We have records of the popular vote in our presidential elections going back to 1824. In all that time, there have been only 11 presidents who were elected to a second (consecutive) term. With the exception of the first, Andrew Jackson, every president who has been reelected has received a higher percentage of the popular vote the second time around. Here’s the list, with their percentage improvement:
Andrew Jackson: -1.2%
Abraham Lincoln: +15.5%
Ulysses Grant: +2.9%
William McKinley: +0.5%
Woodrow Wilson: +7.4%
Franklin Roosevelt: +3.4% (-6.1%, -1.4%)
Dwight Eisenhower: +2.2%
Richard Nixon: +17.4%
Ronald Reagan: +8.0%
Bill Clinton: +7.4%
George W. Bush: +2.8%
Grover Cleveland also won a second term, but it was non-consecutive and does not concern us here. We can look at the individual circumstances of each of these elections and find reasons why the popular vote percentage increased. Reagan and Clinton faced fairly strong third-party challengers in their first election, for example, which kept their numbers down. Lincoln’s reelection took place during the Civil War. But the point remains that presidents tend to have two fates: they are rejected, or they win reelection by a larger margin. We have to go back to the election of 1832 to find a counterexample. So, why do so many people assume that Obama will win reelection, but by a narrower margin?
No doubt, people are relying on some data. Polling numbers, mainly. But polls this far out are fairly meaningless, and Obama has a comfortable lead in almost all of them. I’ve been reading articles about the Indiana Senate race between Richard Lugar and Richard Mourdock, and I consistently see it predicted that Obama will not win in Indiana this time around. I sometimes hear the same thing said about North Carolina and Virginia. But, here’s my guess, based on history. If Obama loses in Indiana or North Carolina or Virginia, it means he has lost the election. But, if he wins reelection, he will win all three of those states and some new states that he lost four years ago. What states might those be? Arizona and Missouri are possibilities. Georgia and Montana and the Dakotas are not out of the question. It might surprise you, but even South Carolina isn’t out of the question.
For all the Republicans’ efforts, President Obama is nowhere near as polarizing as George W. Bush or Bill Clinton (post-Lewinsky) turned out to be. And the GOP has completely left the mainstream of American politics. I think that Dick Lugar is going to lose his primary next Tuesday. Do you know what that means?
“If Dick Lugar,” said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, “having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”
Last time around, the GOP lost the support of Chuck Hagel and Colin Powell. Now, perhaps it will be Dick Lugar, John Danforth, and Olympia Snowe. Maybe even Lisa Murkowski. After all, she was booed this weekend at the Alaska GOP Convention, and the Paulistas took over control of the state party:
FAIRBANKS — Ron Paul might have finished a distant third in Alaska’s Republican presidential primary race, but the Texas congressman and his supporters won big at the Republican state convention this weekend.
In a tense and at times openly confrontational convention, Paul’s supporters came out in force to express their distaste with what they call “establishment Republicans” and successfully took control of much of the party.
The biggest victory the Paul supporters took home this weekend was the chairmanship of the Alaska GOP. Russ Millette, a Paul supporter, was elected to replace retiring party Chairman Randy Ruedrich at the state GOP convention in Anchorage.
These are the types of events that cause people to switch long-standing allegiances. For some, it happened when they impeached Clinton, or when they stole the 2000 election or when they invaded Iraq or after Abu Ghraib or when they sent John Bolton to the United Nations or when they intervened in the Terri Schiavo case or when they let New Orleans drown. I know people who switched in each and every one of those cases. I’m sure there are some who finally made the jump after the debt ceiling fiasco. There are limits for almost everyone. The truth is that the GOP isn’t just ceding the center-right to the Democrats. They’re force-feeding the center-right to us. And the election results should reflect that.