Title: ★ TASK: Explore Your State
Course: US Election 2020-Leuphana-Copy > Section: Introduction

[fa-info-circle]  In this task, you will:

- take a look at your adopted U.S. state, its people, geography, and culture as well as its political landscape;
- develop an idea about how your state might vote on Election Day and discuss this in a forum;
- document your initial findings and refine them gradually as you proceed with the project.

1. Overall impression of 'our' state [fa-book]

Take a look at the websites [1]-[4] below and explore your state in general. Try to understand what the people living there might think and feel about the upcoming election. To guide this exploration, you can fill out a K-W-L chart. Make three columns – know, want to know, learned – and fill in your ideas and questions as well as what you find out as you proceed with the project.

Know | Want to know | Learned

2. First impressions of the political scenario [fa-book]

1. Take a look at the state fact sheet [2] to find out how many electors your state will send to the electoral college and what the voting behavior was like in the past. During the course of the project you will study the current situation in more detail.

2. Discuss your ideas with your classmates (and potential American partners) in the FORUM: First Assumptions.

3. Keep your ideas, impressions and hypotheses in mind while working on the project. You can take notes and document your work in the Project Journal.

4. Refine your ideas gradually. At the end of this project, your task will be to make an informed prediction about how your state will vote on Election Day.

Resources for this task

[1] Explore USA states, territories and major cities
VisitTheUSA.com
website

[2] State fact sheet
Teach About U.S. (look under "U.S. Election Project")
handout

[3] States and their Capitals
50states.com
website

[4] 50 States
History.com
website

SEE ALSO:

- TIP: Golden rules of cooperation