From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Battleground states (in yellow) contested by the presidential candidates during the 2004 Presidential election. The solid Bush states total 172 electoral votes, while the solid Kerry states total 165 electoral votes. The swing states total add up to 201 votes, with 270 needed to win the presidency.

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 America^{[citation needed]}, 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.

1. Arizona: 10 Electoral votes
2. Arkansas: 6 Electoral votes
3. Delaware: 3 Electoral votes
4. Florida: 27 Electoral votes
5. Iowa: 7 Electoral votes
6. Louisiana: 9 Electoral votes
7. Maine: 4 Electoral votes
8. Michigan: 17 Electoral votes
9. Minnesota: 10 Electoral votes
10. Missouri: 11 Electoral votes
11. Nevada: 5 Electoral votes
12. New Hampshire: 4 Electoral votes
13. New Mexico: 5 Electoral votes
14. Ohio: 20 Electoral votes
15. Oregon: 7 Electoral votes
16. Pennsylvania: 21 Electoral votes
17. Washington: 11 Electoral votes
18. West Virginia: 5 Electoral votes
19. 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".

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 Richard Nixon won Ohio but lost the election to John F. Kennedy.

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 is accompanied by an Ohio Democratic Party that is 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. [1]

The listed states are ordered below by the closeness of their result. Although a few states not on the above list (marked with an asterisk) have lower margins than states on it, largely there were few departures from the expected, with the expected swing states turning out to be the closest and no states expected to be safe for a candidate betraying him.

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.