How did Gore not win comfortably?

[Keystone Phil]

Please try your best not to turn this into "He did win!" and that type of nonsense.


I'm in the middle of watching this movie Recount and it brings me back to the days of the 2000 campaign. Now I don't really remember the campaign itself all that well. I remember major events (the debate, Election night, parts of each convention, etc.) but I was just getting interested in politics back then so I obviously don't remember it as well as I remember 2004 or 2008.

We know that Gore didn't utilize Clinton, fearing that it would hurt him with too many voters. However, when you look back on it, Clinton had an approval rating at the time in the mid 50s and even low 60s!

Bush campaigning in restoring honor and dignity to the White House was great but why did that resonate as much as it did? The public clearly didn't care about Clinton's ethical issues all that much. Was Gore's campaign really that inept? The economy was in good shape, the country wasn't at war and the departing President was clearly popular. Even if the campaign didn't use Clinton enough and even though Gore was one of the worst personalities to run for the Presidency in modern times, shouldn't Gore have had a comfortable victory just based on the mood of the country?

[Keystone Phil]

well he did win. 

i think the reason he didnt win comfortably was because of his personality.  he comes across as an abrasive know-it-all.

true, clinton had high approval ratings,but his personal approval ratiings were in the toilet.  people actually believe bush would 'clean up the white house'

I wonder how much personal ratings matter when you have an approval rating in the 60s.

Amazing how someone's personality (Gore's) can make what ought to be an easy win into a real nailbitter.

[Keystone Phil]

Gore was basically trailing the entire campaign but closed in the final weeks, aided by the Bush DUI thing and Nader bled to him hardcore late in swing states.

No, no, no. You're misunderstanding the point of this thread. Why was that the case? Why was Gore out ahead basically the entire campaign?

I think it's safe to say that if it wasn't for the DUI thing, Bush would have won the popular vote. That's just embarrassing for Gore considering the political climate and the fact that Bush had his own personal shortcomings.

The whole Nader is excuse is another joke. The Gore campaign should have been able to make Nader irrelevant. I think Nader's rather successful showing in 2000 was a perfect example of how good things were in 2000. Hardcore left wingers could take a chance throwing their vote to Nader because, in the end, it probably wouldn't mean much. However, looking back on it, if you throw that 3% to Gore, he wins the popular vote rather comfortably and even a few more states go his way. It was the Gore campaign's fault for letting Nader remain a factor. A good campaign knows how to handle a spoiler and making sure that that spoiler's supporters don't just stay home on Election day.

I remember hearing that Gore would win the Electoral Vote and Bush would win the Popular Vote.

and Bush was prepared to fight that:

http://www.bartcop.com/111tie.htm

And that's unfortunate (though I must note how they only quoted "a Bush aide") but if the quotes from the movie Recount are accurate, when asked about that possibility, the Gore campaign told reporters that they would expect Bush to respect "the rule of law."   Your source backs up those quotes.  Too bad we didn't hear that when their surrogates were spinning everytime they got the chance, saying Gore won the popular (as if we were supposed to make an exception to the rule just this one time).

[Keystone Phil]

He distanced himself from his predecessor.

Yeah but like I said, I think it has to be more than that. So Gore didn't have Clinton campaign with him that much (or at all). Big deal. The country whose policies Gore wanted to continue. The country liked Clinton enough to give him a 60% approval rating. The country heard Bush bashing Clinton in every stump speech and while they might have agreed with Bush about Clinton's personal life, that doesn't seem to be a real winning argument when the bottom line is that the country was at peace and prosperous.

It really was a very odd election and a lot more complex than we are led to believe.

[Keystone Phil]

while Bush's supporters among the religious right were more motivated with the hypothetical chance to overturn Roe v. Wade and "restore moral authority" to the White House.

They weren't that motivated. The Bush 2004 campaign harped on the depressingly low Evangelical turnout of 2000. They made sure that they wouldn't see a repeat of that.

[Keystone Phil]

another factor may have been Clinton's low personal favorability ratings.  while a solid majority approved of the job he did a similar majority also personally disliked him, per exits.

Like I said, I only see that being a huge factor if his approval ratings were mediocre. The man was above or close to 60% around Election day 2000. America was at peace and prosperous. I just find it hard to believe that Gore's campaign was so poorly run that they couldn't hammer these points and come away with a convincing victory.

[Keystone Phil]

Gore probably also helped by trying to throw the thing away. You know...the sighing and walking up to Bush during the debates.

[Keystone Phil]

These sort of things are hard to (dis)prove but Gore received only 3 million more votes than Clinton did three years earlier while Bush received about 11 million more votes than Dole did. Those votes had to come from somewhere. IIRC Bush won about 60% of 1996 Perot voters (according to exit polls) yet that only amounts to about 5 million votes. The term "that motivated" is relative. Obviously not as motivated as they were four years later, but certainly much more motivated than they were in 1996 and 1992. Which was, at the time, what mattered.

I had always heard from analysts that Evangelical turnout was "down" in 2000 but whatever.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I remember Barbara Bush claiming that she seriously thought that Gore was going to hit him. Bush's nod was awesome.

[Keystone Phil]

the bush campaign also made a very serious mistake by visiting california, illinois and new jersey in the closing days, instead of concentrating on iowa, wisconsin, florida and iowa.

Well, sure, but that can be covered in the "How did Bush not take more of an advantage of Gore practically throwing him the election?" thread. 

[Keystone Phil]

One thing you have to keep in mind is that there actually isn't that much evidence that an incumbent's popularity / unpopularity transfers over *that much* to the chosen successor within his own party.  Eisenhower was pretty popular in 1960, but JFK still beat Nixon, LBJ was pretty unpopular in 1968, but Nixon only just barely beat Humphrey, Bush and Gore basically fought to a draw in 2000, despite Clinton being fairly popular, Obama beat McCain by "only" 7 points, despite historically low job approval ratings for Bush.

Bottom line, the voters don't necessarily all see the incumbent party nominee as being a potential "third term" for the incumbent president.  Elections with no incumbent president running always seem to be closer than you would "expect" if the voters actually thought that way.

But look at every example you gave. Weren't we just getting over a recession in 1960? Things weren't that great. Things got closer in 1968 (despite LBJ's horrific ratings) because the war was starting to look a little better. By today's standards, a seven point win (even when you consider how terrible the President's ratings were) is about as big of a win as you can hope for running in an open race.

I'm not trying to say that Gore should have won by a bigger margin just because Clinton was still popular. Take a look at how things were economically. Take a look at how things were around the world.

[Keystone Phil]

Who says that the guy running to replace the incumbent president automatically gets credit or blame for everything that's going on around the world?

Look at the results of elections like 1968, 1988 and 2008.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Being the Vice President (as was the case in 1968 and 1988) for eight years isn't enough?

[Keystone Phil]

My point is that you're starting with the assumption that the rules for presidential elections with no incumbent are basically the same as the rules for presidential elections *with* an incumbent, and I question whether that's true.

Well, no, not really.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

But we're not just talking about the President's popularity; it's about the climate in the country. Feel free to criticize how much effect an incumbent President has during an open race but you can't just dismiss the fact that the late 90s and into 2000 were "the good times."

The personal qualities obviously matter a lot and they especially did in 2000. However, just as people disliked the stiff, patronizing, "Mr. Know it all" Al Gore, George Bush didn't have it that much better. Sure, he won the "I can have a beer with him" contest but I think the best idea that the public had of the man was how he was portrayed on SNL - a bumbling fool who expected his Daddy to run the show in the White House again. This, to me, was almost as bad as people's perception of Gore.

I think the real answer to why this wasn't so comfortable was because things were just too good for people to care. In a way, Gore's campaign gets partial blame for that.

[Keystone Phil]

Wouldn't "the climate of the country" have more of an impact on the incumbent president's approval ratings than it would on the veep, or any potential successor?  That is, you can say "well things weren't actually all that good in 1960".  Really?  Then why was Ike so popular?  The president's job approval ratings seem to track a lot better with the mood of the country than does his potential successor's success at the polls.

Ike wasn't that popular at the time. I believe we were just getting out of a recession around that time.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It's not that Gore did poorly because things were too good; it's that his campaign didn't work hard enough to get people to the polls.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Care to explain 2008?

[Keystone Phil]

If Gore had run a strong campaign, he would've won by a much bigger margin; something like this:

He should have won NV, AZ and WV, too.

[Keystone Phil]

Ralph Nader.

If you actually read the first (and other) posts, you'd understand why Nader shouldn't have even been a factor.