Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Grodoski.

What can I say about this week's episode?

It's about a place where men were born to run, a place that gets slippery when wet, and it's not a nursing home.

It's a retirement community.

Yes, I'm referring to the great state of New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen, John Bon Jovi, and the Sopranos.

This episode is all about New Jersey and whether

or not it can become America's next swing state. But before I talk about the Garden State, I want to

go back in time a little bit, all the way to the year 2000. That election obviously was important

for a number of reasons. It elected George W. Bush as the 43rd president. It was the first election year that Hillary Clinton won an election on her own for the United States Senate in New York and began her political career, which obviously didn't go to the places that she dreamed. And it would be the last time that the state of Vermont would elect a Republican to the United States Senate after having consistently elected

Republicans for over a century. But most importantly, it created the modern political map.

Now, there have been six elections since the year 2000, and for the most part, they've kind

of more or less looked a lot the same. Thirty-five states have voted the same exact way in all

seven elections from 2000 to 2024.

Now, you might say 15 states is a lot that would change direction over that time.

And yet, that's true, 15 states is a lot.

But if you cut up the states that have only voted one time at the last seven,

so like the voting six or seven times the same exact way, like New Hampshire, for example,

or North Carolina or

Indiana. And if you take states have only voted twice in a different direction, five of the seven,

six of the seven or seven and seven states that have voted the same exact way in the last seven

consecutive elections, you only have nine states left that have continuously flipped back and

forth for a quarter of a century.

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