, I guess.

12:31 Yeah, but here's the thing is those colors weren't locked in. Like there was never any, you know, vote about those colors or anything like that. They just sort of went that way. As more and more TV networks went color, they went with other colors and it got a little bit confusing. Depending on which network you were watching, you might see different colors representing different parties. I think always red and blue, but they were kind of flip-flopped. And it wasn't until 2000 and the Washington Post, they credit Tim Russert. I think the late Tim Russert, he passed away, didn't he?

13:06 Yeah, unfortunately, yeah.

13:07 Yeah, they credit Tim Russert with kind of locking in what we now know as blue states and red states, blue being for Democrat, red for Republican during the 2000 election between Gore and Bush. And these colors are important because it's, and one of these writers in here, what's his name? Bill Bishop. He's from Texas. He wrote a book called The Big Sort. And he kind of makes a really good point that it's become a shorthand of not just a leaning of a state, but sort of a lifestyle like you hear things like, you know, it's a really blue neighborhood or a red community. And you kind of know that's shorthand for a certain thing in this country now.

13:47 Yeah. And part of the problem with especially designating entire states as like red or blue is that it makes it seem like there's this homogenous group that the whole state thinks that way.

14:00 And that's not necessarily true. I mean, there's plenty of.

14:01 States out there that are considered red states, but they were won by One and a half percent or three percent. You know, it's like a very close call, but it went Republican in the presidential election. So it's a red state. Or like you said, you can get it down to community level, that kind of thing. And in doing so, all you're doing is sowing this division of tribalism that exists in the United States to where it's just so easy to have this allegiance to blue or red. They don't even make it donkey or elephant any longer. It's blue and red. It's one of the most basic things you can sort by, which is colors. And it's a real problem in that it somehow– stokes that mentality, that in-group, out-group mentality that is so problematic in the United States

14:52 right now and is drowning the country as we speak, basically.

14:56 I hate to say it, but it's absolutely true.

14:58 It really is. And it's especially annoying if you have political leanings like I do and live in a state like Georgia that is for the past, you know, 20 plus years been solidly red. And then, you know, you have I used to live in California. I have plenty of friends in California who say things about places like Georgia with such disdain. It just bothers me so much because it is– and the same can be said for people on the other side of the political spectrum. It's not exclusive to me being a liberal in Georgia. I'm sure the same frustrations happen for Republicans in Massachusetts.

15:37 Absolutely, yeah. I'm quite sure in the– I think it was– I don't know what article that came from. They point out that those people are some of the most diehard partisans you'll find, you know, people who are minority in their state. Sure. Because they feel like they're really carrying the flag for their party or whatever. But yeah, it's a real problem. It takes away all nuance. And it also makes people think like, oh, you're from a red state.

16:03 I can't work with you. My constituents won't like it if I work with you, red state person, rather than you're from Wisconsin and I'm from California. Let's figure out how to make this highway bill make more sense kind of thing, you know? Yeah.

16:16 Emily and I have a lot of conversations about the lack of nuance in today's world. And it's, I think that's one of the biggest problems we have going on right now. Nuance has been lost and everything is carved very much into red and blue and black and white.

16:31 And it's sad.

16:32 And you know what is another thing that makes it sad too is it's not just like That's just appealing to the lowest common denominator. It activates in all people, including brilliant, intelligent people who are otherwise normally level-headed.

16:48 They still have that part of their brain somewhere.

16:50 They're like, I'm blue.

16:50 I'm red.

16:53 I affiliate with that, and I hate the opposite. It is that when you lose nuance, a lot of stuff goes out the window with it.

17:02 All right. Well, let's take a break. That was our first soapbox of the day.

17:06 I thought we started out on a soapbox. I thought this whole episode was going to be on.

17:10 I think pretty even-handed soapboxes though, right? Sure. All right. Well, we'll come back and we'll build another soapbox in the next couple of minutes. We'll be back right after this.

17:50 Okay, so we're back on swing states, right? And I think we should kind of talk about how they swing or how they have swung or swanged.

18:02 Recently.

18:04 Because with swing states, you kind of get this idea that they're the same all the time. That's just not the case, especially not lately. It seems like 1992 and 2016 were both watershed years as far as just completely recoloring the electoral map. And in 1992, Bill Clinton did it. And in 2016, Donald Trump did it. And it just surprised everybody both times.

18:31 Yeah, 92. And if you're our age or younger, you might not have been super hip to politics when you were in high school, let's say. or early college. And you may not know that there was what was called a red wall. They didn't call it a red wall back then, but it was a red wall where there was, Republicans had a pretty firm lock on the electoral college in that from 1966 to 1988, 21 states voted Republican every single election. And that included, you might be surprised to hear, California, Illinois and New Jersey and Virginia.

19:14 And here's the one that's going to really make your heart stop.

19:17 Vermont. Yeah.

19:20 Traditionally Republican voted 21 times in a row.

19:23 Yeah.

19:24 And that is 191 electoral votes. So they the Democrats had a pretty big disadvantage going into 1992 historically, meaning that they had to win more than three quarters of the remaining electoral votes and Um, for these, you know, quote unquote competitive or up in the upper grab states. And that's not counting DC, which Democrats have always got a lock on.

19:46 Yeah.

19:46 For the last 14 elections, D.C. 's always gone Democrat.

19:49 Right.

19:50 So the common wisdom was that when George H.W. Bush went up for reelection, not only was he the incumbent president, which means that you're supposed to be favored typically. But He also had this red wall, which I don't know what they called it, but this lock on the electoral college. And it was presumed that he was probably going to win.

20:12 And then Bill Clinton came along and he flipped nine states from that red wall. Not just the swing states. He flipped nine of those red wall states, which was 118 electoral votes. And ended up winning 370 to 168 in the electoral college votes.

20:34 Somebody bring me a sledgehammer. That's basically what he did, though. I mean, it was pretty unprecedented and, like you said, just flipped the political thinking in this country on its ear.

20:47 And flipped them so hard that California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Vermont haven't voted Republican since the 1992 election.

20:56 Yeah, really reshaped the map.

20:58 Yeah, he flipped those Republican lock states into Democrat lock states.

21:05 That's right. And now they call it the blue wall, and they do call it the blue wall now because blue is firmly ensconced as Democrat. And there are 18 states supposedly among this blue wall. along with D.C., that have voted Democrat in each of the most recent six elections from 92 to– well, previously from 92 to 2012.

21:29 Right.

21:30 And that's when Trump came in and flipped it on its ear once again. Yeah.

21:34 So he flipped some traditionally Democrat strongholds like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. And he did so by– first of all, energizing voters that hadn't really been seen at the polls very much, like voters without a higher education diploma, a lot of rural workers, especially blue collar workers who had been lifelong Democrats, went out and voted for Trump and ended up taking, I think he flipped more than just those three. Oh, yeah.

22:08 He flipped five, Maine and Minnesota.

22:12 No, no, no.

22:12 I'm sorry. He flipped those three and that's how he won the electoral college. But he almost won Maine and he almost won Minnesota. Right. And both of them were pretty, pretty strong Democratic states. Minnesota hadn't voted for a Republican in like 50 years.

22:26 Yeah.

22:27 And he came close to flipping that. And so here's the thing.

22:30 We're talking about all these states being flipped because when a state gets flipped in an election and especially if it's kind of close or narrowly held rather than flipped, that state is probably going to be a battleground or swing state in the next election.

22:48 Yeah. So if you're wondering, I mean, we'll list out the swing states and sort of end that drama right here. But if you're wondering if you might be in a swing state, it has to do with quite a few things. Obviously, the voting history there being predictable. If you voted for a long, long time for a specific party, You're probably not a swing state. If your demographics in that state are traditionally really support the same candidate, then you're probably not going to be a swing state. The fact is that most voters in most regions of the country or most regions of the states in this country, they vote based on they have really different opinions based on the experience of just literally the physical place where they live. Right.

23:36 So like the rural voters typically go GOP or Republican, whereas people in metropolitan areas, major metropolitan areas, frequently go toward the Democrats. And they have different experiences based on their geography. And depending on how balanced that is, how big the metropolis is, how big the rural area is in a state compared to whatever metropolis or capital is there.

24:03 that can make that state a swing state. Like North Carolina is a really good example of that. There's a lot of highly educated tech types, scientific researchers who live in the research triangle in North Carolina. There's also a ton of rural voters, too, who are active in politics. And those two balance each other out. And so North Carolina is very frequently a swing state in presidential elections because of that.

24:30 Yeah. And, you know, I want to be clear. We're not like disparaging... people who don't have college diplomas. There are all kinds of ways to be smart. There are a lot of people with college diplomas that can't change their oil on their car or build a fence. And those are other types of smarts. And there are all different ways to be smart.

24:52 Yeah, yeah.

24:52 I'm not saying that at all.

24:53 No, of course not.

24:53 I think if you listen to our election polling episode, a divide between college-educated and non-college-educated voters... was created in 2016 where it hadn't been there before. And now that is a major part of American politics. Right.

25:10 So along with North Carolina this year, and again, you know, this is what they expect to see. It could be turned on its ear once again, and states could be in the mix that we didn't even forecast. You never know. But right now they're saying that North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, always Florida is so important.

25:28 Yeah.

25:29 Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Some people say New Hampshire. Some people say Georgia.

25:34 That's a big one.

25:36 That's a big one. Georgia hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, I think. I mean, has it been since Clinton?

25:44 Yeah, that's what I would say.

25:45 Since 92. And I think Texas, remarkably, and Georgia have both drifted left by four points with each of the last couple of elections. And they're saying that, you know, it's going to be very Tight in Georgia. And I don't think anyone is anticipating that it will flip.

26:04 Right.

26:05 But it's purple and in the mix for the first time in a long time.

26:08 Yeah. Which is really saying something, because, I mean, in Georgia for many years, if you were a Democrat, it just did not matter. Like you just didn't need to bother to vote. And that's a big problem with swing states in the electoral college that we'll talk about.

26:23 And you mean that metaphorically, by the way.

26:25 Right, exactly. But, I mean, there's this whole concept of a wasted vote in a safe state for the opposition party.

26:31 Their vote's wasted. But we'll talk about that later.

26:35 But just like there's some surprising states that are now considered swing states or battleground states in 2020, there's also some that have customarily been swing states that aren't necessarily swing. And the big standout one for that is Ohio. Ohio has voted for the president correctly, or I should say they went. The nominee or the candidate that Ohio voted for has been the president, the one who won the presidential race in, like, dozens of elections. Maybe not dozens, but they've been voting correctly for the president, correctly picking the president. I feel like I'm digging myself deeper into a hole here. Anyway, what that says about Ohio is that, wow, Ohio is like really a thinking group, politically speaking, because

27:30 we have had Republican presidents and we have had Democrat presidents throughout the last few decades. And Ohio has, you know, voted... differently just about every time. And that says that Ohio is a longstanding swing state. Well, Ohio was flipped in 2016, and there's a lot of political observers who are like, Ohio now leans conservative. It's now a red state. And that's a really surprising turn of events for 2020.

27:56 Yeah, I think Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia are three of the traditional swing states that have been taken off that list. Arizona and Georgia. I don't think Texas is officially on the list at all, but I think because Texas has always been so solidly conservative, for it to eke towards the Democrats at all just makes a lot of hay.

28:19 So there's a lot more talk about it on the news and stuff like that because there's so much media influence. And I think that the liberal media probably thinks that, like, oh, Texas is leaning. Maybe we can help push them over the edge if we talk about it all the time.

28:32 Yeah, probably.

28:33 Because that's how things work if you listen to the polling podcast. And like you mentioned earlier, Minnesota– hasn't voted for a Republican in about 50 years. And they are, you know, they have inched a little bit right.

28:47 Yeah, I think Trump just missed Minnesota and Clinton just barely won Minnesota by like 3% and Maine by one and a half percent. So those two are definitely in play like they haven't been in a while.

29:00 Should we take another break?

29:02 Let's take another break. And then we're going to come back and talk about, get this, swing states.

29:07 Learning stuff is fun with Josh and Chuck.

29:14 Stuff you should know. Learning things with Chuck and Chuck.

29:27 Learning all the things. Stuff you should know.

29:36 So Chuck, one of the things that we talked about early on is that swing states basically tell campaigns where they need to concentrate their focus. Right. Their money, their candidates' time, you know, election stops, that kind of thing, stumping. Right. They do that.

29:57 Like that's where the vast.

29:59 Majority of the money goes is the advertising campaigns in these swing states. Florida is a really good example of a longstanding swing state that gets tons and tons of advertising money.

30:09 Yeah, Florida is such an interesting state to me because it's really hard to pin down politically. And I think it's because I think more so than almost any other state except– maybe California, I feel like there are more versions of Florida than almost any other state has versions of itself.

30:34 Absolutely.

30:35 And it's not, I mean, Florida's not small. It's not the size of California, but, you know, you think about the Gulf Coast and then inland from the Gulf Coast, very different people.

30:46 Yeah, the people inland wouldn't be caught dead in Floribama.

30:49 Yeah. You think about Miami Beach. And that area and Key West and Fort Lauderdale. And then you've got the interior of like the Tampa Clearwater area, which is really different.

31:01 And then let's not forget about the most magical place on earth, Orlando.

31:05 Well, you've got Orlando and then you've also got up in the north, you know, borderline Georgia. You have places like Jacksonville and St. Augustine and just Florida has so many different kinds of places within its own state. It doesn't surprise me that it's really hard to pin down politically because it's hard to pin down just sort of culturally.

31:23 I think. Right. And because you have so many different places that geographically inform the voters that are so demographically diverse, all in one state, then that, of course, is going to be a swing state. And Florida probably always will be a swing state just for those reasons.

31:42 Yeah. The retirees are a big, they always point to retirees in Florida, traditional conservatives. But apparently the youngest three generations of amount to 54% of registered voters there now.

31:54 That's surprising.

31:55 Yeah. I mean, I guess the sad way to say it is that many of these people are dying.

32:02 Yeah. I mean, surely. I mean, an elderly population is going to eventually die off. Then you got a younger population that's actually going to age into it. But it seems like right now the elderly population in Florida has been losing ground numbers-wise while the younger populations have been gaining ground.

32:21 That's right. They're coming after you.

32:22 It's good for a state because you need all those young people to work to take care of all those old people. So Florida gets a tremendous amount of attention, a lot of money, a lot of campaign visits, all that stuff. And because it's a swing state, all swing states get that kind of stuff in presidential elections. But people in other states, especially in solid states that have gone one way for many, many election cycles– Those people say, well, hey, what about us? We want attention. We want these campaign stops.

32:54 We have things that are important to us that we want to talk to you about and hear from you about. We don't care about Florida. We care about Idaho. So come to Idaho and talk to us in Idaho. And the candidate usually says, like, I don't even know where Idaho is.

33:11 Please leave me alone.

33:12 I'm trying to pay attention to Florida, and you're being very distracting right now.

33:16 Yeah, and here's the thing. Like, in my mind, I say– who cares if a presidential candidate comes and talks to people at a dumb rally? Like, does that really matter? But what they do is, you know, it's not just a broad sort of, let me make a stop there. It's very pinpointed and calculated. Like, they might be going after a really specific constituency there. Like, because how close some of these swing states are, and they might say, you know what, if we can get auto workers to vote for you, will be set. Or if we can get people that work on public roads and infrastructure flipped our way, then we can win by a thousand votes.

34:01 And so they may make pit stops in these states to go to the factory. I mean, that's why they do that stuff. It's not just to, you know, I mean, it's all just very calculated and very specific.

34:12 Right, because the viewer on TV is like, hey, I work in a factory and they're in a factory right now. They must mean that they really identify with my needs and wants.

34:20 Well, true. And that's someone from another state that also just happens to work in a factory. But the people in that state feel like, wow, they're here to talk to the coal miners.

34:30 Right. I can't believe they came to Michigan. No one ever comes to Michigan on purpose.

34:35 Hey, we went to Michigan on purpose. Once. Are we? We haven't ragged on Detroit in a long time.

34:42 No, it's been a while. But that's really what we're talking about. Michigan is code for Detroit when you're talking about not going to Michigan.

34:48 But it's just interesting how pinpointed and how just like razor sharp and focused and laser focus campaigns are these days with talking to very specific groups of people. If they think they can win a thousand votes out of a state, that could make a difference.

35:03 It can because, again, here's why.

35:05 Literally a thousand votes– could make the president in a state because of that winner-take-all electoral votes. Whereas if like those states use the district system like Maine and Nebraska, you know, if you won 51% to 49%, you might get half of the delegates and they get the other half, basically. But the fact that it's winner-take-all is that, yeah, those extra thousand votes really count in a good-sized state for 10 electoral votes, 20 electoral votes. So it's definitely worth spending that much time and focus on one single state.

35:44 And a lot of other states resent a lot of non-swing states. So safe states resent swing states because they say basically it's up to Ohio and Virginia to decide who gets to be president. The rest of us are going to go vote as we're expected to, because if you're in a safe state, it doesn't matter if you win by a thousand votes or win by a million votes.

36:04 You're going to it's winner take all again, too. So you're not going to pay that much attention. And really, you're not in a way you're not producing the president. That's a little cynical, in my opinion, because without that solid, safe state, you wouldn't have that foundation that the president, the candidate is building these swing state electoral votes off of. Yeah, I don't think that's fully accurate, but there does seem to be like some sour grapes among safe state people.

36:31 That makes sense to me.

36:32 But most of all, Chuck, when you're talking about people who feel like their vote is wasted because they're voting for the party that's the opposite of how the state traditionally goes. So if you're a Georgia voter and you're a Democrat for the last several elections, you could very easily feel like your vote was so wasted. You might not even bother going to the polls because your vote in this sense of electoral college. This is a really good reason to do away with the electoral college vote.

37:02 as far as the electoral college is concerned, your vote didn't count. You, you had no reason to go vote as far as electing the president goes, because it was washed away and drowned out by all the other votes that went toward the other candidate. And since it's a winner take all system of, of electoral votes that, that your vote didn't matter because they were always going to win all those delegates because you were going to get outvoted.

37:26 Right. But, um, And I'm glad you said president specifically. You should always vote for the president, of course, but there are so many ballot measures and local considerations on the ballot, local elections that really have such an impact that you always, always, always vote. But it's almost like filling out your census form in a way. It's the only information that we have of where a state is politically is you casting your vote. So if you cast your vote in Georgia like I do and Donald Trump wins Georgia again, it's not a wasted vote because the Democratic Party will look up the numbers and say, wow, like they're doing now. Look how many– Stacey Abrams almost got elected, the first African-American female governor in the United States,

38:16 almost won in Georgia in an election that many people thought was undermined by the Republican candidate with voter suppression. And that was a big deal. So now that's why so much attention is on Georgia. Because it's like you're filling out your little census thing. You're casting that vote. And they're saying, OK, well, Georgia's in the mix now.

38:33 We're going to campaign in Georgia more.

38:36 Plus, also, there's another really good reason to vote in those situations as well. Like I'm sure other voters in Vermont who felt like they were probably wasting their vote in 1992, but they went dutifully to the polls and exercised their real basic important right as a citizen, their right to vote.

38:54 And Bill Clinton ended up flipping the state.

38:57 Had those people been like, it's just a waste of vote anyway and stayed home, that state wouldn't have been flipped. Right. The same goes for Wisconsin or Michigan.

39:05 Right.

39:05 For Trump in 2016. So there's a lot of good reasons to go out and vote, even if you feel like your vote is wasted. That's just, it's just too cynical. You know, and I understand, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, you know, things are definitely different. But under normal circumstances, especially, the idea of just staying home and not voting, unless you're pro against your party's candidate, that's different.

39:33 Well, then go write in a candidate.

39:35 Okay, sure. I mean, just the idea of.

39:37 Getting out to the polls on Election Day and participating in government on that one day every four years even, It's important. It's just important in ways that you can't fully put your finger on, but you just know it's important and important enough to just do it.

39:52 Well, it's a right that people in this country literally lost their lives to ensure. And it's a right that not everyone in this country had until fairly recently. And so it would be a very sort of privileged. I know that word is thrown around a lot, but it's a it's a truly privileged frame of mind to think, why bother voting? when so many people in this country, women and people of color, didn't even have the right to vote in, you know, within the last, like, hundred years. Right.

40:21 So it just, that's something that, that's the only thing that really burns me up. Vote for whoever you want to vote for, but if you sit at home and you don't even vote, then. Just get out.

40:31 And you know what, Chuck? Yeah, vote or die, as P. Diddy says.

40:36 Who's that, P. Diddy?

40:37 Yeah. So one other thing that really has grabbed me in the last, like, several years is the idea, you know, when I was a younger lad, I was like, voting doesn't even matter. It doesn't count. Everything's controlled by the Illuminati anyway.

40:49 Yeah, you were a young anarchist. Right.

40:51 So the idea that.

40:54 That the Russians are meddling in our election and that the candidates take the election so seriously and super PACs raise so much money to spend to try to sway people's public opinions. The idea that that actually happens in real life, to me, goes to support the idea that your votes actually do count that voting really does matter in the United States still. And things are not so thrown off course and controlled and under the thumb of people who, who, um, you know, are really pulling the strings and calling the shots that that actually doesn't exist that in reality voting matters.

41:32 And I think that the, the, the threats to.

41:34 Voting that we've seen over the last like several years, um, have really kind of driven that home for me. Yeah.

41:41 And you know what? By the time this comes out, there'll be a couple of months to go before the election or actually maybe one month to go. Check your voter registration. Make sure you know where you're going to vote. If you're voting early, make sure you understand that. If you're voting absentee or by mail, make sure you fully understand how that all works. Don't be surprised on election day.

42:03 You don't want any surprises. You want to make sure you know exactly how you're going to vote and that you can ensure that you can vote.

42:10 Absolutely.

42:12 Go to USA.gov to check out voter registration and to make sure that you are, to confirm that you're registered to vote.

42:22 I still check.

42:23 Yeah, I checked recently, too, and I tweeted it out on the Stuff You Should Know podcast Twitter platform, too.

42:29 Totally. And we should put a bow on this one by talking a little bit about the national popular vote. Interstate Compact.

42:36 You read my mind.

42:37 And this, the NPVIC, this is a group of states that advocate for a different plan moving forward. These are states and people that say, how can a candidate win by 3 million votes or 500,000 votes and not be president? Because that is clearly not the will of the people. We have a broken system. Let's get rid of this electoral college. And right now there are Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., and Hawaii are all signed up in a past legislation to enter this compact with several more pending. Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia are pending.

43:25 Right. And so what this compact says is the state signs on to the compact that says under normal electoral college rules, we give our electoral votes to whoever wins the statewide ballot. Instead, we're going to give it to whoever wins the national vote, the national popular vote. So even if, say, Joe Biden loses Idaho, if Idaho was signed on to this and this thing were in effect, but he won the national popular vote, Idaho would give its electoral votes to Biden. So that the states are going to follow the popular vote and basically go around the Electoral College.

44:00 Yeah, not abolish it.

44:11 This requires none of that. It's the state signing on to go around the Electoral College by using the Electoral College. And I mean, we should say, too, the Electoral College is part of the framers vision for the Constitution. But they specifically added this provision to keep the popular vote from selecting the president. They wanted to keep this elite group of politicos in charge of who actually picked the president.

44:36 And that's they created the Electoral College to get in the way of the popular vote.

44:40 Yeah, it's interesting.

44:42 It really is. So that's swing states, eh?

44:46 That's swing states.

44:48 If you want to know more about swing states, start reading up on swing states. Start reading up on politics. It's pretty interesting stuff. And like we said earlier, go vote. Just vote.

44:58 And since I said that, everybody, it's time for Listener Mail.

45:04 This is from McKenna Bridge, and this is in defense of baby carrots. Just like Chuck, the thought of baby carrots disgusted me in the past, conjuring up images of towering piles of food waste that I imagined were the byproduct of these smooth little suckers. But we got it all wrong, my friend. While the baby carrot is, of course, a very manicured and aesthetically pleasing version of the real carrot pulled straight from the soil, their invention basically changed the entire carrot industry forever. And there was a guy named Mike Urosik. who decided to smooth carrots down in the 1980s into these little aerodynamic bite-sized cylinders, and they were called baby carrots. He figured carrots were ugly and

45:49 too plentiful to profit from as farmers, so they had a long growing season, and the people just weren't buying them. So Mike Urosik introduces the baby carrot, and boom, carrot sales absolutely skyrocketed. And even today's baby carrots frequently top the list for the largest share of supermarket sales.

46:10 Wow.

46:11 Asking about the peels, guys? Well, they are just about the perfect byproduct for making carrot juice. Baby carrots are tasty, convenient, and turns out a wonderful invention. The more you know, right? Anyway, I'm not completely caught up on your podcast, so maybe someone has beat me to the punch. But I didn't want to chance y'all making fools of yourself the next time baby carrots comes up. I think you guys are great.

46:33 Keep up the amazing work. You're a loyal listener and baby carrot convert. McKenna Bridge. And I even looked it up, too, and I think I saw that it was a myth that they are bleached.

46:45 It sounds like something I would buy into.

46:47 It sounds like something I'd buy into, too. Big carrot. Or, I'm sorry, small carrot.

46:52 Yeah, carrots are bleached. The Illuminati really runs things.

46:56 So, you know, I haven't fully vetted all that, but that's what McKenna Bridge says, is that they really turned around carrots as a whole thing. And that they do use those shavings for characters is what she says.

47:09 Well, McKenna, that was really great stuff. Thank you for trying to keep us from making fools of ourselves again.

47:14 It's not going to work.

47:16 No, it won't stick. If you want to get in touch with us like McKenna did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

47:29 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.