Who was the most "electable" candidate for both parties, by year?

[tpfkaw]

Including only those who won 2nd place or higher in a non-beauty contest primary or caucus before the winner secured a majority of delegates, or who received at least 10% of the delegate votes at the convention.

2012: R: ...Romney.  He had a real shot, and I honestly can't see that happening with Gingrich, Santorum, or, God love him, Paul.

2008: R: The Huck.  McCain and Giuliani (not eligible by my criteria anyway) did look better on paper, but as we all know were utter train wrecks who had campaigns run by morons.  Most importantly, Huckabee is so brilliant a politician that he doesn't even seem like a politician.  He can pull off aggressive populism, compassion, and an air of reasonableness all at the same time - much like Obama, in fact, but possibly more so.  He could not be put in a box as hard-right on economics since he governed to the center-left in Arkansas.  Most importantly, he was the only significant non-Paul member of that year's field from either party to oppose TARP, which would have given him a major edge relative to McCain heading into election day.

D: ...Obama.  Why?  Well, for one, he actually won, which is a plus.  Secondly, and this may be hard to remember since it was so long ago, but once upon a time 5-6 years ago Hillary Clinton was the incredibly unpopular left-wing harpy, she of HillaryCare and "vast right wing conspiracy" and Whitewater and cattle futures and bizarre suicides, etc. etc.  Polls had her competitive with or behind Giuliani and McCain in states like Connecticut, New Jersey, and Washington.  Her campaign was insisting in conference calls with reporters that they could get to 270 votes without Michigan (where they were behind by double digits in polls).  And the long, drawn-out primary was only making things worse, by the end of it she was doing about 10 points worse than Obama in general election polling (not that she ever did better than him).  Would blacks have turned out in wide numbers to support a candidate who described herself in a national interview as the only candidate for "hard-working white Americans," who spent about a two-week period referring to him only as "Barack Hussein Obama," whose husband claimed that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina too," who trotted out Geraldine Ferraro to claim that "he wouldn't be in this position if he wasn't a black man," whose supporters created the "Obama was born in Kenya" and "Obama is a Muslim" rumors (as well as some which didn't catch on, like "Obama did coke in the back of a limo with a rent boy")?  I think not.

2004: D: Wesley Clark.  Yes, he was a better candidate on paper than in real life.  But so was the rest of the field, and he was the best on paper.  He would also be far better insulated from the gay marriage backlash than Kerry (from Massachusetts) or Dean (signed nation's first civil unions law, from Vermont which is next to Massachusetts).

2000: D: Algore.  I'm super-cereal about this.

R: Cop-out, but difficult to tell.  Again, Bush won, albeit rather indecisively.  McCain ran a somewhat inept campaign that emphasized style over substance much more than Bush's, and, unlike Bush's act, he actually is something of a dim bulb by presidential candidate standards.  Then again, he wouldn't have had any eleventh-hour scandals.

1996: R: Buchanan.  Yes, Buchanan.  Buchanan may well have prevented Perot from running again (or peeled off nearly all of his right-leaning supporters, anyhow).  He knows how to give a humdinger of a speech and can outdebate just about anyone.  He would've likely received the Teamster endorsement and possibly other labor unions as well.  Yes, I'd agree that even factoring in the above factors he'd probably do worse than Dole.  But I can at least see a path to victory for him, which is more than I can say for Dole or Forbes.

1992: R: Buchanan.  See above.

1988: R: H.W.  Robertson and Dole were both gaffe machines and would've had a much harder time running on the Reagan legacy.
D: Algore.  A rather uninspiring group, so much so that Algore was probably indeed the best choice.

1984: D: Hart.  You can't really do worse than Mondale, can you?  That beef isn't served on Monkey Business is besides the point.

More to come later.

[tpfkaw]

I realized I forgot one!

1992: D: Clinton.  Again, I defer to my "the devil you know" bias, since he won (albeit by a lower-than-expected margin).  Tsongas looked like a better candidate on paper but I'm really uncertain if he was as skilled a politician as Slick Willie.  Moonbeam is just a bit too far out-there.

1980: D: Hmm...  Carter was in severe trouble, but he did manage to keep it close for a long time.  I suspect that Ted "Chappaquiddick" Kennedy would do even worse.  Perhaps if the Iran hostage rescue went differently things would be different.

R: Whew!  We have Reagan, H.W., John Anderson, Howard Baker, and John Connally to choose from.  What we can say for certain is that Reagan did win, and decisively, although the polls were close for most of the campaign.  I know it's an inaccurate cliche, but this might be one of the few elections where voters would actually prefer a candidate offering a stark contrast.  People were sick of Jimmy Carter by November 1980, but if they believed that the alternative was just more of the same, they might well have stuck by their incumbent.  More saliently, Reagan was probably among the most skilled politicians ever to have lived, and his opposition was not.  A common feature of losing Republican campaigns, especially when the candidate is from the moderate wing, is to create a succession of bizarre gimmicks, one after the other.  Think of the losing campaigns of 2012, 2008, 1996, 1992, 1976, 1960, and 1932-1948.  In each one, the GOP loser was unable to restrain himself from spending the entire election campaigning on oddball gimmicks that left voters confused at best.  I suspect that the moderates of 1980 would've had an especially hard time not coming up with gimmicks to respond to the gas crisis, Iran, the Olympic boycott, and inflation.

[tpfkaw]

Substitute Lamar Dole and Bush for Buchanan in 92 and 96 in the OP, I was drinking the Buchanan kool-aid a little too hard at that point in my life. 96 was probably winnable for a non-controversial GOPher if the Lewinsky scandal had broken during the election.

Edit: Realized Lamar breaks my rule in the OP.