Selects: What's the deal with swing states?

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie To Me. I'm Lexi Juanio, we're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa de Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my food days, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of Out of Character, the best podcast in the world. It's really funny. Really? Yeah, yeah. I think statistics just came back, and we're one of the funniest two guys with mics, and that's pretty hard to beat right now, but it's true, actually. Why should people listen to us? Tell them. Well, we're trendy, we're funny, we're topical, you get all your news here. Not, you know, the facts, but maybe our takes on it, and everything in between. So listen out of character on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There are thousands of podcasts that can tell you how to better yourself. Get worse with Kyle Proo is not one of those podcasts. So if you're interested in getting thinner, going to therapy, starting peptide, setting boundaries, taking supplements, making your better, getting closer, then I would humbly recommend other podcasts. If you're interested in blackmail, love, bomb, and cloning yourself, or getting revenge, then we've got a little something, something for a dastardly individual like you. Listening to get worse with Kyle Proo on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody. It's Chuck Kinn, I'm rolling through the year of COVID. This is October 6, 2020, and it's got to 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. No, no, 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's over there somewhere. I think in our office, and this is Stuff You Should Know, a swinging, super hip cat edition. Swing states. They're the swinging states of all. They like to sleep with each other, based on keys they took out of a fish ball. I should say up front, thank you to howstuffworks.com for this article, along with Politico in PR. And I think 538 blog, I got some stuff from. You sound like you're giving an acceptance speech. Yeah, for best election podcast episode. It's all right. We are not going to win. Yeah, so this is on swing states, which are all the rage battleground states these days. Everybody loves them and have been for a while. But some of this stuff I thought was even enlightened me, and I thought I kind of knew most of this stuff. 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. Okay, go ahead. 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 will go over. Depending on which way they flip, they could make or break a presidential campaign and elect the president or deny somebody else's presidency at the same time even they can do both. That's right. And I'm glad you said that because more than anything else in this episode, we want to drive or I want to drive home at least, I'm sure you're on board. Okay, 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 right 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, 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 want to say has 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. 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. Brookings Institution says 75% or more of a presidential candidate 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, but we should go over just, you know, 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. Yeah, because everybody thinks in the United States that everybody goes to the polls and 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 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. It's happened four times. Yes. Twice very recently 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 three million votes, like 2.9 million. I happened a couple of times in the, I think the 19th century, didn't it? Yeah, four times. Yeah, the other two were pretty far back and all four times Republican candidates lost the popular vote and ended up 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 to get a vote. And then for each representative in the house, they get a vote in everywhere except for Maine and Nebraska does what's called a winner take all. So if everyone in Georgia or, you know, if Georgia votes for, for let's say Joe Biden, then everybody, all the electors would have to vote for Joe Biden and cast that vote. And Maine and Nebraska, what they do is I think they, and the goal here, by the way, is 270 electoral votes if you want to 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? Yeah, they do. And so, so you can win, you know, 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. So it seems a little more fair. It does seem a little more fair, but I saw that on fair vote or they said if you do the math, it's actually way less fair on relational level. Yeah, like maybe it works for Maine and Nebraska, but if all states did that, you would be able to eek out and even more imbalance between an electoral college win and 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. Wow. You like to think that they can 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 the safe state is where so many people, so reliably vote for the party that that candidate is running for, that you can just count on that state, like winning their electoral votes. And you actually start with a base of that, like 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. And you could conceivably put those swing states together to create that 270 or more electoral votes, which should lead you to the presidency. 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 are 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. 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, I thought it was very interesting. Yeah. Because 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. Yeah. So 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 the 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 go full color. And so in election 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 did you see a picture of the map? Yeah. It looks like a giant stained glass window for 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. Yeah. And here's the thing is those colors weren't locked in, like there was never any 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 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. And it wasn't until 2000 and the Washington Post, they credit Tim Russell, I think the late Tim Russell. He passed away. Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah. They credit Tim Russell 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 has 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. Yeah. And part of the problem with, especially designating entire states is like red or blue, is that it makes it seem like there's this homogenous group that is, that that whole state thinks that way. And that's not necessarily true. I mean, there's plenty of states out there that are considered red states, but they were one by one and a half percent or three percent. 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. But doing so, all you're doing is sewing 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. 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, it somehow stokes that mentality, a in-group outgroup 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. 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, you used to live in California, I have plenty of friends in California who say things about, you know, places like Georgia with such a disdain. Right. It just bothers me so much because it is, you know, these, and this thing 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. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm quite sure. And I think it was, I don't know what article that came from, they point out that those people are some of the most die hard partisans you'll find, you know, people who are minority in their state. Sure. 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 all, it takes away all new wants 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? 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. Neuance has been lost and everything is carved very much into red and blue and black and white and it's sad. Yeah. And you know what is, what another thing that makes it sad too is 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 somewhere. They're like, Oh, I'm blue. I'm red. I, I, I, I, I affiliate with that and I hate the opposite. Yeah. It is that when you lose nuance, a lot of stuff goes out the window with it. All right. Well, let's take a break. That was our first soapbox of the day. Oh, I didn't, I thought we started out on a soapbox, I thought this whole episode was going to be on. It's pretty even handed soapboxes out, right? Sure. All right. Well, we'll come back and we'll build another soapbox in the next couple of minutes and we'll be back right after this. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast, it's called Don't Lie To Me. I'm Lexi Iwano, we're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get any words or fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told me. That's how accommodating you are. - Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. - Don't lie to me. - Don't lie to me. - Don't lie to me. - Lier. - Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, I don't really care. - I'm Hamza. - And I'm Martin, and we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast, I know. There's a lot of them to listen to these days. - How are you gonna get to us? - Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. - We are the best podcast in the entire world. I swear. - I know, bold, but why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? 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You only need one thing, and that's the Get Worse podcast. - Listen to Get Worse with Kyle Proo on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) ♪ Loving things with chocolate ♪ ♪ Chocolate, all the things ♪ ♪ Stuff you should know ♪ - Okay, so we're back on swing states, right? And I think we should kinda talk about how they swing, or how they have swung, or swanged. Recently, because with swing states, you kinda get this idea that they're the same all the time. That's just not the case, especially not lately. It seems like 1992 and 2016 were both watershed years 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. - Yeah, '92, and 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, and 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. And here's the one that's gonna really make your heart stop, Vermont. - Yeah, traditionally Republican voted 21 times in a row, and that is 191 electoral votes. So 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, quote unquote, competitive or up in the upper grab states. And that's not counting DC, which Democrats have always got a lock on. - 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 in 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 gonna 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 votes, and ended up winning 372, 168 in the electoral college votes. - Somebody bring me a sledgehammer. (laughs) - That's basically what he did, though. I mean, it was pretty unprecedented, and like you said, just flipped the political thinking in this country on its ear. - And flipped them so hard that California, Illinois, New Jersey and Vermont haven't voted Republican since the 1992 election. - Yeah, so he really reshaped them up. - Yeah, he flipped those Republican lock states into Democrat lock states. - That's right, and now they call it the blue wall, and they do call it the blue wall now, 'cause blue is firmly ensconced as Democrat, and there are 18 states supposedly among this blue wall, along with DC that voted in Democrat, and each of the most recent six elections from 92 to, well, previously from 92 to 2012. - Right. - And that's when Trump came in and flipped it on its ear once again. - Yeah, so he flipped some traditionally Democrat strongholds, like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and he did so by, first of all, energizing voters that hadn't really been seen at the polls very much, like voters without 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. Main and minus, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. He flipped those three, and that's how we won the electoral college. But he almost won Maine, and he almost won Minnesota, and both of them were pretty strong Democratic states. Minnesota hadn't voted for a Republican in like 50 years, 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. Yeah, so if you're wondering, I mean, we'll list out the swing states and sort of in 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 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 experience of just literally the physical place where they live. - 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. North Carolina is a really good example of that. 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. - Yeah, and 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 build a fence. And those are other types of smarts, and there are all different ways to be smart. - Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying that at all, of course. - No, 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. And now that is a major part of American politics. politics. 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 is so important. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Some people say New Hampshire. Some people say Georgia. That's a big one. That's a big one. Georgia hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. I think, I mean, has it been since Clinton? Yeah, that's what I would say. 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, but it's purple and in the mix for the first time in a long time. 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. And you mean that metaphorically, by the way? Right. Exactly. But I mean, there's this whole concept of a wasted vote in a safe state for the opposition party. Their votes wasted. But we'll talk about that later. But just like there's 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. The nominee or the candidate that Ohio voted for has been the president, the one who won the presidential race in like dozens of elections, maybe 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 voted differently just about every time. And that says that Ohio is a long-standing swing state. Well, Ohio has flipped in 2016 and there's a lot of political observers who are like Ohio is now lean conservative. Yeah. It's now a red state. And that's a really surprising turn of events for 2020. 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 eat towards the Democrats at all, just makes a lot of A. Yeah. So there's a lot more talk about it on the news and stuff like that. Right. Because there's so much media influence and I think that the liberal media probably thinks that like, oh, Texas is leaning. Maybe we can help push them over the edge if we talk about it all the time. Yeah, probably. Because that's how things work if you listen to the polling podcast. And like you mentioned earlier in Minnesota. Hasn't voted for a Republican in about 50 years. And they are, you know, they have inched a little bit right. Yeah, I think Trump just missed Minnesota and Clinton just barely won Minnesota by like 3% and main by 1.5%. So those two are definitely in play like they haven't been in a while. Should we take another break? Let's take another break and then we're going to come back and talk about get this swing states Lisa. We should tell them about our new show. Oh my god, Lexi. I'm Lexi. You want to wear two bus friends 22 years apart but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Julio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. And at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not gonna get any words I'm fighting. That is wild. The men were just honest about this. There would be so much more peace in the world. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Lie. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, I don't really care. I'm Hamza. And I'm Martin. And we're the hosts of Out of Character. It's a podcast. I know. How are you gonna get to us? Well, there's a specific reason why you should listen to us. We are the best podcast in the entire world. I swear. I know. Bold. But why don't we list some of the things we might talk about on a regular episode? And how nice they were, or if we tip them or not, come and find out. Sometimes we'll talk about that weird news story from last week. It's the one you're thinking about. Trust me. Or maybe we'll talk about music and what's happening in the underground, or drama music, or TV shows, or the Met Gala and what the actors wore. And if you want to see what that's like, come join us. It's a place where everyone can hang out with anyone, wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome. Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeart radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get worse with Kyle Pru is not one of those podcasts. But if you're interested in blackmail, love, bombing, cloning yourself, or getting revenge, then we've got a little something, something for a dastardly individual like you. Fake a back injury. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them with a gun. Listen, it's already over. The next time a bear is running at you, you just calmly stop what you're doing. You look the bear in the eye, and you say this isn't you. Do not preserve relationships. You don't need them. Listen to Get Worse with Kyle Pru on the iHarm Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, their money, their candidates time, election stops, that kind of thing, stumping. And they do that. That's where the vast majority of the money goes, is it's an advertising campaigns in these swing states. Florida is a really good example of a longstanding swing state that gets tons and tons of advertising money. 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. Absolutely. And it's not, I mean, Florida is 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. Yeah, the people inland wouldn't be caught dead in Florida, Bama. 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 let's not forget about the most magical place on Earth or Lando. 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. 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. Yeah. So 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 that's surprising. Yeah. I mean, I guess the sad way to say this is that many of these people are dying. Yeah. I mean, surely. I mean, an elderly population is going to eventually die off. Then you got a younger population, it's actually 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. That's right. They're coming after you. It's good for a state because you need all those young people to work to take care of all those old people. Sure. 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 and Idaho." And the candidate usually says like, "I don't even know where Idaho is. Please leave me alone. I'm trying to pay attention to Florida and you're being very distracting right now." 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 public roads and infrastructure flipped our way, then we can win by a thousand votes. And so they may make pit stops in these states to go to the factory. I mean, that's why you do that stuff. It's not just to, you know, it's, I mean, it's all just very calculated and very specific. 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. 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. Right. I can't believe they came to Michigan. No one ever comes to Michigan on purpose. Hey, we went to Michigan on purpose. Once. Are we? We haven't ragged on Detroit in a long time. 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. 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 a thousand votes out of a state, that could make a difference. It can because again, here's here's why a thousand literally a thousand 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 thousand votes really count in a good size 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 of safe states, resent 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 a thousand votes or win by a million votes. You're going to 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. Yeah. 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 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 the 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. 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, your vote didn't matter because they were always going to win all those delegates because you were going to get outvoted. Right. And I'm glad you said the president specifically, you should always vote for the president, of course, but there are so many ballot measures and local considerations on the ballot, local elections that really have such an impact that you always, always, always vote. But 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. Yeah. 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 one in Georgia, 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 going to we're going to campaign in Georgia more. 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 due to flee to the polls and exercised their real basic important right as a citizen they're right to vote. And Bill Clinton ended up flipping the state. Had those people been like, it's just a waste of vote anyway in state home, that state wouldn't have been flipped. Right. The same goes for Wisconsin and 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 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. But did the idea right in the candidate? 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 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. 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. 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 within the last like hundred years. Right. 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. And you know what? Yeah, voter die is p-ditty says. Who's that p-ditty? 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. So the idea that that the Russians are meddling in our election and that 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 you know are really pulling the strings and calling the shots that that actually doesn't exist. That in reality voting matters. And I think that the threats to voting that we've seen over the last like several years have really kind of driven that home for me. 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 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. Absolutely. Go to USA.gov to check out voter registration and to make sure that you are to confirm that you're registered to vote. I still check. Yeah. I checked recently too and I tweeted it out on the stuff you should know podcast Twitter platform too. Totally. And we should put a bow on this one by talking a little bit about the national popular vote Interstate Compact. You read my mind. And this, the NPVIC, this is a group of states that advocate for a different plan moving forward. These are states and in 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. They're all signed up in a past legislation to enter this compact with several more pending. Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia are pending. Right. And so what this compact says is the 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. And 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 by using the electoral college. Yeah, because you can't 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 political 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. Yeah. It's interesting. It really is. So that's swing state, say. That swing states, 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's time for listen or mail. This is from McKinna 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 Eurosik who decided to smooth carrots down in the 1980s into these little aerodynamic bite-sized cylinders. And they were called baby carrots. He figured carrots were ugly and too plentiful to profit from his farmers. So they had a long growing season and the people just weren't buying them. So Mike Eurosik 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. Wow. 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 beat me to the punch, but I didn't want to chance y'all making fools of yourself. The next time baby carrots comes up, you guys are great. Keep up the amazing work. You're a loyal listener and baby carrot convert, McKinna Bridge. And I even looked it up to you and I think I saw that it was a myth that they were bleached. That sounds like something I would buy into. Sounds like something I'd buy into too. Big carrot, or I'm sorry, small carrot. Yeah, carrots are bleached, the Illuminati really runs things. So you know, I haven't fully vetted all that, but that's what McKinna Bridge says is that they really turned around carrots as a whole and that they do use those shavings. That's really something. For carrot juice is what she says. Well, McKinna, that was really great stuff. Thank you for trying to keep us from making fools of ourselves again. It's not going to work. No, it won't stick. If you want to get in touch with us like McKinna did, you can send us an email to [email protected]. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Lexi Iwaneo, we're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hamza, and I'm Martin, and we're the hosts of Out of Character, the funniest podcast in the entire world. I like that's a good way to promote ourselves. We are two funny guys having fun and enjoying ourselves, and we just know how to have fun, unlike anyone else. If you guys like fun conversations, hot takes, what else? Not too hot, just kind of lukewarm takes to get your mind thinking a little bit. Listen to Out of Character on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're interested in blackmail, love, bomb, and cloning yourself, or getting revenge, and we've got a little something, something for a dastardly individual like you. Listen to Get Worse with Kyle Proo on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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