Since the photo-finish 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore that introduced the United States to the red-and-blue political map, the struggle between the parties for 270 Electoral College votes has resembled trench warfare. With most states locked down for one party or the other, both sides have overwhelmingly concentrated their resources on the same handful of swing states.
Those traditional battlegrounds, led by Florida and Ohio, are still attracting enormous efforts from the two campaigns. But this year, the geographic stalemate could finally be broken—or at least disrupted—by the sharply divergent demographic coalitions of support that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have assembled in their ferocious contest. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic