Candidates’ focus on swing states leaves rest of country a campaign desert

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In 1835, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a short story called The Ambitious Guest. Nearly two centuries later, Western Pennsylvania is playing host to two ambitious guests.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are almost permanent presences in Pennsylvania and in neighbouring Ohio.

But not just here. The two ambitious guests – along with their campaign surrogates – are continually in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire and a (small) handful of others. The rest of the country is a campaign desert. You won't see either Mr. Trump or Ms. Clinton there unless their campaign planes develop engine trouble and they have to touch down for maintenance.

But in the target states, the candidates are a constant presence, the result of how the peculiar U.S. Electoral College system, which forces candidates to win individual states rather than a countrywide popular-vote majority, warps the race for the White House.

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"I can't escape this campaign," says Frank Lucchino, who has senior status as a Pennsylvania judge but also has a home on the west coast of Florida. "The candidates are advertising here and you see them a lot here in Pittsburgh. And when I get back to Florida a week before the election, they'll be there too. The television stations will be clogged with ads."

But his brother, Larry Lucchino, the retired president and chief executive officer of the Boston Red Sox, will hardly see any of the campaign. He lives in Massachusetts, where the popular Republican governor is wary of Mr. Trump. Over all, the Bay State, deep Democratic blue in the past seven consecutive elections, is the power centre for Ms. Clinton, who went to Wellesley College in the state and who has vacationed in Martha's Vineyard for years.

The U.S. presidential campaign has come down to a very few states that are being saturated with advertisements and candidate visits while about four-fifths of the rest of the states are being virtually ignored.

Indeed, just as the general election campaign formally opened last week, four campaign planes were sitting on the tarmac at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. They belonged to Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump along with separate planes for their running mates, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia and Republican Governor Mike Pence of Indiana.

Together, New York and California account for 84 electoral votes, a little less than a third of the 270 required to win the White House. California, the home state of two relatively recent presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, has voted Democratic the past seven elections in a row. New York, which elected Ms. Clinton twice to the Senate, has voted Democratic the past eight elections in a row.

The two megastates, which account for 57 million people, are so safely Democratic that they are not in play. The candidates may repair there for sleep (Ms. Clinton to Chappaqua, N.Y., Mr. Trump to Manhattan) or to raise money (perhaps Orange County, Calif., for Mr. Trump, Manhattan and Silicon Valley for both of them), but there will be no rallies in the population centres of Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Anaheim, San Diego, Fresno and Sacramento. In the sprint to election day, the candidates have no time for states – even giant ones with bulging populations – that are not competitive.

And that is a lot of them. Fully two-thirds of the states have voted for the same party in the past five consecutive elections. They're pretty much off the campaign itinerary.

Indeed, most of the country is off the itinerary, for virtually the entire presidential campaign is being conducted in fewer than a dozen states that are considered competitive.

Tiny New Hampshire, with a population about the size of the Ottawa metropolitan area, is one such hot spot. Forty states are larger than New Hampshire, but it is considered a swing state and is a particularly sore spot for Democrats. Had the independent candidate Ralph Nader not siphoned off votes that almost certainly would have gone to Albert Gore Jr. in the contested 2000 election, the vice-president would have prevailed in the election and the contretemps in Florida would have been irrelevant.

The candidates also have singled out North Carolina, about twice the size of Metro Toronto, for special favour. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois carried the state in 2008, but lost it four years ago. The state has voted Democratic only one other time since 1968, and that was when the Southerner Jimmy Carter ran the first time. Mr. Carter lost the state to Mr. Reagan four years later, and Mr. Trump considers it within his reach even though Ms. Clinton has a slender lead, according to most polls.

The respected Politico website gives Ms. Clinton a six-percentage-point lead in what it considers the 11 battleground states, but some of those states seem to be slipping beyond Mr. Trump's grasp.

Michigan, Democratic in the past six consecutive elections, might ordinarily be a prime target for the Manhattan businessman because of its blue-collar tradition and the ambient resentment of the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA). But two-thirds of female voters in the state, and more than a quarter of strong GOP voters, consider Mr. Trump unqualified, according to the Detroit News poll. That gives Mr. Trump little room to fashion a majority in a state that has 16 electoral votes.

One caveat: The election map is not immutable – and thus campaign itineraries are changeable. The country's second-largest state, Texas, safely Republican for 10 of the past 11 elections, may become competitive before election day. The Lone Star State, with a population about the size of all of Canada outside Quebec, now is a virtual tie, according to a Washington Post/SurveyMonkey poll.

Ms. Clinton and her husband have made several visits to Texas. They may be back, and if they are, so will Mr. Trump. But don't look for either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Trump in most of the Farm Belt. Like Dorothy, they're not in Kansas (Republican in 18 of the past 19 elections) any more.

David Shribman, executive editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of U.S. politics.