oklahoma 2004

[Gustaf]

Sweden uses a national vote system and it's evident how virtually all of the campaigning takes place in Stockholm. No one bothers with the rural areas.

[Gustaf]

Sweden uses a national vote system and it's evident how virtually all of the campaigning takes place in Stockholm. No one bothers with the rural areas.

In part wouldn't that be because everyone knows that (most of) the rural areas will vote for the Social Democrats regardless? Over here areas with lots of safe seats "tend" to get ignored as well.

You miss the point - since we don't have FPTP there is no inherent advantage in going for "marginal" seats as opposed to "safe" seats (unless one supposes that the number of swing voters are fewer in safe areas). But because Stockholm is more cost-effective to campaign in, being an urban area, it gets all the action. It's very obvious how Sweden tends to have two swings in each election - the campaign-correlated Stockholm swing and the non-campaign related national swing.

While it would be correct to note that most rural areas are safely SAP, Stockholm is the most or second most conservative area in the country. I'm sure New York would see a lot more campaigning than Iowa or Wisconsin if America used a more national system.

[Gustaf]

Al,
I was actually going to insinuate that.

Gabu,
Yes, but one could argue that it's a matter of what principle one believes should be used rather than what particular group should be favoured.

RBH,
I'm not so sure. First off, what's left once you've covered swing areas AND bases? Secondly, the pay-off on an ad campaign or whatever in a rural area is much, much lower than in an urban area. 90% of 1000 voters is still less than 40% of a million. And so on.

Also, it is fully possible that a state such as Wisconsin is 45 R-45 D-10 Undecided while, say, Idaho is 65-25-10. In that case it isn't necessarily better to campaign in Wisconsin than in Idaho. The point is that a safe state must not necessarily have fewer swing voters than a swing state. It may just have more safe voters for the other side. Therefore the traditional swing states would not necessarily get any attention in a national race.