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

[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."

[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.

[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.