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President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney will feel at home when they go to Florida for their final debate on Monday. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a state that has seen a lot of both candidates. But when their second debate concluded on Tuesday night, the two men sure left New York quickly. The president didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even spend the night and Romney was up at the crack of dawn to flee. After all, there was a campaign out there that demanded their return. And other than on a debate stage, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly not being waged in New York, the nation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s third most populous state. Or in California or Texas, the two biggest states. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 82.8 million Americans who are just bystanders in the most hotly contested presidential election in a decade.<\/p>\n
Obama raced to Iowa and Ohio the day after the debate; Romney scurried off to Virginia. They were wooing voters in states totaling only 22.7 million residents, barely a quarter of the Big Three\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s population. But their clout is bigger than their numbers; they \u00e2\u20ac\u201d along with voters in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina \u00e2\u20ac\u201d are Campaign 2012.<\/p>\n
Much has been written about the hardy band of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153battleground states.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But little has been written about why the American electoral map has shrunk so dramatically, what it tells us about the nation and what it means for future elections.<\/p>\n