There is no historical record of the popular vote in our country’s first nine presidential elections. We only have that data beginning with the 1824 contest between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Since that time, there have been thirteen candidates who have received as much as 55 percent of the vote. That’s a pretty strong indication that this country has always been very politically divided. We’ve had a total of fifty-eight presidential elections. Of the forty-nine elections for which we have popular vote records, only four times have more than six in ten voters cast a ballot for the winning candidate.
Here are those elections:
1964: Lyndon Johnson, 61.05%
1936: Franklin Roosevelt, 60.80%
1972: Richard Nixon, 60.67%
1920: Warren Harding, 60.32%
Those were all landslide elections, but the list is slightly different if you look at the largest (by percentage win) Electoral College victories in history.
1936: Franklin Roosevelt, 98.49%
1984: Ronald Reagan, 97.58%
1972: Richard Nixon, 96.65%
1864: Abraham Lincoln, 90.99% (the South did not vote)
1980: Ronald Reagan, 90.89%
Ronald Reagan’s 18.21 percent popular vote victory in 1984 was the seventh biggest ever. In 1980, he won by 9.74 percent, which only comes in 21st-place. Obviously, the size of a popular vote victory is an imprecise predictor of the size of an Electoral College victory. But here’s one way of looking at the relationship between these two variables: of the 13 candidates who got at least 55 percent of the popular vote, the worst Electoral College performance came from Ulysses S. Grant who won 81.25 percent of the ballots during his 1872 reelection campaign.
The takeaway is that, if a candidate gets north of 55 percent of the vote, they are going to win a thumping Electoral College victory. Even cracking 53 percent is a good indication that the election will be decisive. In 2008, Barack Obama just missed that plateau at 52.93 percent. That was considered a big win, but it still left us with a pretty strong red/blue divide. It didn’t change the political landscape in the same way as the elections on the lists above.
Obviously, both Lincoln and Harding died in office, but both of their victories augured a new period of dominance for the Republican Party, just as FDR’s massive reelection did the same for the Democrats. LBJ and Nixon both game to grief during their terms, but the size of Nixon’s 1972 reelection would haunt Democrats for several generations and it foretold the coming of the Reagan Revolution.
Perhaps it’s most useful to look at what happens to the losing party when their presidential candidate gets destroyed by 55 percent or more of the vote. The record indicates that it forces some pretty significant changes in approach, although there can be a bit of lag time as old habits die hard.
I’ve heard many people say that our country is currently so divided that it’s inconceivable that any major party presidential candidate could get less than 45 percent of the vote in a one-on-one contest. I do not believe this.
A look at some early head-to-head polls indicates that we’re currently still in the narrow band, but there’s plenty of reason the believe that these margins could get worse for Trump rather than contract towards historic norms.
Democratic firm @ppppolls surveys early 2020 head-to-head contests:
Biden 53%, Trump 41%
Sanders 51%, Trump 41%
Harris 48%, Trump 41%
O’Rourke 47%, Trump 41%
Warren 48%, Trump 42%
Booker 47%, Trump 42%
Gillibrand 47%, Trump 42%**
Trump approval: 40/57https://t.co/bATutAFANR
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 22, 2019
To begin with, if Biden and Trump were to split the undecided vote, the former vice-president would already be ahead 56-44, which would place him between Andrew Jackson’s 1828 victory and Teddy Roosevelt’s decisive 1904 reelection. Regardless of which candidate Trump is judged against, he’s currently holding at 41-42 percent, but what if he loses a few points because of scandal or poor performance or some national or economic catastrophe?
I continue to believe that the Democrats have it in their grasp to break the red/blue divide and win a landslide election in 2020. I think this has to be the goal. Winning narrowly isn’t going to give them enough power to govern. For the GOP, losing narrowly isn’t going to create the needed impetus to change.
It’s too early to use poll numbers to judge which Democrat has the most potential to win the needed landslide, but the candidate with the broadest possible support will be a surer bet than the one with the most enthusiastic partisan support. There’s a big difference between winning with 53 percent and 55 or 60 percent.
Trump will do half the work for the Democrats simply by being the worst president in our nation’s history. The other half, though, is going to be up to Democratic primary voters. They need to think it terms of a candidate who can break out of our divisions and deliver a transformative and uniting hammer blow.
Looks like you published the previous post a second time, here BooMan.
I logged in to say the same thing.
I sure hope Nancy and the Dems stay firm – because what is at stake is the legislative process. If the Dems give in, we will never have any kind of normal give and take negotiation and compromise again. Preserving the democratic process is SO much more important than some number of billions for a wall. Hold the line Dems, stick to the “Reopen the govt. THEN we will talk”
Were dems to cave, and I don’t think they will — they really don’t any reason to with public opinion on their side, then federal workers will always be at risk of being pawns and have to be ready to not get paid again any time the baby Trump fills up his diaper with a load.
It’s not Nancy I’m worried about. It’s the representatives from red districts that might be fearful of Trump. Fortunately, kaiser donald is doing a great job of undermining his own credibility. Even the most vulnerable Democrats would have to be complete pussies to cave. But we’ve seen that so many times, it’s impossible to rule out. Glad we have Nancy Smash to hold ’em in line. If she can’t, no one can.
That doesn’t give me any confidence. Now even mainstream news is calling this the “Democrat’s shutdown”. They’ll geek. It’s their nature. They are only hard-nosed in opposition to real Leftists.
We heard you the first time.
I hope it doesn’t come down to an alleged choice between broad versus enthusiastic support. To have a wave election, we’ll need both.
I do think it possible. Given the nation’s desire for real change and for a candidate who speaks authentically and truthfully to power (as opposed to one who poll tests their convictions), I can see the possibility.
I’m skeptical that it’s Sanders or Biden. Could be Warren or Harris. Definitely don’t think it’s Booker or Gillibrand. O’Rourke is a definitely maybe. Many are trying to pain him as insincere. He needs to fight that and maintain his credibility within the party. I think he has a real chance at emerging as that transformational candidate. Perhaps someone else will emerge.
I believe any of the Democratic candidates will have a great shot at winning. The question is who could do it in an overwhelming manner.
Yes, having Trump in office being Trump is half the battle, which is also an argument for impeaching him and have the GOP senate not convict him, if for no other reason than to put his deeds in sharp crystal clear focus in front of the voters in an impeachment report and give them more reason to dislike him. And show voters that its not just Trump, its the republican party.
And if the dems can break out of their straight jackets of caution and put forth bold proposals that poll well across party lines, like medicare for all, for starters, instead of the incremental stuff some in leadership seem to love, then maybe they will overwhelm them at the polls with a blue tsunami, and leave the GOP standing like Johnson’s proverbial jackasses in a hailstorm.
If you could design a candidate who could ‘break out of our divisions and deliver a transformative and uniting hammer blow’ what would she or he look like?
At this point as long as she or he is not Trump, it ought to suffice. I think the results of the mid-term serve as a good example of how Americans are feeling about our current occupant of the office.
So contra Booman, you think that (almost) any Dem candidate has a chance of getting 55-60%, not just 53%?
I think any candidate can get 55, they just need to ensure third parties get effectively 1% total. None can get 60% without a far right third party challenger and no left wing third party challenger.
This is the least-convincing in a career of unconvincing comments, but I’m pretty sure I read that there’s no evidence that third parties cannibalize significantly from the major parties. At least if I’m remembering right, those fuckwits would switch to become non-voters, not major-party-voters.
But, um, I’m not exactly 100% sure I’m getting this right.
That’s absurd. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lost a ton of votes to third parties in 2016, and that’s likely because they thought Hillary would win — from both sides. Many on the right felt uncomfortable voting for Hillary but felt fine voting for McMullin/Johnson — had they known Trump would win, the calculus changes: do they hate Trump more than they fear Hillary? Evidence of shifts we see from 2018 suggests that many of these voters vote for Clinton. Or maybe not, maybe they would have had to see it first, and they’d vote for Trump anyway before being turned off two years later.
Point being, we see in 2018 that when there was virtually only 0-1% third party vote, Dems took 53 to R’s 45, and that 3/4 of third party voters who voted in 2016 went to Dems.
Yeah, I’m sure I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here somehow. I’ll see if I can’t dig up what I read.
Both did lose a ton. You know that Cheeto Mussolini + Johnson + McMuffin > Clinton + Stein, right? So we don’t really know if Clinton would have won if the only candidates on the ballot were HRC and Cheeto Mussolini. My guess is that the NeverTrump clowns would have sucked it up and voted for Trump. After all, look how most are treating him now that he won. 2018 only tells us about mid-terms. It tells us nothing about 3rd party support in 2020. All sorts of parties and candidates usually try to get on the presidential ballot.
You basically repeated what I said, but I’ll quibble here:
Yes, presidential candidates will try to be on the ballot, that’s why I said if their support can be kept low, and/or if portions of the far right can be pushed to vote for a RW third party instead, it’ll be to Dems’ advantage and be the only way they can secure 55-60. 2018 had presidential level turnout with both sides turning out huge numbers. If R’s are splintered and D’s unified, 55 is achievable. I don’t think 60 is possible without economic collapse and Mueller having the goods (both possible I guess). Only way for mass margins is to push R’s down.
. . . Clinton-Bush-Perot 3-way contest (as I’ve noted here before, the exit polls asking Perot voters’ second choice showed Perot drew about equally from both Clinton and Bush, and so didn’t tip the outcome either way — contrary to the oft-spouted conventional wisdom that he threw it to Clinton, which the WtUCM* started spouting within days of the election, despite the only relevant evidence showing the contrary).
Whether there’s evidence of that being true more generally I don’t know. (Seems likely to me that Nader may have thrown it to SCOTUS for them to then install dubya via judicial coup. But I don’t have or know of evidence to support that, beyond just the closeness of the results.)
(Seems likely to me that Nader may have thrown it to SCOTUS for them to then install dubya via judicial coup. But I don’t have or know of evidence to support that, beyond just the closeness of the results.)
Why not lay blame where it really belongs? On Gore/Droopy Dog, Jeb!, and the idiots in Florida who can’t design ballots for shit.
. . . always “really belongs” on a buncha things, any one or some combination of which could have tipped the outcome the other way, including those you mention (though Gore himself sits at/near the bottom of that list imo). But the Banana Republican SCOTUS majority was ultimately decisive.
Nader’s vote in FL was the decisive difference even despite Jeb’s and Katherine Harris’ rat f*cking of the election. Without him on the ballot, FL would have clearly gone to Gore.
. . . underlying that conclusion, i.e., that most/all Nader votes would have gone to Gore, few/none to dubya, in order to swamp the effects of all the other incompetence and ratfucking that stole votes from Gore? Are there data (such as those exit-poll second choices I noted above, but specific to FL) that validate that assumption?
[curious hizownself, he checks, finds this; in a nutshell, method looks at other races on ~3M actual FL 2000 ballots (i.e., essentially all ballots from 10 counties) to model “partisanship” and infer from it Nader & Buchanan voters’ second choices between Gore and dubya; the nut:]
So I wouldn’t state it as definitively as you did (obvious limitations of the methodology preclude such definitiveness, in my judgment), but would call that quite strong evidence in support of your conclusion.
Even Hillary?
Didn’t mean to imply any Dem could win in a landslide. Only win. I don’t see us breaking the stranglehold the Right has on this country’s power base. What matters is we get a Dem in the WH and repair the damage.
We know the answer already.
Fair enough. The white working class is huge, and with those numbers comes electoral influence. But I’m not sure how we increase our appeal there without alienating or betraying other members of the coalition. Just via the pure charisma of the nominee?
I know Booman thinks we can peel off a few percent with the right message–anti-monopoly, mostly–but I think he’s underestimating the tribalism.
Charisma means a lot. People discount it at their peril.
I think he has a chance. The real question is will the D electorate give him a chance to tact left on coal.
Sherrod Brown. But I don’t want that because then the senate seat is lost.
. . . describing him being interviewed on the teevee talking about “working people” and “progressives” as if those are separate, non-overlapping groups.
Didn’t see, haven’t verified, but if that description’s accurate, it was really, really bad and dumb of him.
He’s also advocating for allowing cops and firefighters to buy into Medicare, don’t know why or what that’s about.
But the question is who would romp Trump and run up the margins the highest. And it’s without a doubt Sherrod Brown.
. . . “without a doubt” for the time being. It’s too early for that imo.
I have had the privilege to meet and talk with Sherrod many times. He has spoken at our County Party’s Spring Dinner, he has popped in unexpectedly at our County Dem office when he has been passing through the area, I have watched him stand on a chair in a local Chinese restaurant to make an impromptu address to an overflow crowd of people, I have watched him at local union picnics and activities, and I have worked with his office on a couple of fundraising activities.
Unless one actually witnesses firsthand how Sherrod connects with people on the ground, it is hard to convey his true abilities. I have quibbles with some of his points of view on certain policies, but there is no one in the Democratic field who could take on Trump in the way that Sherrod Brown could. Sure, I’m probably a little biased, but I think the man is singularly capable of turning Donald Trump inside out. I would love to see him throw his hat into the ring.
Just caught his act via: https://crooksandliars.com/2019/01/mika-blames-dems-not-using-their-magic
I see what you folks mean. Impressive.
If Sherrod Brown did run, I think he would win and win big in which case Mike DeWine would still appoint a Republican replacement but most likely we would still have a solidly Democratic Senate. Still, I agree that he should probably stay in the Senate just to be sure.
We are unlikely to get a solidly Democratic Senate. Boo’s 56-41 win would only give us a 52-48 Senate if states just voted their lean. The critical Senator would be King-ME by Trump score unless a more conservative Dem got elected. If we lose another the critical vote becomes Sinema and while I’m delighted she won, she’s cast a number of problematic votes.
with a VP from the midwest. That person can be a Senator
Right now the ideal ticket would either be Inslee/Klobuchar, Bullock/Klobuchar, or Hickenlooper/Klobuchar
I pretty much think Klobuchar is the ideal VP candidate if there is not a woman at the top of the ticket and since no woman governor is running (I strongly believe we need a governor at the top of the ticket rather than a Senator) that leaves those 3 male governors.
As for why Klobuchar is an ideal VP candidate – she personifies competency and calm – something I think people will be looking for after 4 years of Trump.
. . . our purple-leaning-red politics, he’s about as lefty a conservadem as we can hope for winning statewide election here, but I certainly want more from a prez candidate. And as for “charisma” discussed here, would be amazed to find anyone who perceives Bullock oozing it. He’s fine for here, but it would be seriously disappointing to have to conclude he’s the best we could do for a Dem preznitial standard-bearer. Don’t buy that Dem candidate’s gotta be governator either.
You need the South for a landslide. And the South, for now, is firmly in Conservative hands, cheering on the current Dictator-In_Waiting.
According to him, all he has to do is unilaterally declare a “National Emergency” and then rule like Louis IV, the Sun-King. And Congress and the media agrees with him! So what’s the point of elections?
Virginia is already a blue state, plus there’s North Carolina and Georgia on the swing side.
Of course Missouri is lost for a generation if not more.
If the donald takes peoples land for his wall that’s never built….they will stay home. I await Ross and Kudlow in the house oversight comm. When they see what idiots are leading trade talks…they will stay home. The donald running for a second term is going to have to explain why there are silos full of rotting soy beans. That is a skill set the donald or the GOP senators (ones that vote with the donald on thursday) will possess.
Will not possess…oops
Louis the “Sun King” was XIV not IV. Louis the IV (the One from Overseas) ruled from 936 – 954.
As for the South, I think the mid-terms showed two things: a) massive voter suppression is essential for the GOP to win and b) Democrats seriously eroded the GOP massive resistance to change in FL, GA and TX, the largest of the southern states. VA is already a mostly blue state, especially in any statewide election.
I agree that, for the Democrats to get 55%+ majority, Democrats need to a) prepare right now through updated voter registrations and lawsuits to overcome voter suppression, b) bring out many more new voters, especially Millennials and Gen Z voters, and c) co-opt or otherwise defang third parties to the left of the Democrats.
Unfortunately polarization is so strong now that even 56-44, a pretty whomping win by historical standards, won’t erase the divide. If you apply that D+6 shift to the Cook partisan lean by state you get an electoral win only slightly better than Obama’s 2008 win, losing IN and gaining AZ and GA. We need to get a win of 58-42 or better to start flipping states like TX, SC, AK, MS, and MO that would really signal that the red side is losing in a way that won’t just flip back at the next election.
I’ll take 56-44 because that will probably give us the trifecta but it’s not enough to end the red-blue divide.
For another indicator of how polarized we’ve become we’d need to win 70-30 – far and away the biggest win ever – to roughly match Reagan’s 1984 electoral win.
Percentage of the vote is not the measure of a landslide. Turnout is.
Booman wants Democrats to focus on winning back rural white voters, possibly with someone centrist and non-threatening like Biden. But the Democratic success in 2018 involved bringing in millions of people who typically feel disenfrachised and that involves a completely different strategy. It involves a candidate who inspires and engages people.
Democrats won only 53% of the vote in the Blue Wave last November. They gained 41 seats seats in the House and 7 governorships including Kansas. It was a wave because Democrats won 25 million more votes than they did in 2014 – a 70% increase. Republicans also brought in millions of voters who sat out 2014, but the difference (25 million more votes for Democrats compare to 10 million more votes for Republicans) was huge.
Obama’s win in 2008, was another landslide that brought in 8 new Democratic Senators and 21 new House seats. He also only got 53% of the vote, but brought in millions of new voters.
I’ll happily take numbers like those in 2020.
I’ll say it again. Biden is only ahead right now because of name recognition and the fact that he isn’t actually running yet. His numbers will drop the day he enters the race.
Likewise, O’Rourke, Harris, Gillibrand and Booker are familiar faces, but not actually well known yet. If they do well in the primaries, their numbers will automatically go up.
Whoever wins the Democratic primary will go against Trump with good odds of winning, but I wouldn’t put my money on Biden to be the best bet for a landslide.
Am I wrong to worry that US is not ready yet for a woman president?
Are Senators and it is notoriously difficult to go from senator to president. President Obama is the exception to that but President Obama was also a once in a generation political talent, especially in campaign mode. None of the Senators running are that talent.
60 seats in the Senate will give Democrats the power to govern. Nothing less.
“It’s too early to use poll numbers to judge which Democrat has the most potential to win the needed landslide, but the candidate with the broadest possible support will be a surer bet than the one with the most enthusiastic partisan support.”
At first glance this looks like a no-brainer, but it may not be quite so simple in practice. I agree that a candidate who can create a landslide is necessary, but it looks like there will be a lot of candidates and very likely many of them will poll extremely well against Trump.
If that is so, then there might not be very much difference, in sheer numbers, between the one with “broadest possible support” and the one with “most enthusiastic partisan support.”
Besides, what does “enthusiastic partisan support” mean in a Democratic Party that may be getting more populist but in which establishment hacks still retain a lot of power?
In other words, if there are several candidates tht poll very well against Trump, then we need to evaluate them in terms of who we truly believe will be best for the country, not who is most likely to win. If there are quite a few who would slaughter Trump, we should not automatically that the one who could win with 60 percent is better than the one who could win with 59 or 58 percent.
We need a very strong win, yes, but we also need the candidate that is best able to tackle our VERY serious problems. That person may not exactly coincide with “broadest POSSIBLE support” or : most enthusiastic partisan support (whatever that means) — or might combine both.
Left out a word: “we should not automatically ASSUME” …
. . . gaming out electoral scenarios is that we can never know in advance — we’re limited to, at best, somewhat-informed guesses — who “the one who could win with 60 percent” and “the one who could win with 59 or 58 percent” (or even with 55%), even is. So if my best guess had more than one candidate in that range of possibilities, I can hardly imagine picking the one I thought less of as a potential prez based on such an extremely tenuous proposition that s/he would win the general by such a small additional margin. If somebody could somehow guarantee me that, then sure, I’d at least consider voting according to such reasoning. But of course, such a guarantee (that isn’t fraudulent!) is impossible.
I mean, just look at how some Bernie supporters (I was one!) still declare as fact (I’m not one of these!) that he’d have won the nomination absent the improper (it was!) DNC thumb on the scale; AND would have then beaten Trump in the general. Unknowable unknowns, like which primary candidates “will” get 55 vs. 57 vs. 60% in general if nominated.