Why is the GOP so good at ultra narrow wins?

[twenty42]

People fish for patterns in presidential elections, but it's really a fool's errand. A presidential election is way too rare of an event to establish patterns...it is much more useful to look at them on a case-by-case basis.

2000 and 2016 were open elections following moderately popular Democratic administrations. Both Democratic candidates in these elections were much less popular than the current presidents, and both ran against relatively charismatic Republican opponents. Both elections resulted in narrow Republican victories.

2004 and 2012 were incumbent elections held during a time when the incumbent presidents hovered around 50% approval. Both incumbent presidents had baggage, but they were lucky enough to run against relatively dull and uninspiring opponents. These elections resulted in a narrow Republican victory and a narrow Democratic victory, respectively.

2008 was an open election following a substantially unpopular Republican administration. The Democratic candidate was much more charismatic than his Republican opponent. The election resulted in a comfortable Democratic victory.

I think the fact that Democrats have recently won presidential elections more comfortably than Republicans is really just a matter of luck and small sample size. Had Al Gore won in 2000 and subsequently in 2004, we'd have most likely seen a Republican landslide in 2008. American voters are much more elastic than people think.

[twenty42]

1. 2012 was not a narrow Democratic victory by any means. Obama won the national popular vote by 3.9% (RCP average was +0.7 nationwide for Obama), and he won every swing state except NC, which he lost by 2%. Amongst the swing states he won, aside from Florida, Obama won all the others by 3%+.

Historically speaking, 2012 was a pretty close PV margin. The majority of presidential PV’s have been decided by greater than 5%.

However, the structure of the EC that year gave Democrats a substantial advantage, and Romney’s share of the PV was very inefficient. Romney was actually leading in the PV when the election was called for Obama, and most networks were even predicting that Romney would wind up winning the PV in the early morning hours of November 7.