Fifty-state strategy

A fifty-state strategy is a political strategy which aims for progress in all states of the United States of America, rather than conceding certain states as "unwinnable." In a presidential campaign, it is usually implemented as an appeal to a broad base of the American public in an attempt to win, even if marginally, every state, since even a marginal victory is effectively total victory for electoral purposes. It can also refer to an overall long-term strategy for a political movement such as a political party.

This strategy is very ambitious and, when used for a specific election, is typically abandoned as the election day draws nearer. In the vast majority of cases, winning a state's popular vote for president or senator — even by a small margin — means the state's entire representation in the election goes to the victor without being divided. A fifty-state strategy requires a campaign to spend valuable resources in a rival's strongest states, when those resources could instead be concentrated in swing states that will become a total win or a total loss based on only a small difference in popular votes.

A president has won every state three times: in 1788 and 1792, George Washington won all the electoral votes running effectively unopposed, and in 1820, James Monroe, running unopposed, carried all twenty-three states in the union at that time (although one electoral vote was cast for John Quincy Adams and two electors died prior to casting votes). In 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt carried forty-six of forty-eight states, losing only Maine and Vermont. A complete fifty-state victory has not been accomplished since the fiftieth state was admitted into the union, although Republicans have twice managed to win the presidency in forty-nine of the fifty: in 1972 with Richard Nixon losing only Massachusetts, and in 1984 with Ronald Reagan losing only his rival's home state of Minnesota. Both also lost the District of Columbia, which has had presidential electors since the Twenty-Third Amendment in 1961.

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