The Battleground Is Everywhere

FiveThirtyEight: “The premise of this story is that although recent presidential elections have featured a predictable set of swing states and safe states, the extraordinary unpopularity of both major candidates (especially Trump) might mean that voter enthusiasm — and therefore turnout — might be different from that of past years. Additionally, Trump is so unlike recent Republican nominees that the past few presidential election results might not be very predictive of his performance.”

“Suppose, therefore, that we broaden our view and investigate where Democrats and Republicans have generated close contests beyond presidential races. Surprisingly, nearly the whole country has seen very close contests during the past few years.”