I liked this puzzler from user markhanna (slightly edited):
Can you cite an example from the past 20 years where a non-scandal plagued incumbent lost to a challenger in a Presidential year when the incumbent’s state voted for the same party he (or she) was from?
While I think Mark was limiting his inquiry to senators, let’s add governors to the mix as well to make it more interesting. A few folks have already taken a stab in the prior comment threads, but what have you got?
Fowler lost to Paul Coverdell as Clinton carried Georgia in 1992.
Cecil Underwood lost to Bob Wise as Bush carried WV.
Admittedly, I’m not an expert as to why incumbent Gov. Cecil Underwood (R) was defeated by Bob Wise (D), but some googling reveals no overt scandals. And of course, Bush carried WV by a little over 6% in 2000.
Still, WV remained heavily Democratic at the local level (and still remains so), so maybe that defeat isn’t too shocking.
The only other examples I can find requiring going back further than 20 years, to 1984 when Democrats took out GOP governors in Washington and North Dakota, despite the Reagan landslide.
Sen. John Ashcroft (R MO 2000)
Gov. Cecil Underwood (R WV 2000)
Sen. Larry Pressler (R SD 1996)
Sen. Wyche Fowler (D GA 1992)
Also three primary losers
Gov. Olene Walker (R UT 04)
Sen. Sheila Frahm (R KS 96)
Sen. Alan Dixon (D IL 92)
Other than the Dixon, Ashcroft and Pressler races, these are all explainable due to anomalies.
Underwood was the only Republican in a LONG time to hold that seat, and WV is overwhelmingly Democratic at the state level.
As discussed earlier, Clinton probably snuck Georgia’s electoral votes due to Perot’s appearance on the ballot. In a heads up race, Georgia probably goes to Bush and Fowler isn’t on this list.
Walker and Frahm were not elected to their seats and were defeated in primaries by popular, red meat Republicans.
Dixon lost in a three-way primary to Carol Moseby Braun after voting to confirm Clarence Thomas. Pressler was just not popular and lost a close race to Tim Johnson. And Ashcroft was too conservative for a swing state and narrowly lost reelection at the same time that the state narrowly went for Bush (he underperformed Bush by about five percent).
Remember, most governors are elected in off-year elections, so we are talking about a total population of about 190-200 elections that didn’t involve scandals. Remove the open seat races and the ones where a state is definitively blue or red, you may have a total population of about 50 or 60 possible elections.
In which case, it is important to be able to compare to the other type: opposite-party incumbents who lost. (Some of these may have been scandal-prone, I can’t be bothered going through them all).
Senators:
4 in 2008
0 in 2004
4 in 2000
0 in 1996
2/3 in 1992 (depending if you count an appointed incumbent)
Governors:
0 in 2008
1 in 2004
0 in 2000
0 in 1996
0 in 1992
Note that over this time period there would presumably be more same-party Senators and Governors in the first place, so the ratio would be relatively smaller. Nonetheless it appears there is a relationship between re-election chances and the winner of your state. But how much of this reflects genuine coattails (i.e. the Presidential candidate causes the downballot success) and how much simply reflects a tendency for voters in a state to support candidates of a given party?
Wasn’t that 2000, when Bush was beating Gore in AR?
Thanks David for front paging this.
My reason for posing this query was during a debate with user daman09 about the recent poll of the Tennessee Senate. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it had former governor Phil Bredesen leading Senator Bob Corker 46-41.
My take is that even if Bredesen got in the race, and even with these poll numbers, Corker would still be the favorite if you looked at this kind of situation historically.
So, above we’ve identified the scandal-free Senators that have lost when the presidential candidate of their own party was winning the state. Over the past 20 years, Wyche Fowler, John Ashcroft and Tim Johnson all lost their elections. The first two (in which Fowler was top-voter getter on election night but lost in the runoff and Ashcroft lost to a dead man) don’t count in my opinion because of the anamolies of the election. Tim Johnson counts, but it needs to be noted that a). he had already run as a state-wide federal candidate as South Dakota’s AL Rep and b). Clinton only lost to Dole by three points in South Dakota (and Dole did not get a majority of the vote).
If you’re looking at popular governors running against less popular Senators for the Senate in a presidential election year, only one example out of the past 20 years really applies: William Weld vs. John Kerry in 1996. And Weld lost that one pretty badly.
I think that is really the best comparison between the potential race between Bredesen and Corker. And that’s why if I were Bredesen I wouldn’t pull the trigger.
Roger Jepsen republican senator from Iowa loses to Tom Harkin in 1984
NH-Gov 2004. Not sure if he was scandal plagued or not though…pretty sure he wasn’t.
Weicker lost a close one to Lieberman in 1988. It just falls out of the 20 year time span but it’s scandal-free. Bush I carried CT by five points that year. Although, Lieberman ran to the right of Weicker and had I been in CT, I would have been a Bush-Lieberman CT voter.
and the amazing current Decemberists album which sounds like the band doing a remake of the Reckoning album.
as for these stats they are daunting. and clearly establish that bredesen would be an underdog.
but even recent history seems quaint and distant in this current environment. corker could face a tea partier in a primary. bredesen could find some issue that would fire people up. there could be a wave of revulsion from 2 crazy republican years in the house majority.
if bredesen runs a hell of a campaign, he could win – but, he’s definitely an underdog.