A divisive primary isn’t going to cost GOP the White House.

[Senator Cris]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/20/fear-not-republicans-a-divisive-primary-isnt-going-to-cost-you-the-white-house/

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Interesting.

[Mehmentum]

A sample size of 8 isn't very impressive, why didn't they go back further?  It would be easy.

[Mr. Morden]

Most of the campaign takes place many months before any of the votes have been cast.  There's plenty of "divisive" campaigning taking place right now, more than five months before Iowa.  I'm not sure how you can capture the nature of the pre-primary campaign with a metric like "Percentage of the primary vote won by the winner."

[Mehmentum]

So I actually did this myself in excel. (going back to '76 for the GOP and '72 for the Dems)  

[Blair]

It's more depending on how divisive the primary is-Clinton v Obama in 2008 was pretty close and extremely aggressive but the Clinton's pulled out and gave pretty much full support-compare that to Ted Kennedy in 1980 who left Carter running around stage

[muon2]

The analysis I've seen looks at divisive primaries in relation to the party with the White House. The conclusion is that divisive primaries have minimal effect on the challenging party. They do have an effect of the party defending the Presidency. In the period from 1864 to the present a presence or lack of a contested nomination in the incumbent party has forecast the outcome over 90% of the time.

[Mr. Morden]

The analysis I've seen looks at divisive primaries in relation to the party with the White House. The conclusion is that divisive primaries have minimal effect on the challenging party. They do have an effect of the party defending the Presidency. In the period from 1864 to the present a presence or lack of a contested nomination in the incumbent party has forecast the outcome over 90% of the time.

That makes sense when the incumbent president himself is running, but when the incumbent president isn't running, isn't there always a contested nomination battle in both parties?  I mean, even in 2000, Gore didn't run for the nomination unopposed.

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

The analysis I've seen looks at divisive primaries in relation to the party with the White House. The conclusion is that divisive primaries have minimal effect on the challenging party. They do have an effect of the party defending the Presidency. In the period from 1864 to the present a presence or lack of a contested nomination in the incumbent party has forecast the outcome over 90% of the time.

Lichtman's Keys, huh? Let's look at the times the Democrats have the lost White House to the Republicans...

2000*
1980
1968
1952
1920
1896
1884*
1860

*-The Democrat won the popular vote. I don't think Cleveland had a serious challenger. Gore did have Bill Bradley, but that didn't last very long. The Democrats had divisive primaries in the remaining races.

It doesn't seem to be as good a predictor for the Republicans, but as they're not the incumbent party, it's not really relevant.

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

The analysis I've seen looks at divisive primaries in relation to the party with the White House. The conclusion is that divisive primaries have minimal effect on the challenging party. They do have an effect of the party defending the Presidency. In the period from 1864 to the present a presence or lack of a contested nomination in the incumbent party has forecast the outcome over 90% of the time.

That makes sense when the incumbent president himself is running, but when the incumbent president isn't running, isn't there always a contested nomination battle in both parties?  I mean, even in 2000, Gore didn't run for the nomination unopposed.

Just cause there's a contest doesn't mean it's a divisive one. Gore made pretty quick work of Bill Bradley, and the elder Bush did the same with Bob Dole. Hell, even McCain had a relatively easy time once the balloting actually started. Nixon in 1960 also did not have a contest as Rockefeller and Goldwater both declined to run.

[Mr. Morden]

The analysis I've seen looks at divisive primaries in relation to the party with the White House. The conclusion is that divisive primaries have minimal effect on the challenging party. They do have an effect of the party defending the Presidency. In the period from 1864 to the present a presence or lack of a contested nomination in the incumbent party has forecast the outcome over 90% of the time.

That makes sense when the incumbent president himself is running, but when the incumbent president isn't running, isn't there always a contested nomination battle in both parties?  I mean, even in 2000, Gore didn't run for the nomination unopposed.

Just cause there's a contest doesn't mean it's a divisive one. Gore made pretty quick work of Bill Bradley, and the elder Bush did the same with Bob Dole. Hell, even McCain had a relatively easy time once the balloting actually started.

By that standard, every Republican contest in the post-reform era except 1976 was quick and bloodless.  Sure, things can get resolved pretty quickly once the voting starts.  But so what?  I think it's a bit of a reach to try to draw grand conclusions when lumping together elections from pre- and post-McGovern/Fraser reforms, incumbent presidents running vs. their successors running, etc.  There are only so many presidential election to choose from, and lumping these things together in this convoluted way, including making arbitrary decisions about what counts as "divisive", seems like a reach.

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

The analysis I've seen looks at divisive primaries in relation to the party with the White House. The conclusion is that divisive primaries have minimal effect on the challenging party. They do have an effect of the party defending the Presidency. In the period from 1864 to the present a presence or lack of a contested nomination in the incumbent party has forecast the outcome over 90% of the time.

That makes sense when the incumbent president himself is running, but when the incumbent president isn't running, isn't there always a contested nomination battle in both parties?  I mean, even in 2000, Gore didn't run for the nomination unopposed.

Just cause there's a contest doesn't mean it's a divisive one. Gore made pretty quick work of Bill Bradley, and the elder Bush did the same with Bob Dole. Hell, even McCain had a relatively easy time once the balloting actually started.

By that standard, every Republican contest in the post-reform era except 1976 was quick and bloodless.  Sure, things can get resolved pretty quickly once the voting starts.  But so what?  I think it's a bit of a reach to try to draw grand conclusions when lumping together elections from pre- and post-McGovern/Fraser reforms, incumbent presidents running vs. their successors running, etc.  There are only so many presidential election to choose from, and lumping these things together in this convoluted way, including making arbitrary decisions about what counts as "divisive", seems like a reach.

Like I said, it doesn't predict things as well when Republicans are the incumbents, but it seems to be pretty solid when Democrats are, as they are now. 2000's the only election since 1884 that Democrats lost (as the incumbents) when their nominee had a bloodless path to the nomination, but Gore did win the popular vote.

[Kingpoleon]

Usually, in a rough primary, the serious candidate closest to the other side wins.

See: Carter 1976/1980, Ford 1976, Clinton 1992, Kerry 2004, McCain 2008, Romney 2012.

In 1992, Tsongas was more centrist on economics than Clinton, but socially to his left. The only time the non-closest since primaries began has won were: Reagan 1980(debatatable), Goldwater 1964, Dukakis 1988, and, possibly, Obama 2008.

As you can see, Webb/Kasich would be the most likely to win if they manage to gain ground in early states. Otherwise, they are comparable to Huntsman or Edwards.

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

The problem is not a "divisive" primary for the GOP; it's a primary process that sticks its candidates with issue positions that are untenable in General Elections.

The NATURE of the GOP primaries in 2012 is what locked Romney into a course of action where he couldn't unbox himself from a narrative that wasn't working, and run on his record in Massachusetts, which would have been more attractive to voters than what he did emphasize.

[Likely Voter]

Fuzzy is right, plus there is the whole issue of the cost of long drawn out primaries. When one side has a much longer primary they end up with a cash disadvantage. Again we saw that with Romney in the summer of 2012 when his campaign struggled to combat the anti-Romney narrative in the Obama ad onslaught which many saw as Obama successfully defining Romney as an out of touch fat cat.

This is the main reason the GOP moved their convention to an earlier date, in order to allow the candidate to spend general election money.