The Political Swing Dance

In their weekly video chat, Claire and Neil discuss the problem of the swing vote--who are the voters who will decide the 2024 election? And why aren't they polarized like the rest of us?

Image credit: gguy/Shutterstock

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It’s just a couple days shy of the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. North Carolina mails ballots next week. And Pennsylvania—a crucial state for both campaigns, but necessary to a Trump victory—begins early voting on September 16. In a wrap up of the week’s top stories, Neil and Claire also discussHarris’s first 2024 presidential campaign interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Republican election fraud claims that promote false theories of non-citizen voting, and why Claire is annoyed by Barron Trump’s matriculation at NYU.

But our major focus for today’s video chat is swing voters: who are they, and how we define them; which campaign can capture them, and how that diverse demographic—reportedly 18% of the American electorate who are expected to vote mostly in battleground states—will decide whether we elect a seasoned prosecutor and sitting Vice President for our nation’s highest office—or a convicted felon who tried to reverse the 2020 election.

• How did swing voters become so critical to the outcome of national elections?

• Which demographic groups is each campaign is targeting?

• Why are non-college educated men so prominent as swing voters?

• Ticket splitting (voting for members of different parties on the same ballot), on the decline in the 21^st century, was seen as making a comeback before President Biden left the race. But are American voters now mostly retreating to their partisan corners?

Claire and Neil also want a couple of stories to go viral this week.

• Neil focuses on Wyoming’s former Representative, Liz Cheney, who endorsed Kamala Harris at a forum held at Duke University—a school in one of the swingiest states, North Carolina

• Claire points viewers to a story from Judd Legum’s Popular Information Substack about why thousands of Florida k-12 students will have no sex education.

Our weekly episode ends with a look ahead to the Presidential debate on Tuesday, September 10. It’s only available to paying subscribers, so won’t you try us for only:

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Your hosts:

Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.

Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024). 

These videos are a paid subscriber feature (although you can access them on YouTube one week later.) Don’t miss new drops from Claire and Neil by taking out a paid subscription! Only $5 a month, or $50/year and choose Neil’s Coming Out Republican or Claire’s Political Junkies as a welcome bonus.