Unusual Presidential Elections

[Gustaf]

Carter was a very Southern candidate in '80, he did very poorly in almost all the Northern states, whereas with a 2% shift he would have won the vast majority of Southern states. Also there was the Anderson factor cutting into Carter in NE and the Northwest.

Here's a map where the Red states are states where Reagan's margin was below average and the Blue are where it was above average.

[gorkay]

Speaking of unusual elections, what is everybody's take on the 1948 election?

Not only was Truman not particularly popular going into the election, but his base was split not once but twice.  First, Henry Wallace, the former Roosevelt VP who would have been president had he not been forced off the 1944 ticket, ran against Truman as a progressive, on a platform urging accomdation with the Soviet Union rather than Truman's containment and cold war policies.

Then, the Dixiecrats broke with Truman over his support for civil rights for blacks.  At that time, it was considered impossible for a Democrat to win the presidency without the "solid south," a similar position to what the Republicans are in today.

And yet Truman won anyway.  I guess it helped that Wallace won no electoral votes, but he probably cost Truman New York state anyway.  And Strom Thurmond won several southern states as the Dixiecrat candidate.

This election did have the effect of actually hastening civil rights reforms, because once the Democrats saw that they could actually win without the whole south, they became more courageous about advocating equal rights for blacks.

I have always been a fan of Truman because he had the 'nads to revolutionize US foreign policy and he set up a national security structure that exists to this day.  He showed tremendous courage in urging permanent world involvement to a nation used to minding its own business unless attacked, and took the first step to save the world from Soviet tyranny.  I also admired his desire to move the country in the direction of fair treatment of blacks.

Does anybody have any thoughts on how Truman pulled off this victory against such great odds?

It was a combination of many factors. First, Truman ran a great campaign. Clark Clifford planned it out and Truman carried it out brilliantly.
Second, Dewey ran a lousy campaign. He decided he had the election sewed up and played it safe, a terrible mistake.
Third, the Republicans did not even realize what was happening. They were so convinced that they had it won, they stopped polling sometime in September, another incredibly stupid move. Thus they missed the late surge to Truman and did nothing to combat it.
Fourth, the Republican Congress which had been elected in 1946 played into Truman's hands. During his acceptance speech, Truman announced that he was calling them back into a special session so they could enact all the legislation they'd been talking about. They did nothing, and Truman went out on the stump and called them the "Do-Nothing Congress." Another master stroke on Truman's part.
Fifth, Wallace and Thurmond both got far fewer votes than projected, as a lot of voters who originally planned to vote for them came home to Truman.
Sixth, FDR won another one from beyond the grave. Truman campaigned on the pledge to continue New Deal policies, and the loyalty of the old New Deal coalition pulled him through.

[tinman64]

Truman always said, in discussing his 1948 victory, that "labor did it."  That is, in part, true.  Many factors added up to his victory.

In addition to the ones mentioned above, the significance of the African-American vote to his victory cannot be underestimated.  Many African-Americans migrated north and west during WWII in search of wartime jobs.  Their votes in critical states such as California, Illinois, and Ohio helped provide the slim Truman margins.

[Dr. Cynic]

McGovern was the first victim of the "Too liberal bias" in America. Today, McGovern can be regarded as a moderate liberal, but in the 70's, he was thought of as a radical. He also ran a really bad campaign. It started with the Eagleton fiasco and went from there.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I have heard a lot of references to Nixon's 1972 landslide victory over George McGovern.  It was one of the most lop-sided in history. McGovern's campaign is most famous for favoring a quick end to the VietNam War.  However, there must be other factors that resulted in a 49-state electoral college blow-out.  Why did Nixon, only modestly popular, win so easily?  And why was Massachusetts favoring McGovern by a comfortable margin at the same time?

I believe that the reason that Nixon won so big was because people simply did not trust McGovern and they felt comfortable under Richard Nixon.

Though I personally do not understand why they felt comfortable under Richard Nixon, he is probablly the only Republican President that I would not have had supported. I would have even taken Herbert Hoover over Richard Nixon. I would have voted for Hubert Humphrey any day over Richard Nixon and in 1972 probablly would not have even voted at all.

The reason that many people did not suppor t George McGovern is because they simply did not trust him. That is my oponion on why people gave Nixon such a big landslide.

Now about why Massachussetts went for McGovern by a comfortable margin is because of two reasons.

The first reason is that Massachussetts is so liberal. They probablly do not care who the candidates are, they will always vote for the democratic candidate. The people in Massachussetts are just too liberal to vote for a republican. The only republican that they might vote for is Mitt Romney. And even Romney would not be guarenteed a win in his homestate.

The second reason is the Kennedys. As all of you people who study Presidents and elections as I do, the Kennedys would have never voted for Richard Nixon. Though I do not know this, but I would not be surprised if Ted Kennedy had endorsed George McGovern and his whole family supported McGovern.

These two reasons are why McGovern did so well in Massachussetts.

Also McGovern's eventual running mate was a Kennedy in-law.

McGovern was sunk by the Eagleton fiasco when essentially his image as an anti-politican politican basically self-destructed, so the type of disenfranchised people he really needed to reach out to in order to win given his fairly radical by American Standards campaign, did not turned out to vote at all. At least that's the impression the Doctor of Gonzo gave me in his book on the election. He also seemed to suggest that Nixon was pushing Agnew forward more in a Machiavellian scheme to appeal to those democrats who thought McGovern was "too liberal". (The scheme was, if he was re-elected, Nixon suggested that he would try to make Agnew Republican candidate in 1976 - a sure fire Democratic victory then). All these factors plus by 1972 the rise of the Anti-radicals sank McGovern.

[Verily]

It always mystified me that Massachusetts, the only state to vote for McGovern in 1972, voted twice for Ronald Reagan.

Granted, it was generally the weakest state that he carried, receiving just under 41% of the vote in the 3-way 1980 race, and 51% of the vote in 1984.

But it still makes me wonder.  Is it because the Massachusetts liberalism was centered on anti-war views, and that once that issue was removed there was less incentive to vote Democratic?  Any ideas?

Mass. is largly Catholic, economicly liberal, not very pro-war, but not all that socially liberal.  Regan gathered some Catholic anti-abortion votes, and Carter had done poorly.

This certainly isn't true. Massachusetts was not exactly the bastion of social liberalism at the time; that title went to Minnesota in the 1980s. Still, Reagan won Massachusetts on economic policies, not social ones, and on party loyalty and the North-South divide. 1980 was the last election in which the Democrats represented the South and the Republicans the North (or at least the Union), and Reagan was just moderate enough on economics to convince both sides of the Massachusetts economic spectrum to vote for him. (Catholic distrust of southerners helped.)

McGovern did well in Massachusetts at least partially because of his name.

Finally, as Gustaf points out, Massachusetts still voted more for Carter than the average state in 1980.