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The History of Devisive and Decisive Primary Elections
There is a blog post called “Hysteria Aside, Hillary Clinton's Concession is Speedy by Historical Standards” by Joe Perez. It's a good read, but it doesn’t give a results oriented look at when opposition has called off their campaigns.
Let’s take a look at the primaries in recently that have been taken nearly to the Convention and their results.
88 Democrats
Michael Dukakis versus Jesse Jackson
Loss
84 Democrats
Walter Mondale versus Gary Hart
Loss
80 Democrats
Jimmy Carter versus Ted Kennedy
Loss
76 Republicans
Gerald Ford versus Ronald Reagan
Loss
72 Democrats
Hubert Humphry versus George McGovern versus George Wallace
Loss
Here's a blurb from Wikipedia in regards to that election:
In a separate note, 1968 was gearing up to be a convention battle when tragedy struck the Bobby Kennedy. The feel good atmosphere that a party usually wants to convey from a party convention was marred by the antiwar rally and police brutality outside the convention. Resulting in a Loss for the Democratic party.
Before 68 the systems for picking the President seemed more like a combination of primaries, and backroom deals. Candidates could be “drafted” to run as Adlai Stevenson hoped he would be in 1960. Not all states had primaries so the system was a bit more politician friendly.
Let’s look at this years Republican Fight.
Mitt Romney could have raced a while longer with McCain, and probably won some states but he dropped out to consolidate the party. Huckabee ran a campaign that was designed to give the "Conservative Base" a voice. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to win he ran his campaign in a fashion to be Pro-Conservatives but not Anti-McCain. He announced that he was staying on not to win but to give voice to those people. Then there’s Ron Paul who announced that he was running but hasn’t run much of a campaign. But his new book is selling like crazy.
If you look at all of the winners of the past several elections there was a sort of a clearing of the field and inevitability when it became clear who was going to win. The other candidates looked at their chances of winning and decided to help in the effort for their party to take the White House.
Let's look at the resent Presidential Winners:
George W Bush 2004 -- Ran Virtually Unopposed
George W Bush 2000 -- McCain Dropped out after he was beat in 11 out of 16 primaries.
Bill Clinton 1996 -- Virtually Unopposed
Bill Clinton 1992 -- Tsongas suspended his campaign calling Clinton the presumptive nominee and said Clinton was in the driver's seat. Interestingly enough Tsongas had a great showing three weeks later in New York and decided to remain out of the race. "To hope that I will re-enter is a false hope," he said. "I will not re-enter. Preserve the message, yes. But we must heal the party as well. Both are noble purposes and I hope to be part of bringing both into reality."
The only other Challenger to Clinton was Jerry Brown the Governor of California. When he saw the inevitable he pulled back. There was a California Primary that he surely could have won (Being that he was the popular, 2nd term Governor of the state), but he didn't campaign and didn't advertise so that Clinton could win in a landslide and have the "Fairy Tale" ending in his campaign. At that point Clinton hadn’t received the Magic Number of Delegates but mathematically he was going to victory.
George HW BUSH 1988 -- Ran against Pat Robertson and Bob Dole. Both dropped out Shortly after Super Tuesday.
Ronald Reagan 1984 -- Virtually Unopposed
Ronald Reagan 1980 -- George HW Bush dropped out of the race in May and became the Vice President.
Jimmy Carter 1976 -- Jerry Brown entered the race late and only garnered 10% of the delegates. George Wallace who that year wasn't a very serious contender didn't concede until June. But unlike the previous Conventions this one was about party unity.
In reality, the best case scenario for the Obama Campaign would have been for Hillary to put away the attack dogs (Bill and Geraldine) and turn off the Fire Hoses and step aside for the mathematically difficult to defeat Obama (racial implications intended) after her string of 11 loses. She could have run a Pro Hillary, Pro-Feminist campaign, raised awareness about the issue and been a beacon of hope to women everywhere. Obama would be in a cakewalk to the General Election by now and Hillary or Kathleen Sebelius or Claire McCaskill would have been perfectly set up to be Vice President and Certain Nominees for 2012 or 16.
There is a certain power of language with people. If you say the same thing enough times, people believe it. If you say that Obama has a problem with working class whites, enough times they start to believe it. If you say I won the popular vote enough times people believe it. It’s a variation of Munchausen Syndrome. There have been experiments where a person was repeatedly told they looked depressed by several different people. The person soon started to develop symptoms of actual depression.
I don’t think the main problem that people had with Hillary is that she kept running. It was that she decided to run a race that Was Anti-Obama instead of Pro-Hillary. Time after time after time, she continued to yell about the weaknesses of Obama instead of citing her own strengths. That’s where the main gripe about her campaign lies.
All in all, the polls indicate that Obama will have a difficult campaign for the Presidency, but these are the same polls that said Obama had an impossible campaign for the Democratic Nomination. We all know how that turned out.
Let’s take a look at the primaries in recently that have been taken nearly to the Convention and their results.
88 Democrats
Michael Dukakis versus Jesse Jackson
Loss
84 Democrats
Walter Mondale versus Gary Hart
Loss
80 Democrats
Jimmy Carter versus Ted Kennedy
Loss
76 Republicans
Gerald Ford versus Ronald Reagan
Loss
72 Democrats
Hubert Humphry versus George McGovern versus George Wallace
Loss
Here's a blurb from Wikipedia in regards to that election:
In the end, McGovern succeeded in winning the nomination by winning primaries through grass-roots support in spite of establishment opposition. McGovern had led a commission to redesign the Democratic nomination system after the messy and confused nomination struggle and convention of 1968. The fundamental principle of the McGovern Commission—that the Democratic primaries should determine the winner of the Democratic nomination—lasted throughout every subsequent nomination contest. However, the new rules angered many prominent Democrats whose influence was marginalized, and those politicians refused to support McGovern's campaign (some even supporting Nixon instead), leaving the McGovern campaign at a significant disadvantage in funding compared to Nixon.
In a separate note, 1968 was gearing up to be a convention battle when tragedy struck the Bobby Kennedy. The feel good atmosphere that a party usually wants to convey from a party convention was marred by the antiwar rally and police brutality outside the convention. Resulting in a Loss for the Democratic party.
Before 68 the systems for picking the President seemed more like a combination of primaries, and backroom deals. Candidates could be “drafted” to run as Adlai Stevenson hoped he would be in 1960. Not all states had primaries so the system was a bit more politician friendly.
Let’s look at this years Republican Fight.
Mitt Romney could have raced a while longer with McCain, and probably won some states but he dropped out to consolidate the party. Huckabee ran a campaign that was designed to give the "Conservative Base" a voice. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to win he ran his campaign in a fashion to be Pro-Conservatives but not Anti-McCain. He announced that he was staying on not to win but to give voice to those people. Then there’s Ron Paul who announced that he was running but hasn’t run much of a campaign. But his new book is selling like crazy.
If you look at all of the winners of the past several elections there was a sort of a clearing of the field and inevitability when it became clear who was going to win. The other candidates looked at their chances of winning and decided to help in the effort for their party to take the White House.
Let's look at the resent Presidential Winners:
George W Bush 2004 -- Ran Virtually Unopposed
George W Bush 2000 -- McCain Dropped out after he was beat in 11 out of 16 primaries.
Bill Clinton 1996 -- Virtually Unopposed
Bill Clinton 1992 -- Tsongas suspended his campaign calling Clinton the presumptive nominee and said Clinton was in the driver's seat. Interestingly enough Tsongas had a great showing three weeks later in New York and decided to remain out of the race. "To hope that I will re-enter is a false hope," he said. "I will not re-enter. Preserve the message, yes. But we must heal the party as well. Both are noble purposes and I hope to be part of bringing both into reality."
The only other Challenger to Clinton was Jerry Brown the Governor of California. When he saw the inevitable he pulled back. There was a California Primary that he surely could have won (Being that he was the popular, 2nd term Governor of the state), but he didn't campaign and didn't advertise so that Clinton could win in a landslide and have the "Fairy Tale" ending in his campaign. At that point Clinton hadn’t received the Magic Number of Delegates but mathematically he was going to victory.
George HW BUSH 1988 -- Ran against Pat Robertson and Bob Dole. Both dropped out Shortly after Super Tuesday.
Ronald Reagan 1984 -- Virtually Unopposed
Ronald Reagan 1980 -- George HW Bush dropped out of the race in May and became the Vice President.
Jimmy Carter 1976 -- Jerry Brown entered the race late and only garnered 10% of the delegates. George Wallace who that year wasn't a very serious contender didn't concede until June. But unlike the previous Conventions this one was about party unity.
In reality, the best case scenario for the Obama Campaign would have been for Hillary to put away the attack dogs (Bill and Geraldine) and turn off the Fire Hoses and step aside for the mathematically difficult to defeat Obama (racial implications intended) after her string of 11 loses. She could have run a Pro Hillary, Pro-Feminist campaign, raised awareness about the issue and been a beacon of hope to women everywhere. Obama would be in a cakewalk to the General Election by now and Hillary or Kathleen Sebelius or Claire McCaskill would have been perfectly set up to be Vice President and Certain Nominees for 2012 or 16.
There is a certain power of language with people. If you say the same thing enough times, people believe it. If you say that Obama has a problem with working class whites, enough times they start to believe it. If you say I won the popular vote enough times people believe it. It’s a variation of Munchausen Syndrome. There have been experiments where a person was repeatedly told they looked depressed by several different people. The person soon started to develop symptoms of actual depression.
I don’t think the main problem that people had with Hillary is that she kept running. It was that she decided to run a race that Was Anti-Obama instead of Pro-Hillary. Time after time after time, she continued to yell about the weaknesses of Obama instead of citing her own strengths. That’s where the main gripe about her campaign lies.
All in all, the polls indicate that Obama will have a difficult campaign for the Presidency, but these are the same polls that said Obama had an impossible campaign for the Democratic Nomination. We all know how that turned out.
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Marquis,
Thanks for this very informative historical review. It's wonderful to let a few facts creep into our discussions now and then.
Do you have an opinion of the extent to which Republican dominance in recent presidential lections traces to wrapping up their nominations earlier? At a glance, Republicans seem to have almost always settled things sooner and gotten behind the nominee. They've certainly won more often. I've tended to think their stomach-turning tactics are responsible for their victories. Now I wonder if earlier resolution of primary fights is more important.
As an aside, it's interesting that Harold Ickes was involved in Ted Kennedy's campaign against Jimmy Carter, which tried to get pledged delegates to the 1980 convention to abandon their commitments to the nominee. Ickes seemed to want to do it all over again this year with Hillary's campaign, perhaps making of John McCain a second coming of Ronald Reagan - a landslide winner thanks in part to Democratic disarray and hard feelings. Perhaps learning wasn't one of the benefits Ickes seeks from his vast experience.
Do you have a personal opinion about whether Hillary's concession, assuming she truly concedes tomorrow, will come in time?
This is asking a lot, but did you take a look at the grace or lack thereof in conceding the nomination each time around? Did that play a role in the wins and losses you listed, or was it all about the timing? Do you know if there's a precedent for an intense nonconcession speech followed the same week by a concession speech? If so, did the latter make an impression or was the damage done?
Thanks again very much for grounding our understanding of this election in recent historical fact.
June 6, 2008 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. Not only clinton's campaign was anti-Obama campaign, where he was presented as out of touch elitist, huge amount of money was spent in the time of economic hardship for many, but Obama had to repeat his stamp speeches over and over, creating an impression of empty rhetoric's. His public over-exposure was the biggest damage Clinton made.
June 6, 2008 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
What I keep noticing is that McCain would only get about 70% of the vote AFTER he clinched the nomination. The Paul people did not lie down and go away. St. Paul should be interesting.
June 6, 2008 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that Obama's strengths and McCain's weaknesses will synergisticly feed on eachothe and more than counter the damage that Clinton has done Obama.
June 7, 2008 1:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Speaking of divisive party politics, did anyone catch the new video on the RNC webpage, "Obama vs. the Democrats?" It stars, you guessed it, a current NY senator and former first lady:
http://rnc.org/
June 7, 2008 3:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good roundup. You left one out that I think is pertinent as well, however.
1992. George H.W. Bush, sitting president challenged by Pat Buchanan. Loss.
The best parallel to this election, I fear, is Ford-Reagan. I fear what kind of speech Sen. Clinton is going to give at the convention.
June 7, 2008 9:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
You show two kinds of data: 1. Close primaries where the party lost and 2. Lopsided primaries where the party won. What about 3. Lopsided primaries where the party lost (Dem 2004, 2000; Rep 1996, 1992).
The Totals, then, of our tiny accumulated data set:
1 (Close Primary, Party Lost): 5
2 (Lopsided Primary, Party Won): 4
3 (Lopsided Primary, Party Lost): 4
Pretty evenly spread. You might point out that there are very few elections in would-be category 4 (Close Primary, Party Won; Republicans in '68 fit the bill). You might try to argue that lopsided primaries are a necessary but insufficient condition for general election victory (in such an argument, a single exception throws everything into doubt).
And who among us thinks
1. The Democrats lost in '80 because of the intra-party competition and not the economy and the hostage crisis
2. Reagan's 1984 popularity helped him in the general but not the primary
4. That the Democrats had a chance (or reason) for fielding a challenger to Clinton in 1996.
Basically, this is all to say that it's unlikely that primary challenges cause general election difficulties for incumbents. It is more likely that vulnerable incumbents face stronger primary challenges. In other words, anticipated weakness in the general for incumbents causes strong primary competition, not the other way around. Conversely, anticipated incumbent strength likely discourages would-be challengers. Thus, incumbents' primaries should be removed from the data set. Now our data look like this
1 (Close Primary, Party Lost): 3
2 (Lopsided Primary, Party Won): 2
3 (Lopsided Primary, Party Lost): 3
Now it looks like parties incur a slight disadvantage by having lopsided primaries. Still, we might also remove primaries from years with incumbents in the general, but I think we're going to lose all of our data pretty soon.
In truth, in order to analyze thoroughly the relationship between primary competition and general election prospects, we would need a much larger data set. To do that, we would have to look at legislative election data, since there are simply too few presidential elections.
June 7, 2008 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love your analysis. Thank your for taking the time.
Couple things:
The 1968 Republican Primary wasn't close. Nixon mopped the floor with the competition with margins like 70% Nixon to 21% Reagan in Nebraska and Nixon winning 65% of the vote in Oregon Primary. The only major primary victory that someone other than Nixon claimed Reagan winning California because Reagan was the only one on the ballot. The delegate count for the election on the first ballot was:
Nixon
692
Rockafeller
277
Reagan
182
Reagan Technically won the popular vote because he ran unopposed in California. You can read more about that election on here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968
Secondly,
You're right there isn't enough data to conclude what were the determining factors for the losses. But looking at the history of the last 40 years of Presidential Elections (admittedly that only translates to 10 elections) no candidate has won an election after a bitterly fought primary. After a lopsided primary there is about a 50/50 split chance for victory. Add to that in the primaries you cited above, (Dem 2004, 2000; Rep 1996, 1992), they were facing opposition that also won lopsided primaries.
June 7, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the correction on the '68 election. I was indeed just looking at the popular vote totals.
I think the major problems with drawing conclusions about how the primary will affect the general are:
1. causal ordering (lopsided primaries improve general election chances or stronger general election candidates have less primary competition)
2. strategic necessity (see 2004, where electability concerns created immense pressure to have a nominee early)
3. differences in party rules (Republican majoritarian rules vs. Democratic proportionality) combined with Republican electoral advantages over the past three decades (which taken together make it look more like lopsided primaries correspond with general election victories. In other words, Republican rules amplify lopsided delegate victories and since Republicans have won seven of the past ten elections for reasons possibly unrelated to primaries, a relationship seems to emerge which may in face be spurious.)
As for whether the bitterness of a primary fight torpedoes the nominee's chances, we have to decide how to measure bitterness. Is it simply the closeness of the delegate count? The duration of the campaign? The closeness of the popular vote? Or does it have something to do with the content of the fight. Bush II won after a primary campaign that McCain supporters probably considered quite bitter. Bush I got pretty nasty about Reagan back in '80. Still the majoritarian rules of delegate allocation made for fairly brief nomination battles.
So, to put a fine point on it, what are the proposed causal mechanics here?
a) alienation of the primary loser's supporters?
b) negative campaigning as grist for the opposition party's mill?
c) delaying the general election campaign?
In all, I think this season is particularly favorable to our party. As such, I also think it has been a perfect time to have a real nomination battle that engaged literally all of the fifty states (and the territories), registered a flood of new voters, and captured the media spotlight for the past six months.
June 7, 2008 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink