The American Campaign, Second Edition: U.S. Presidential Campaigns and the National Vote

★ Chapter 8 Electoral Competition and Unsystematic Campaign Effects

★ Chapter 8 Electoral Competition and Unsystematic Campaign Effects WHILE FUNDAMENTAL POLITICAL forces systematically shape the course of presidential campaigns and election results, making both predictable, neither campaign eVects nor election results are perfectly predictable. In addition to the systematic eVects of campaigns, the particular decisions, strategies, and events that arise in campaigns may also influence their course. These idiosyncratic elements of campaigns may aVect who votes and for whom they vote. While unsystematic aspects of campaigns may make a diVerence, their impact is often marginal, especially in the aggregate. To some degree, the idiosyncrasies of a campaign are evaluated in light of the pre-campaign fundamentals of partisanship, incumbency, and the economy. Where there is room for varying interpretations about a campaign development (such as the Ford“Eastern Europe” gaVe or the Dukakis “tank trip”) evaluations may tilt toward the candidate already favored on partisanship or other pre-campaign considerations , or toward the incumbent, or toward the candidate favored because of the economy. On most matters arising during the campaign, voters have the latitude to take the development seriously or to write it oV as inconsequential. Moreover, in the aggregate, the idiosyncrasies of particular campaigns often neutralize each other (one event helping one candidate and another helping the opponent) and thus contribute to the narrowing eVect of the campaign. Even though the fundamentals that systematically shape decisions during the campaign generally have the greater impact on the vote and though the unsystematic aspects of a campaign may have only marginal eVects, presidential elections are often competitive enough that even marginal eVects of events unique to a particular campaign can be important and, in some cases, decisive. This chapter examines competition in presidential elections and estimates how often and in what particular elections the unsystematic events of campaigns may have aVected the outcomes. From Dead Heats to Landslides In this analysis, we examine the thirty-five presidential elections between 1868 and 2004. The popular and electoral college votes in these elections are presented in table 8.1, ordered according to the national two-party popular vote for the candidate who was elected president. The general point emerging from these returns is that American presidential elections are quite competitive. Of the thirty-five elections spanning almost 140 years of electoral history, Republican candidates won twenty-one times and Democrats won fourteen. The average two-party popular vote for the winning candidate has been just over 55 percent of the vote, a plurality of 5.2 percentage points (or a spread of between ten and eleven points between the votes for the winning and losing candidates). The typical election appears to be fairly competitive. The diVerence between winning and losing a typical election in this period is the diVerence between winning the votes of eleven out of twenty voters versus nine out of twenty voters. The table also demonstrates that the typically modest popular vote margins are greatly magnified by the winner-take-all provisions employed by most states in awarding their electoral college votes. Thus, while the typical winning presidential candidate received about 55 percent of the popular two-party vote, he received almost three-quarters of the electoral votes. However, the close correspondence between the popular and electoral vote percentages is also evident . The correlation between a party’s two-party share of popular and electoral college votes is strongly positive (r = .90). The election results displayed in table 8.1 rather neatly divide into four groupings : near-landslide and landslide elections, moderately competitive elections, close contests, and near dead heats. Near-landslide and landslide elections are those in which the winning candidate’s plurality of the two-party popular vote exceeded seven percentage points. Moderately competitive elections are those in which the winning plurality of the vote ranged from three to seven percentage points. Close contests were elections in which the two-party popular vote plurality exceeded one and a half percentage points but was less than three percentage points of the vote. Near-dead-heat elections were those in which the winning candidate received a two-party popular vote plurality of one and a half percentage points or less. These cut-points in part reflect general impressions 166 • the american campaign Table 8.1. Election Results Ranked by the Closeness of the Popular Two-Party Vote, 1868–2004 National Popular Two-Party Vote Percentage Winning Electoral College Candidate and Losing Vote % for Election Political...