GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - What does it mean to be a battleground state? The term 'battleground state' is the same as 'swing state, which means the state could go blue or red in an election. It's a state where neither candidate has a clear lead over the other, instead it's a battle ground, where President Trump and Joe Biden will fight it out.
Professor of political science at Calvin University Doug Koopman describes them as the states where the margin of victory is razor-thin.
"All of these states are within the polling margin of error, in other words, that even if Trump is consistently ahead its within 2 or 3 percentage points and the polls could be wrong. And so you really have to account for the fact that some people are misleading you in the polls," he says.
As ABC News explains, the candidates need 270 electoral votes to win the election. The electoral votes of all the battleground states combined would make up a large part of the 270 electoral votes a candidate needed to win, but a candidate does not need to win all of the battleground states to win the election.
This year there are 12 battle ground states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa Pennsylvania, Maine, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. Michigan has 16 electoral votes making it an important state for a candidate to win.
"There are a couple of reasons why Michigan is important," explains Professor Koopman. "One it is decently sized in electoral votes so its not a small state, its bigger than Wisconsin. Also the people who are up in the air in Michigan are typical of two nationwide groups: One its the union worker who voted Obama-Obama-Trump and you want see what they're doing, and the other group is suburban woman, particularly in Grand Rapids, but also across state in Oakland County. The races to watch I think are Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I think Michigan is very likely to go Democratic at the presidential level."
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