What swing states want

I’ve written a lot about the politics of the labour left in the swing states, but these places aren’t just about that. States including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are some of the most politically heterodox in the country — that’s why, of course, they are swing states.

I was struck by some recent polling done by Blueprint, a left-leaning public opinion research initiative, that speaks to this point. As they put it, “swing state voters are ideologically eclectic: They hold conservative views on immigration and crime, but are pro-choice and favour government action to control corporate excesses, particularly on prices. They reward pragmatic populist positions rather than strict ideological consistency.”

They also “favour politics that punish corporate bad actors but are sceptical of government over-reach and sweeping systemic change rhetoric”. This point is particularly interesting because it indicates that Kamala Harris’s decision to target price gouging — which is politically astute but doesn’t take broader market forces into account — is still the right approach in swing states. Same goes for Harris’s stance on bringing down prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate with Big Pharma. 

Fifty-seven per cent of swing state voters believe that the criminal justice system isn’t tough enough. They want corporations to pay for their crimes, but they want individuals to be held to account too. This presents an opportunity for Harris — who, as a former prosecutor, is totally committing to seeing bad guys get their due. Given that swing state voters are also in favour of decreased immigration, I’d say there’s some room for her to lean into immigration reform and ensure the government is tough on unlawful entries.

Swing state voters are also deficit hawks. That makes a lot of sense to me, coming from the Midwest, where people tend to have Swabian attitudes around savings and thrift. Sixty-nine per cent of swing state voters believe in deficit reduction, though they also seem to be tolerant of more government intervention in markets (only 23 per cent agree that “Soviet-style price controls will only make inflation worse”.) That’s a paradox, of course, but it might be an opportunity for messaging around government efficiency versus spending.

As I wrote in a column a few months ago, red tape in both the public and private sector is rife. Growing up in Indiana, I’ve seen entire farms labelled wetlands after the wrong bird lands on a row of crops. I’ve seen factory owners have to rebuild entire operations because a certain kind of paint is outlawed. I’ve heard from US mining executives who tell me it will take them five to six years just to get a permit to open rare earth mineral facilities. And don’t get me started on the complexities of federal student aid forms or New York City building codes. 

The same goes for the private sector, too, of course — tackling rent-seeking by large, bureaucratic monopolies is something I’ve argued that Harris should lean into. That plays well to voters concerned about the cost of living (73 per cent of swing state voters say that lowering prices on consumer goods, gas, and services is their top economic priority).

I came away from this research thinking, more than I had before, that perhaps Harris’s somewhat vague, yet pragmatic approach on the economic front isn’t such a bad thing. She needs to capture people with a lot of differing viewpoints right now, and while more joined-up systems thinking will be necessary for making good policy should she win, heterodoxy might serve her well now.

Peter, in your travels through swing states, what are some of the points of political heterodoxy that you find most intriguing? And how do you see Trump and Harris playing to them?

Recommended reading

• This article in Foreign Policy lays out the two camps of China hawks in the Republican Party, and how they differ in their approach to dealing with the CCP threat. While I, too, am hawkish on China, I think it’s beyond folly to think that the US can effect regime change in China. America would do far better to focus on a strong, integrated industrial strategy at home, which secures supply chain resiliency, and plug the gaps in areas like shipbuilding, steel, chips, rare earth minerals and of course cutting edge technologies.

• This New Yorker magazine feature on Russian’s espionage war in the Arctic, is a rippin’ yarn of a feature about how the top of the world is becoming one of the most geopolitically charged places on earth.

• In the FT, see my column on how America, not just China, is increasingly perceived as a global risk node and don’t miss Lunch with Signal’s Meredith Whittaker, who has wise words about AI and the surveillance economy.

Peter Spiegel responds

Rana, I certainly agree with you that swing states are politically heterodox. And I may even be persuadable that Harris is right to be vague ideologically to reach the maximum number of persuadable voters in these key battlegrounds.

But I have an issue with the conclusions put forward by Blueprint because they seem to argue the opposite: that swing voters in these states share an identifiable set of issues and values that can be easily targeted by presidential campaigns. The reality is that the seven swing states are a motley group of regions, political histories and demographics that make any attempt to identify a prototypical “swing voter” on a national basis impossible at best and disingenuous at worst.

To oversimplify, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have been battleground states for decades because of their common histories as big, industrial centres that have drifted towards the Republican party for decades thanks to the cultural and trade issues that you’ve written so compellingly about, Rana. They are in play because of the so-called Reagan Democrats that Biden was able to win back in places like his hometown of Scranton.

Georgia and North Carolina are completely different beasts, though. They are moving in the opposite direction, from solid Republican to “in play” for Democrats. They are the “New South” that was once in lockstep with conservatives across the region but have seen an influx of highly skilled workers in places like North Carolina’s Research Triangle, or Atlanta’s burgeoning music scene, which has given them an increasingly cosmopolitan flavour — and a voting bloc that is going to be more supportive of globalisation than the swing voter in the industrial Midwest.

Finally, Arizona and Nevada are younger, western states with less of the historical baggage of the Midwest or New South and more of a libertarian streak. They are also moving from solid Republican to the centre because of the rise of skilled workers, but both have been shaped far more by immigration, with second and third generation Mexican-Americans playing an outsized role in changing their political make-up. Democrats thought they had the Latino vote locked down, but Republicans have proven newly resilient for some of the same reasons many immigrant groups gradually become more conservative over generations. These voters need a whole different set of issues addressed than the swingers in the Midwest and New South.

In sum, swing voters may be even more heterodox than you give them credit for, Rana. Still, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and Joe Biden) managed to win in many of these states with detailed economic visions and plans. We should expect the same from Harris.

Your feedback

And now a word from our Swampians . . .

In response to “What we should learn from Jimmy Carter”:
“Whatever you think of Carter and Reagan as presidents, when you think of them as people you fully realise how superior they are/were to Trump. We need decency regardless of policy, and Trump is a craven, disturbed person.” — Commenter Fan of FT

In response to “Dear Kamala: A letter from Pennsylvania”:
“Spend any time at all on a family dairy farm in Wisconsin . . . and what you are likely to find is a white, septuagenarian farm couple whose adult children have left the farm for opportunities in the city. This couple hasn’t had a vacation in decades, they have an $800,000 combine on which they owe a lot of money, they employ migrant labour (largely Hispanic) because no one wants to do the hard, dirty work of taking care of 200 dairy cows. Ask any farming community what they really think of immigrants and they will tell you their farms cease to exist without this labour force.

Enter the Democratic party which in the recent past has the effrontery to accuse this couple of benefiting from undeserved white privilege — and often accusing them of being racist to boot. This farm couple looks around their hard scrabble homestead, despairs at their pile of debt, laments they have no succession plan but auctioning off the herd and squint as they might, they can’t for the life of them see their privilege. I can’t really blame them for abandoning the Democratic party . . . The truth is, the Democratic Party has abandoned them.

Kamala would do well to address the shortcomings of the Democratic Party and answer the burning questions of this farm couple: What did we do wrong? Where is the social contract between government and citizens? Why do elements of your party accuse of me of inherited privilege when I’m poor and my way of life is disappearing seemingly month by month. Sure, we benefit from having the family farm passed down to us, and we weren’t brought to this country in involuntary servitude, but privilege? We aren’t coastal elites. We go to church. We work hard and play by the rules. And we might not want Donald Trump as our son-in-law but at least he doesn’t make us feel diminished.” — Steven C. Wallace