I’m putting this post in the diaries because it’s about presidential elections rather than the downballot. Just trying to keep it real! But this is an issue I was curious about so I thought I’d share my findings.
John McCain pieced together just 173 electoral votes this year. That’s the 8th-worst showing by a Republican since 1916. Interestingly, all seven weaker GOP showings came at the hands of just three men: FDR, LBJ and Bill Clinton. To win in 2012, the GOP needs to get to 270, of course, so they’ve got to scrape together another 97 EVs. How likely is this?
(Sidebar: Why 1916? In 1912, the electoral college expanded to 531 votes, which is close enough to today’s 538 to make pure EV comparisons meaningful. In 1908, there were just 483 EVs. Also around and shortly after 1916, you had the realignment of the two major parties, the extension of the franchise to women, and the direct election of senators. In short, it’s a decent benchmark for the “modern” political era. Also, the election of 1912 was a serious oddball, with the GOP coming in third.)
The GOP has posted EV gains in excess of 97 six times since 1916:
| Year | GOP EVs | Prior Election | Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | 442 | 189 | 253 |
| 1968 | 301 | 52 | 249 |
| 1980 | 489 | 240 | 249 |
| 1972 | 520 | 301 | 219 |
| 1920 | 404 | 254 | 150 |
| 2000 | 271 | 159 | 112 |
The next-best showing was a net of 90 EVs in 1948. Most of these big gains took place at moments of serious change.
1920: Harding’s “return to normalcy.” Had 3,000 votes in California gone the other way in 1916, Woodrow Wilson would have lost to Charles Hughes. A war-weary public and a damaging recession let Harding run against the unpopular Wilson (much like Obama “ran against Bush”) and rack up the biggest popular-vote margin since 1820.
1952: Twenty years of Dem control of the White House ended. The incumbent president, Truman, was unpopular due to a seemingly intractable war in Korea and chose not to seek re-election as a result. The GOP candidate was the venerated Allied commander in WWII, Gen. Eisenhower.
1968: Another incumbent Dem mired in an even less popular war in Asia (LBJ) decided against running for another term. A badly fractured Democratic Party put forth a wounded, underfunded candidate (Humphrey) against the conniving Nixon, who knew how to exploit the fears and resentments brewing during a time of social upheaval. And hard not to improve on Goldwater’s performance.
1972: A continuation of 1968 in many ways – the Democrats even more badly fractured, their candidate woefully unready and unappealing to many. Nixon, evil though he was, deserved credit for appearing on this list twice.
1980: Stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis, and a Democratic president swept narrowly into office in the wake of Watergate (Carter) versus Nixon’s heir. Carter’s outsider status, a virtue on the campaign trail, also turned into a major liability once in DC, as few people owed him anything.
2000: The outlier on this list. Pundits and Ralph Nader succeeded in turning this into the “Seinfeld election” (ie, the “election about nothing”). Gore struggled to cast himself as the natural inheritor and steward of the Clinton legacy and Rove (again abetted by the media) cast Gore as a serial liar. Without those unearned Florida electoral votes, the gain would have only been 87 EVs – not enough for this list.
Now, the 97-plus Democratic gains:
| Year | Dem EVs | Prior Election | Gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1932 | 472 | 87 | 385 |
| 1976 | 297 | 17 | 280 |
| 1992 | 370 | 111 | 259 |
| 1960 | 303 | 73 | 230 |
| 1964 | 486 | 303 | 183 |
| 2008 | 365 | 251 | 114 |
| 1988 | 111 | 13 | 98 |
These elections are a bit more of a mix between the epochal and the prosaic. Also, in the prior elections, Dems took 111 or fewer EVs five times – that only happened once for the GOP.
1932: The Great Depression. ‘Nuff said.
1960: Perhaps the trickiest race on this list. At the very least, Adlai Stevenson’s abysmal 1956 haul meant the odds favored a better performance by Kennedy.
1964: A wildly conservative, non-mainstream Republican candidate versus a pre-backlash LBJ, running in the wake of JFK’s assassination. Despite the size of the victory, this election famously did not offer the Dems lasting gains but actually presaged a long period of decline.
1976: Watergate, the accidental presidency of Gerry Ford, and McGovern’s unthinkably pitiful showing gave Carter lots of room for improvement.
1988: How sad is it that Michael Dukakis is on this list? It’s only possible because Walter Mondale was ten times sadder. Dukakis is the only person on both lists to post a big gain but still lose – a classic dead-cat bounce.
1992: A bit tough to classify. Dukakis not only did poorly in 1988, he underperformed expectations badly. The dark recession of 1990-91 played a major role here, though.
2008: The most unpopular president in US history and the second-worst financial crisis in US history, not to mention an unpopular war and an alienating conservative GOP ticket.
So a few pretty clear trends emerge. Most of these elections took place during or in the wake of unpopular wars or economic downturns, or both: 1920, 1932, 1952, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2008. Two back-to-back races saw a political collapse on the part of each party: 1972, for complex reasons, and 1976, for much simpler ones.
Some just involved improvements over craptacular prior performances, like 1960 or 1988 (but also including 1932, 1968 & 1976). One time, 1964, saw one party put forth a completely unacceptable candidate, at least for that particular moment in time. And as for the election of 2000… well, as Al Gore himself would say, sometimes, there’s that little-known third category.
As impressive as Nixon’s consecutive gains were, in a way, George W. Bush’s surge from Bob Dole’s sucky performance might be the most remarkable of all. After eight years of peace and prosperity, he had to invent an amazing mythology in order to give voters a reason to change horses. It didn’t really work, of course – Gore still won more votes. But thanks to an assist from the Supreme Court, he pulled it off.
Anyhow, drilling down to the 2012 election, I don’t think this past history offers the GOP a whole lot of hope. The war in Iraq darn well better be over by then, and we probably won’t engage in another large-scale conflict. The Dems aren’t about to implode or nominate someone unelectable. And McCain’s haul wasn’t so awful, ala McGovern or Mondale, that you simply have to expect a bounce.
They already tried the 2000/2004 smear strategy this year, and that failed. I think it’ll be a lot harder to try that on an incumbent. So that leaves the possibility of a major economic downturn. It’s sadly possible that we won’t be out of this mess in three years, but that seems hard to imagine. What I think is more likely (but hopefully not very likely) is that we recover and then relapse (think 1938).
The pure odds would seem to favor McCain – after all, 97-plus gains have happened 13 times in just 24 elections. But the background facts are very unfavorable, and that’s without even looking at demographic nitty-gritty of the blue states which might be winnable in 2012 for Republicans. That can wait for another day, though.
Bush’s improvements over Dole came pretty much from winning the border states of the old Confederacy and demographically similar areas (Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and West Virginia) while still holding on in states which, at the time, were traditionally Republican states (New Hampshire, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, etc.) With the exception of Arizona (for obvious reasons) the Democrats took all of those states this, and in the case of all those states but Ohio, they are simply becoming more Democratic (Ohio tends to stay at the median either way, so it is different from the other states in this regard). Really, Obama’s the first Democratic winner since Kennedy in 1960 to win without Tennessee and Kentucky, and is the first Democrat in the modern era to win without Arkansas and West Virginia.
To think about it this way, Obama’s 365 electoral vote win is probably more stable than Bill Clinton’s 379 vote win (since Clinton’s victory was predicated largely on states which were moving more Republican, like Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and West Virginia) while a lot of Obama’s wins are coming from states that are tending to hold steady (Iowa, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) and states which are leaning more Democratic (New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, and North Carolina [even if I could see the Republicans take NC back in 2012]).
And I came upon this little interesting piece of information:
The fake cowboy thing worked for George W. Bush, so that going into each of his elections (2000 and ’04) he had the electoral votes of the second largest state in his bag. (Alas, Texas remained a Repub state in ’08, but ’12 is not such a sure thing.)
The Repub ticket in ’08 had the home state advantage in Arizona, with a lousy 10 EVs, and Alaska, with only 3. But without that home state advantage, AZ might well have gone Democratic this year along with its neighbors NV, NM, and CO. AK probably would have been fun to contest but disappointing in the end, a colder bleaker Montana.
So one way for the Repubs to pick up a batch of EVs would be to get a new, big-state-home-state advantage in ’12. But how the hell they gonna do that? Their bench is exceedingly weak in the big EV states. Usually Governors win the Presidency, and Democrats look likely to hold the Governor’s Mansions (and most of the Senate seats, for that matter) in NY, IL, PA, OH, NJ, MA, MO, CO, and NC, among others.
The Repub outlook for Cali is foggy at best. In FL they have a popular Gov who might appeal to a center-right electorate. But, well, what can I say but, ‘Congratulations’ on the forthcoming marriage, and ‘Good luck’ with the ultra-right base of the party — which has no interest in appealing to any part of the center. In TX, well, that doesn’t get them anything they didn’t get with the AZ-AK ticket.
So I only see them losing EVs in 2012. That is, unless this recession deepens into a depression and somehow people blame the Dems for not getting things turned around in time.
Now, 2016 is quite another story. If the economy and politics have normalize by then, the Midwest could be the traditional battleground again. And the Repubs might be then have elected a few decent Governors in the region. Then one of them at the top of the ticket might help regain EVs like OH, IN, WI, IA, or PA.
But to do that, the whole image and brand of the party will have to change by then. Well, it could happen. Eight years is a long time in politics. But they will need a long time to change their spots.
It’s far-fetched, but it might almost be easier for the Repubs to fade away into electoral insignificance than for them to change. Then the Democrats could split between center and left (the left having grown in a depression period), to become the two dominant parties, with the ultra-right Repubs withering away.
they could improve over McCain by 8% in every state, winning the national popular vote by 1%, but still lose to Obama by a percent in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Iowa, and thus lose the election. Obama won by double digits in every other blue state.
…and you really do downplay their success in the electoral college including some really lopsided totals. Since the civil war LBJ, FDR, and Barack Obama are the only three candidates to win more than 51% of the popular vote. This is important because the electoral college vote tends to exagerrate the popular margin of victory (unless the election is obscenely close). And excepting the two Bush victories Republicans have won by solid popular margins in all their victories in the last century.
While McCain was a stronger candidate than we give him credit for. This was a very bad year for any Republican to run in that the low water mark for the Republicans was only at just under 46% gives them considerable room for growth. Especially in an environment where every problem will stop being the Republicans fault and start being the Democrats fault.
Now what we don’t know is what the electoral environment is going to be. For example might a President Obama (rather than a Senator Obama) make a better play at low income blue collar Democrats who went to McCain. Or might say a collapse of the auto industry move states like Michigan sharply into the Republican column. And what effect will the Republican nominee have on individual states and different groups. For example if the Republicans were to nominate Jeb Bush would his Mexican-American wife and attractive children help him raise his share of the Latino vote to say 45% or even higher and what affect would that have on various states like Colorado and New Mexico?
Arizona will be tougher in 2012 for Republicans. And Virginia’s trend towards the Democrats makes it a candidate to stay in the Democratic column. But with a better Republican popular vote at the very least the very close states such as North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, and Florida start to flip. As you approach 50 Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa (with a non-ethanol bashing Republican at the top of the ticket), Pennsylvania, Michigan, and the upper midwest start being in play.
The good (and the bad) thing about a 2012 election is that it will be completely about how Obama is doing. If people like the job he’s doing. He’ll win. If not cross your fingers that the Republicans are able to channel their inner-John Kerry.
If Obama can’t get us out of Iraq/Afghanistan and the economy doesn’t settle down by 2012 watch out. There are two repugs of the rarest breed – actual ability to govern. Jeb Bush is loved in Fla (not so much Crist) and Jindal is making a name for himself in LA. Either one would be a national candidate and in the same incumbant scenario we won in you think they can’t pull out a win?