GOP Nominee
Former Candidates
Part I can be found here.
Landslides as re-alignments
The easiest alignment theory to dispense with is the idea that we will know it has happened by its size. The gist of the theory as proposed by Bowers is that a 400+ electoral landslide would be a re-aligning election.
Of course, this would be noteworthy, given that the Democrats have only won more than 51% of the popular vote once since FDR passed from the scene. But this is almost an historical accident as much as anything: Clinton likely would have done this in 1992 but for Perot (who actually pulled slightly more from Clinton than Bush, according to exit polling) and certainly would have done so in 1996 when he *almost* won 400 electoral votes, and picked up states like Arizona that had not gone Democratic since 1948. But this victory was passing, not re-aligning.
In fact, history is replete with electoral landslides that no one seriously considers a re-alignment, and many of the elections that are thought to be re-alignments were actually quite close. Consider the chart below, which shows the percent of electoral votes won in Presidential elections where one party or the other won 75% or more of the electoral vote (which is the equivalent of the 400 electoral vote threshold set by Bowers):
| Year | Victorious party | % |
| 1804 | Democratic Republican | 92% |
| 1816 | Democratic Republican | 84% |
| 1820 | Democratic Republican | 99.5% |
| 1832 | Jacksonian Democrat | 77% |
| 1840 | Whig | 80% |
| 1852 | Democratic | 86% |
| 1864 | Republican | 91% |
| 1872 | Republican | 81% |
| 1912 | Democratic | 82% |
| 1920 | Republican | 76% |
| 1928 | Republican | 84% |
| 1932 | Democratic | 89% |
| 1936 | Democratic | 98.5% |
| 1940 | Democratic | 85% |
| 1944 | Democratic | 82% |
| 1952 | Republican | 83% |
| 1956 | Republican | 86% |
| 1964 | Democratic | 91% |
| 1972 | Republican | 96.6% |
| 1980 | Republican | 91% |
| 1984 | Republican | 97.6% |
As you can see, there have been several massive wins for one side or the other that no one seriously considers re-alignments: Ike’s two victories stand out in particular, though at the time one could have pointed to the GOP taking the House in 1946, making big gains in 1950, and then winning outright in 1952 as signs of a realignment that would never come to pass. The Whig’s big win in 1840 over Martin Van Buren did not portend a generation of Whig hegemony, nor did Millard Fillmore’s 1852 landslide foreshadow great things for the Democrats. There are also Nixon’s 1972 win and LBJ’s 1964 win, which were not re-alignments.
Indeed, landslide victories are often followed by the collapse of the winning party; such was the case for the Democrats in 1966, the Republicans in 1974, the Republicans in 1958, and the Republicans in the House in 1982 and in the Senate in 1986. And narrowing the threshold for a landslide to 65% of the electoral vote adds little clarity, as years like 1992 and 1996 find their way onto the list.
On the other hand, several of the supposed re-aligning elections have been quite close. Not listed on the table are the 1800, 1828, and 1860 elections (of those, only 1828 involved the victor receiving even 65% of the electoral vote). 1876, which Mayhew posits as the “critical” election, was one of the closest in history, and is absent. 1896 misses the list (though the Republican victories in the 1894 midterm still represent the largest pickup in U.S. history), while 1932 was clearly a landslide, but 1968 was extremely close.
Nor is the fact that Democrats won control of the Congress in the mid-terms of any great import. Consider that in 1890, Democrats took advantage of the inept Presidency of Benjamin Harrison to take a massive 238-86 advantage in the House of Representatives (about 75% of the seats). In 1892, Republicans bounced back somewhat, picking up 38 seats, largely as a result of reapportionment, but Grover Cleveland stormed back and won a resounding 62% of the electoral college. But this did not translate to a re-alignment; in 1894 Republicans picked up the most seats in US History (+130 seats), and in 1896 they maintained a large majority while electing William McKinley, and setting in motion a pro-Republican re-alignment (arguably).
In other words, sometimes landslide wins are considered re-alignments, and sometimes they are not. It is not consistent enough for us to read anything about this election based upon the size of Obama’s (or McCain’s) victory. Sometimes narrow elections are not re-alignments, and sometimes they are. When it comes to re-alignments, size doesn’t really matter.
July 21st, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I’ve never been much of a fan of the notion of an “electoral landslide”. One can win a lot of states by very little and have an EV landslide in an otherwise close race.
1912 comes to mind as an extreme example - Wilson getting 42% of the vote, but an electoral landslide.
So your ananlysis seems to be drowning in lots of irrelevant datapoints.
Would your results be different if you only considered popular-vote blowouts to be landslides?
A more general point - I think there are elections (like 1980) where we can look back and see that something fundamental changed, but we would also see that it wasnt until the landslide of ‘84 that the dynamic of ‘80 was made determinative. So which was the realigning election - the new pattern, or the confirmation of that pattern in a big way?
I dont suspect that this year will be a landslide - but it could be realigning like ‘80 - and that might be cemented in place by a landslide re-elect, like ‘84.
July 21st, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Can someone post this on the site?
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27630
July 21st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Hey, I didn’t operationalize the dataset, Bowers did.
But even using popular vote victories are problematic. For one thing, we don’t have thorough popular vote results until the 1830s, at which point two of the five supposed re-alignments had already occurred. Re-aligning years like 1896 were actually quite close, while landslide popular vote elections like 1924 and 1956 aren’t really thought of as re-aligning. I’m not sure what you’re proposing as a cutoff (since no one gets 75% of the popular vote), but there are plenty of 10-point victories that aren’t re-aligning (for example, absent Perot, Clinton might have won by 10 in 1996).
And I don’t think there was a re-alignment in 1980, for reasons that I hinted at yesterday.
July 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
One other thought — even using popular vote, Wilson won by about 15 points in 1912. It would show up in almost any definition of a popular vote landslide. The problem is that it is difficult to operationalize a landslide, so Bowers’ definition is as good as any.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:17 pm
My own cutoff for considering an election a landslide is more like >15 (if I am in a generous modd), or 20 if I am not. I.e. - FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan and thats about it. 3 out of those 4 seem to fit the model I laid out above of massive victories cementing in a fundamental shift that may have started in the previous election (36 confirming 32, 64 confirming 60, 84 for 80. Maybe Nixon 72 would have accomplished what Reagan ended up doing if his big victory hadnt blown up in his face within 2 years.
Whereas Wilson did win by almost landslide levels, in one sense, the fact is that he had two opponents of the same party, both former (or incumbent) presidents who had been allies. It would have been like Clinton running against George Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan. You could just as well make the case that the GOP won a 9 or 10 pt. victory but threw it away by dividing it between two candidates.
Ike in 56 did win by 15, barely a landslide, but perhaps this does point to some of the other factors, beside mere size of victory, that needs to be considered for a “realignment”. Ike won, both times, one could argue, because he was the great military leader of the biggest war in history. He actually defeated, in the primaries, Mr. Republican - ie the actual political leader of Republicanism. The GOP basically traded away their principles in order to win power by nominating Ike - who was pretty much what we would call a RINO these days.
So basically, I think you need to get well into the high 50s in order to claim a landslide. And a realignment, though it may be traced to a narrow victory, tends to be confirmed by a landslide. Or at least those realignments that are remembered by history as enduring realignments.
To that point - I’ll repeat the point that 68 could have been a real realignment - signalling the abandonment by the South of the Democrats - and it was confirmed big time in 72. But Nixon blew it with Watergate, and teh Dems were able to re-win the South with a conservative southern candidate who managed, looking back on it, to forestall the inevitable. So maybe 80 and 84 were the fruition of what was supposed to happen in 68 and 72.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Making it 15 points popular vote percentage, you get years like 1836 (VB+15), 1904 (TR+22), 1912 (Wilson+15), 1920 (H+25), 1924 (C+25), 1928 (H+17), 1956 (E+15), 1964 (LBJ+23), 1972 (N+24), and 1984 (R+18). And its a double-edged sword — you lose likely re-aligning elections like 1896/1900, 1860/64, and (probably) 1800. Nor does making it 20 points really help any. You still get false positives and false negatives, and more than a few of them.
You’d be quite alone in the literature suggesting that 1964 was a re-aligning year, given that the wheels pretty well fell off the Democratic bus shorly thereafter. Remember, a re-aligning election promises some long-term change in the citizenry’s voting behavior (in the favor of the party that wins). Same with 1972. Yes, 1972 *could* have been a re-aligning election but for Watergate, but that only means that even to the extent that a blow-out victory is necessary to declare re-alignment (it isn’t, see, e.g., 1896), it certainly isn’t sufficient, as Bowers implies. And you’re still left trying to explain years like 1904 and 1920.
I don’t think you can fairly write off Ike’s ‘56 victory as the work of a RINO and then in the same breath argue that ‘72 could have been a realigning win for Nixon but for Watergate. The Richard M. Nixon that gave us EPA, OSHA, Clean Water Act, opened China, jacked up Social Security benefits (and offered a guaranteed national income in exchange for Dems calling off the dogs on Watergate), etc., was not exactly Goldwater Part Deux. Don’t get me wrong — he wasn’t McGovern either, but still.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Tano, it’s good to see you here again. You’re the most polite liberal we’ve ever had.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
You beat me to it, Sean, I was going to point out that Harding’s margin in 1920 was the biggest ever (26+), and proved … not much.
If it proved anything, it was that Wilson was a fluke caused by (as Tano pointed out) the split in the Republican party, and that the realignment of 1896 was still operative.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
What is the basis for calling 1876 a realigning election? I appreciate the importance of 1876 as the end of reconstruction, but that was an effect of the deal that ended the election controversy, not of the election itself (if that’s not just nit-picking, but I don’t think it is).
July 21st, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Bob,
Read this. It’s been a while since I took Mayhew’s course, so I don’t recall all the details of the argument:
http://web.syr.edu/~mkharris/mayhew.html
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:12 am
Based on that paper, it does appear that the argument is based on the results of the post-election deal.
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:33 am
Hi Doug,
Thanks for the welcome back.
Sean - very interesting thread. Unfortunatly, I think I need to devote a tad more thought to the subject than what I have time for right now, but I will keep reading.
Just to clarify one thing though - when you speak of realignment, is it just party-based, or are you considering ideology as well? E.g. I’ll take your point that Nixon was more like Ike ideologically, and not really part of the Goldwater movement, but in terms of party coalition building - he seems to have put into place the very coalition that Reagan was able to put back together after the brief Carter incursion - white working class - “silent majority -> Reagan Democrats plus the flowering of the southern strategy.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:48 am
Tano,
That’s a very good question, and its a distinction that many have struggled with. The argument I’m giving is that political re-alignments follow ideological re-alignments, and that the political alignment we are currently in began showing up in the 1950s, and is the function of the ideological realignment we began seeing in the 1890s, and to a greater extent in the 1930s.
Remember, in 1956, had 7,500 voters in North Carolina changed their minds, Ike would have been the first Republican since Reconstruction to carry a majority of states in the South. Four years later, Nixon would come awfully close to tying Kennedy in Southern States carried (20K voters in TX, 5K voters in SC, and 30K voters in NC). This is while the Republicans were still fighting for the label of the Civil Rights Party. In other words, well before there was any “Southern Strategy,” the re-alignment in the South was well under way.
More on that today and tomorrow. These first two posts were really just warmups.