The general election
Tue Apr 29, 2008 at 10:13:55 AM PDT
There has been a lot of handwring recently about the Democrats' chances in the geheral election.
Most of it is nonsense.
- Obama has been neck-and-neck with McCain in the polls -- sometimes a little ahead, sometimes a little behind, never significantly different -- especially for this long before November.
- clearly, some of "McCain's" vote in the polls has been Clinton supporters who want Obama to look less electable. (Probably something similar is going on WRT McCain/Clinton results.)
- Obama is a great closer. Look at the prim ary results contrasted to the poll results far out in states where that is avainalble. And he didn't campaign at all in MI and FL. That won't be the case in the general.
- And most important, history favors a change of party when the incumbent president is not running. Details after the jump.
More than 2/3 of the elections in the last century had an incumbent president running.
Starting from 1900 -- longer than the century -- with an incumbent were:
["IW" = Incumbent wins; "IL" = incumbent loses; italics for Democratic incumbents.]
1900 IW
1904 IW
1912 IL
1916 IW
1924 IW
1932 IL
1936 IW
1948 IW
1944 IW
1948 IW
1956 IW
1964 IW
1972 IW
1976 IL
1980 IL
1984 IW
1992 IL
1996 IW
2004 IW
That's just to eliminate all but the eight elections in which no incumbent ran.
I'm going to compare each of them to the preceding election.
In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt, highly popular incumbent, got
7.6 (million popular votes)/ 5.1 (million popular votes for his opponent)
and
336 (electoral votes)/ 140 (for his opponent)
in 1908 Taft got
7.7/6.4
and
321/162
Taft got a little more votes, but the Democrat got a lot more votes.
========
In 1916 Wilson got
9.1/8.5
and
277/254
In 1920 the Democrat got
9.1/16.1
and
127/404
The Democrats stayed essentially even, and the Republicans almost doubled their votes.
========
In 1924, Coolidge got
15.7/8.4
and
382/136
in 1928, Hoover got
21.4/15.0
and
444/87
This is the only case of a successor getting better than the pedecessor. Hoover was vastly popular, and the country was in the midst of a great boom -- for which the Rpublicans took all the credit.
========
In 1948, Truman got
24.1/22.0
and
104/189
in 1952, Stevenson got
17.3/33.9
and
89/442
Eisenhower was vastly popular, and the rule that "nothing fails like successors" can't be blamed for all this change.
========
In 1956 Ike got
355.5/26.0
and
457/73
In 1960 Nixon got
34.1/34.2
and
219/303
This was a close one, but the drop from the previous election is straightforward.
========
In 1964, Johnson got
43.1/27.2
and
486/52
In 1968, the Democrat got
31.3/31.7
and
191/301
Again, there were other influences, a divided party and an unpopular war.
========
In 1984, Reagan got
54.2/37.5
and
525/13
In 1988, Bush Sr. got
48.6/41.7
and 426/111
========
In 1996, Bill Clinton got
47.4/39.2
and
379/159
In 1996, Gore got
51.0/50.5
and
266/271
This is the most recent election which didn't feature an incumbent. Gore was notoriously happily-and-faithfully married, but Clinton's straying from the bridal path probaly influenced the vote.
=================================================
There you see it. In six of the eight elections in which an incumbent did not run in the 20th century, the White House changed hands. In seven, the incumbent's party lost a significant share of the vote from the preceding election. The less popular the incumbent, the worse the drop from teh preceding vote.
So, how do you rank McCain's chances now?
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