The 2020 Elections were won by Joe Biden, who will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States of America in January. This research question this paper proposes is as followed “Why did four swing states vote for the Democratic Party and not for the Republican Party”
The theory that this paper will test is how Trump’s administration has handled the current pandemic of Covid-19 and if Republican voters have lost faith in the Trump administration. Traditionally, the economy, terrorism, foreign policy and health care play the largest role concerning top voting issues. This was the case again in the election in 2016 https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/07/07/4-top-voting-issues-in-2016-election/
However, in 2020 although the economy and health care still play a large role in top issues for voters, the coronavirus outbreak plays a large role as well. An alternative explanation of why the swing states turned Democratic is due to the sex demographic and level of education. Voters with a bachelor’s or higher degree tend to be more liberal and women tend to vote more democratic. Thus in this research, this explanation for a Republican stronghold will be tested. A republican stronghold is defined as a state that traditionally votes for the Republican Party. This is the case for Arizona for example, who since 1952 has always been Republic, with one exception of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1952 https://www.270towin.com/states/Arizona .
This is of importance to test as the President of American holds a large power as the head of state. Policies regarding health care, as well as the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The interest of swing states is important as they hold a large amount of the electoral votes. The five swing states that played an active role in the 2020 election were: North Carolina (holding 15 electoral votes), Florida (holding 29 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (holding 20 electoral votes), Michigan (holding 16 electoral votes), Arizona (holding 11 electoral votes), Wisconsin (holding 10 electoral votes), and Ohio (Holding 18 electoral votes).
Biden managed to turn Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, which were important states to win for the presidency. Together these states made up these are all traditionally Republican states and they hold the most electoral votes. As these states hold … electoral votes these states are the most important in terms of winning, as the smaller states do not hold as many electoral voters.
A single case study would not be sufficient if this paper would want to research why one Republican state voted for the Democratic party and another voted traditionally for the Republican Party, this paper needs to look at multiple swing states that voted for the Democratic Party to find the independent variable and the cause of this outcome. This is for the reason as the independent variables may change between states. This paper could speculate on the independent variables and dependent variables for Pennsylvania for example, but we would not be able to recreate this for the other swing states. There are three types of research this paper could conduct theory-testing, theory-building or theory-building: explaining outcome. As there are theories as to why swing states voted for the Democratic Party it will not be necessary to create our own theory. Theory-testing is not possible for this research question as this paper only looks at the election of 2020, if we wanted to utilise theory-testing we could need to look at the elections of 2016 or the 2018 midterm election polls.
Therefore, this paper will utilise the comparative research design method. This method consists of two choices: the ‘most similar’ design and the ‘most different’ design. The most similar design is similar in background but differ on the independent and dependent variable. The most different design is dissimilar in all but one independent variable, however the cases will share the same dependent variable. For the purpose of this research and to be able to utilise the most similar design this paper will use two cases, one swing state and one traditional ‘deep red’ Republican Party state. This paper will use Pennsylvania as an example of the swing state as it has traditionally been a Republican state. As a republican state this paper will use Florida as an example as it turned ‘deep red’ during the 2020 election.
There are similarities in the two states namely the education levels concerning high school graduate or higher, as well as bachelor degree or higher are comparable. 30.8% of the population in Pennsylvania holds a bachelor degree or higher and in Florida that percentage is 29.2%. the numbers are comparable when it comes to sex, 51% of the population living in Pennsylvania are women and in Florida the percentage is 51.1%. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/PA,FL/HSG651218 There are more similarities that make these two states comparable with each other and make them perfect to compare with each other however the outcome is different for both states. There are of course more states that could be compared but these two are the most appropriate cases as they are both swing states, and average on having the most in common on consensus. Both Biden and Trump have campaigned heavily in these two states, with Biden turning to Spanish tv and radio commercials to try and win the votes of the Latino voters. If we utilize the case of Pennsylvania and find the independent variable of this state, we will most likely be able to use that variable to explain why the other swing states voted for the Democratic Party instead of for the Republican Party.