Selects: What's the deal with swing states?

Swing states are all the rage once again this election season, but the makeup has changed a bit. In this classic episode, learn all about what makes a swing state a swing state right now. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:49Speaker 01

  This is October 6, 2020, and it's gotta 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.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:31Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's over there somewhere, I think in our office. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the swinging, super hip cat edition.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Swing states.

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  They're the swingin' estates of all.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  They like to sleep with each other.

• 2:55Josh Clark?

  Based on keys they took out of a fishbowl.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Should say upfront, thank you to HowStuffWorks.com for this article, along with Politico, NPR, and I think 538 Blog I got some stuff from.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  You sound like you're giving an acceptance speech.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, for best election podcast episode.

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  That's right. We are not gonna win.

• 3:19Speaker 01

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

• 3:26Josh Clark?

  Everybody loves them.

• 3:27Speaker 01

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

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's one of those things that I found 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.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Okay, go ahead.

• 4:00Josh Clark?

  Swing states are states during presidential elections in the United States here that are so closely divided politically that they could go either way. They could vote one way or the other. And based on a lot of governmental ins and outs that we'll 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 at the same time, even. They can do both.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  That's right. And I'm glad you said that because more than anything else in this episode, we wanna drive, or I wanna drive home at least, I'm sure you're on board.

• 4:42Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 5:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  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.

• 5:28Josh Clark?

  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 wanna 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. 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.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:15Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Brookings Institution says 75% or more of a presidential candidate's spending occurs in these swing states. And they're spending on ads, a lot of it is ad buys and social media ad buys, robo-calling, stuff like that.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  But we should go over just, 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.

• 6:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because everybody thinks in the United States that everybody goes to the polls 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

• 7:32Josh Clark?

  Donald Trump. You're voting for your state's Republican Party 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. And that's what happened in 2016.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  It happened four times.

• 8:01Josh Clark?

  Yes, twice very recently. It happened in the 2000 election, where Al Gore, I think, won the popular vote by half a million votes. 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 the, I think, the 19th century, didn't it?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, four times. Yeah, the other two were pretty far back. And all four times, Republican candidates lost the popular vote and ended up being, 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 if Georgia votes for, let's say, Joe Biden, then everybody,

• 9:04Speaker 01

  all the electors, would have to vote for Joe Biden and cast that vote. In Maine and Nebraska, what they do is, I think they, and the goal here, by the way, is 270 electoral votes if you wanna 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?

• 9:30Josh Clark?

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

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, which seems a little more fair.

• 9:49Josh Clark?

  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 an electoral level.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Really?

• 9:58Josh Clark?

  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. So you would win the presidency while also getting just like 23% of the popular vote.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:27Josh Clark?

  You like to think that that could never happen, but apparently mathematically, with this setup of the Electoral College, it could happen. 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.

• 11:09Josh Clark?

  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, um, let's say there's 170 solid electoral votes among like 20 states for Democrats, right? That is what you would rely on, 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.

• 11:50Josh Clark?

  And you could conceivably put those swing states together to create that 270 or more electoral votes, which should lead you to the presidency.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:17Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Because it, 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. 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.

• 13:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, 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 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 have, to go full color.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:50Josh Clark?

  And so on Election Night, 1976, they said, "Check out our amazing interactive map. Blue states are going to be ones that Republicans have won. Red states are going to be ones that Democrats have won." And have you, did you see a picture of the map?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:04Josh Clark?

  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.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  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?

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, unfortunately, yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and part of the problem with, with especially designating entire states as like, red or blue, is that it makes it seem like there's this homogenous group that is, that the whole state thinks that way. And that's not necessarily true. I mean, there's plenty of states out there that, that are considered red states, but they were won by 1.5% or 3%. 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 know, you can, you can get it down to like, 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.

• 16:15Josh Clark?

  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, you can sort by, which is colors. And it's a, it's a, 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 right now and is drowning the country, as we speak, basically. I hate to say it, but it's absolutely true.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  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, you know, I used to live in California, I have plenty of friends in California, who say things about, you know, places like Georgia with such disdain.

• 17:05Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  And it just bothers me so much.

• 17:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Because it is, you know, these, 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.

• 17:22Josh Clark?

  Absolutely, yeah. I'm quite sure, and I think it was, I don't know what article that came from, but they, 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.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 17:37Josh Clark?

  Because they feel like they're really carrying the flag for their party or whatever. But yeah, it's, it's a real problem. It takes away all nuance. And it also makes people think like, "Oh, you're, you're from a red state. 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?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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, and it's sad.

• 18:17Josh Clark?

  And you know what is, what, another thing that makes it sad, too, is it, 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. They still have that part of their brain still, where they're like, "I'm blue, I'm red. I affiliate with that, and I hate the opposite."

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:42Josh Clark?

  It's, um, it is that, when you lose nuance, a lot of stuff goes out the window with it.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  All right, well, let's take a break. That was our first soapbox of the day.

• 18:50Josh Clark?

  Oh, I didn't, I thought we started out on a soapbox. I thought this whole episode was going to be on.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I think pretty even-handed soapboxes, though, right?

• 18:57Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  All right, well, we'll, we'll come back and we'll build another soapbox in the next couple of minutes. We'll be back right after this.

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• 22:36Josh Clark?

  Okay, so with, we're back on swing states, right?

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:40Josh Clark?

  And I think we should kind of talk about how, how they swing, or how they have swung, or swanged, recently. Because with swing states, like, you kind of get this idea that they're, they're the same all, all the time, and 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.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, 92, and if, you know, 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.

• 24:00Josh Clark?

  And here's the one that's going to really make your heart stop, Vermont.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Traditionally Republican, voted 21 times in a row.

• 24:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  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 for these, you know, quote unquote, competitive or up in the, up for grabs states. And that's not counting DC, which Democrats have always got a lock on.

• 24:31Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for the last 14 elections, DC's always gone Democrat, right? 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, 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. 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

• 25:12Josh Clark?

  votes, and ended up winning 370 to 168 for, in the Electoral College votes.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Somebody bring me a sledgehammer.

• 25:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  That's basically what he did, though. I mean, it was, it was pretty unprecedented, and, like you said, just flipped the political thinking in this country on its ear.

• 25:33Josh Clark?

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

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, really reshaped the map.

• 25:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he flipped those Republican lock states into Democrat lock states.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  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 DC, that have voted Democrat in each of the most recent six elections from 92 to, well, previously, from 92 to 2012.

• 26:15Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 01

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

• 26:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so he flipped some traditionally Democrat strongholds, like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and he, 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, he flipped five, Maine and Minnesota, no, no, 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.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:04Josh Clark?

  And both of them were pretty, pretty strong Democratic states. Minnesota hadn't voted for a Republican in like 50 years.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  And he came close to flipping that. And so here's the thing, we're talking about all these states being flipped, because when a state gets flipped in an election, 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.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  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, 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

• 28:18Speaker 01

  experience of just literally the physical place where they live.

• 28:21Josh Clark?

  Right, 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, that can make that state a swing state. Like, North Carolina is a really good example of that.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:54Josh Clark?

  There's a lot of highly educated tech types, scientific researchers who live in the research triangle in North Carolina, but 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.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  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, you know, or build a fence, and those, those are other types of smarts, and there are all different ways to be smart.

• 29:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying that at all.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  No, of course not.

• 29:39Josh Clark?

  But 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.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 29:53Josh Clark?

  And now that is a major part of American politics.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Right, 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's so important.

• 30:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, some people say New Hampshire, some people say Georgia.

• 30:21Josh Clark?

  That's a big one.

• 30:21Speaker 01

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

• 30:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's what I would say.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 30:50Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 30:51Speaker 01

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

• 30:54Josh Clark?

  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.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  And you mean that metaphorically, by the way.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly, but I mean, there's this, this whole concept of a wasted vote in a safe state for the opposition party, their vote's wasted, but we'll talk about that later. But just like there's some, 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, and the big standout one for that is Ohio. Ohio has voted for the president correctly, or I should say, they went, they, the nominee or the candidate that, that Ohio voted for has been the president, the one who won the

• 31:53Josh Clark?

  presidential race in like dozens of, of elections. I mean, 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 we have had Republican presidents, and we have had Democrat presidents throughout the last few decades, and Ohio has, you know, voted differently, you know, 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 is now leans conservative.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:37Josh Clark?

  It's now a red state, and that's a really surprising turn of events for 2020.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 33:04Josh Clark?

  Even an inch.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  So there's a lot more talk about it on the news and stuff like that.

• 33:08Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Because there's so much media influence, and I think that the liberal media probably thinks that, you know, like, oh, Texas is leaning, maybe we can help push them over the edge, if we talk about it all the time.

• 33:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, probably.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  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.

• 33:29Josh Clark?

  That's crazy.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  They are, you know, they have inched a little bit right.

• 33:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think Trump just missed Minnesota and Clinton just barely won Minnesota by like 3% and Maine by 1 and 1/2%. So those two are definitely in play like they haven't been in a while.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Should we take another break?

• 33:47Josh Clark?

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

• 34:09Josh Clark?

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• 34:31Josh Clark?

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• 34:47Speaker 01

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• 35:12Josh Clark?

  Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? The moment you met your partner, landed that promotion? For people living with a rare disease, life can feel divided into before the diagnosis and all the after moments that follow. On Voices of VivGart, VivGart is also known as its generic name, Fgart Tigamod Alpha F-Cab, you'll hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.

• 35:48Josh Clark?

  These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:04Josh Clark?

  Hey Chuck, let's say you want to settle one of life's most important questions. What was the greatest era of skateboarding? Well, all you have to do is go to YouTube Premium, because YouTube Premium is the perfect place to investigate. Like, let's start by searching great skateboard videos and see where it takes us.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, of course, the mid 80s to mid 90s would probably be the greatest era of skateboarding. Like, I know that's our era, but even skate historians say so.

• 36:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well, the 80s are when Mike McGill invented the McTwist. Check this out. 720 degrees midair on a half-pipe.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 36:39Josh Clark?

  Amazing.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  How does someone even do that?

• 36:41Josh Clark?

  I don't know, man. It's just crazy. And that's where it came from, the mid 80s, thanks to Bones Brigade member Mike McGill. Plus also, the 80s were the era of Nautilus Capus, who's one of the most amazing street skaters ever. Check out this video of him rail sliding on the roll bar of a pickup truck.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  That looks like a video game.

• 37:00Josh Clark?

  It does. It's pretty amazing. I could watch skate videos all day, Chuck.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 37:04Josh Clark?

  And with YouTube Premium, exploring a topic like this is even more seamless, because it has ad-free viewing, which means we can watch classic skate clips uninterrupted, and we can really dig into that debate about what the greatest era of skating is.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and with background play, it lets us keep listening with our screen locked, which is great if we're doing something else, which we always are, but you still want to hear the video content. And get this, with offline downloads, we can save videos ahead of time and watch them anywhere, even without Wi-Fi.

• 37:31Josh Clark?

  So back to that debate. If you go to the search bar of YouTube Premium and search for golden era of skateboarding, you can see that there's a bunch of different videos that come up, and they're from a bunch of different eras. There's like people skating in old pools in the 70s. There's, of course, the 80s, which were amazing to us. But there's still tons of people skating today that are amazing, like this guy Antoine Dixon. He was still doing amazing stuff this year in 2026. Check out this little video of him. He's amazing, and he's skating right now.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, so after reviewing the evidence, we may finally have our answer, or maybe we've just uncovered more skateboarding debates we need to settle. But either way, that's the beauty of YouTube Premium. It's a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy everything you already love about YouTube. So if you like YouTube, go up Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 38:39Josh Clark?

  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.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:51Josh Clark?

  Their money, their candidate's time, you know, election stops, that kind of thing, stumping. And they do that. Like, that's where the vast majority of the money goes, is the advertising campaigns in these swing states. Florida's a really good example of a longstanding swing state that gets tons and tons of advertising money.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, Florida is such an interesting state to me, because it is, 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.

• 39:37Josh Clark?

  Absolutely.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 39:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the people inland wouldn't be caught dead in Florabama.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  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. And then-

• 40:05Josh Clark?

  Let's not forget about the most magical place on earth, Orlando.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  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, I think.

• 40:27Josh Clark?

  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.

• 40:45Speaker 01

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

• 40:58Josh Clark?

  That's surprising.

• 40:59Speaker 01

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

• 41:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, surely, I mean, an elderly population is going to eventually die off, and you got a younger population-

• 41:13Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 41:13Josh Clark?

  -is eventually 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.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  That's right. They're coming after you.

• 41:25Josh Clark?

  It's good for a state, because you need all those young people to work to take care of all those old people.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 41:30Josh Clark?

  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. 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. Please leave me alone. I'm trying

• 42:15Josh Clark?

  to pay attention to Florida, and you're being very distracting right now.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  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, we'll be set. Or if we can get people that work on, on public roads and infrastructure flipped our way,

• 43:01Speaker 01

  then we can win by 1,000 votes. 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.

• 43:15Josh Clark?

  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.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 43:33Josh Clark?

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

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Hey, we went to Michigan on purpose.

• 43:40Josh Clark?

  Once.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  We haven't ragged on Detroit in a long time.

• 43:45Josh Clark?

  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.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  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 1,000 votes out of a state, that could make a difference.

• 44:07Josh Clark?

  It can, because again, here's why. Literally 1,000 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 1,000 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. And a lot of other states resent, a lot of non-swing states, so safe states, resent

• 44:51Josh Clark?

  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 1,000 votes or win by a million votes. You're gonna, 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.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:28Josh Clark?

  I don't think that's fully accurate, but there does seem to be like some sour grapes among safe state people. That makes sense to me most of all, Chuck, when you're talking about people who feel like their vote is wasted because they're voting for the, 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, as far as the Electoral College is concerned, your vote didn't count.

• 46:08Josh Clark?

  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 Electoral Votes, that, your vote didn't matter because they were always going to win all those delegates because you were going to get outvoted.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Right, but, 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, local considerations on the ballot, local elections, that really have such an impact that you always, always, always vote. But it's almost like, 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.

• 47:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  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, you know, like they're doing now. Look how many, you know, Stacey Abrams almost got elected, the first African American female governor in the United States, 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, okay, well, Georgia's in the mix now. We're gonna, we're gonna campaign in Georgia more.

• 47:40Josh Clark?

  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. And Bill Clinton ended up flipping the state. Had those people been like, it's just a wasted vote anyway, and stayed home, that state wouldn't have been flipped.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:06Josh Clark?

  And the same goes for Wisconsin or Michigan 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 in the, 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 protesting against your party's candidate, that's different.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Well, then go write in a candidate.

• 48:38Josh Clark?

  Okay, sure. I mean, just the idea of 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, 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.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 49:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  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 100 years.

• 49:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 49:35Josh Clark?

  And you know what, Chuck? Yeah, voter die, as P Diddy says.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Was that P Diddy?

• 49:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So one other thing that really has grabbed me in the last like several years is the, 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.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're a young anarchist.

• 49:54Josh Clark?

  Right. So the idea that, that the Russians are meddling in our election and that the, the candidates take the, 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, you know, are really pulling the strings and calling the shots, that that actually doesn't exist, that in reality, voting matters.

• 50:35Josh Clark?

  And I think that the, the threats to voting that we've seen over the last like several years have really kind of driven that home for me.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, 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. 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.

• 51:13Josh Clark?

  Absolutely. Go to usa.gov to check out voter registration and to make sure that you are, like to confirm that you're registered to vote.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  I still check.

• 51:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I checked recently, too, and then I tweeted it out on the Stuff You Should Know Podcast Twitter platform, too.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Totally. And we should put a bow on this one by talking a little bit about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

• 51:39Josh Clark?

  You read my mind.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  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, DC, and Hawaii are all signed up in a pass legislation to enter this compact with several more pending.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia are pending.

• 52:28Josh Clark?

  Right, and so what this compact says is a 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.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, not abolish it.

• 53:04Josh Clark?

  By using, by using the Electoral College. Yeah, because you can abolish it. It would take a constitutional amendment and ratification by 38 states, I believe, to get rid of the Electoral College. 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. And that's, they created the Electoral College to get in the way of the popular vote.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 53:45Josh Clark?

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

• 53:49Speaker 01

  That's swing states.

• 53:51Josh Clark?

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

• 54:07Speaker 01

  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 Erosik, who decided to smooth carrots down in the 1980s into these little aerodynamic bite-sized cylinders, and they were called baby carrots.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  He figured carrots were ugly and too plentiful to profit from as farmers, so they had a long growing season and the people just weren't buying them. So, Mike Erosik 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.

• 55:13Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  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 beaten 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. 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.

• 55:47Josh Clark?

  It sounds like something I would buy into.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  It sounds like something I'd buy into, too. Big carrot, or, I'm sorry, small carrot.

• 55:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, carrots are bleached. The Illuminati really runs things.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  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, and that they do use those shavings.

• 56:09Josh Clark?

  That's really something.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  For carrot juice, is what she says.

• 56:12Josh Clark?

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

• 56:18Speaker 01

  It's not gonna work.

• 56:19Josh Clark?

  No, it won't stick. If you want to get in touch with us, like McKenna did, you can send us an email to [email protected].

• 56:32Speaker 03

  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.

• 56:47Josh Clark?

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• 57:29Josh Clark?

  Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 57:52Speaker 07

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• 58:20Speaker 00

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