Look, I don't want to get into any debate about whether the separation of East Tennessee from Tennessee was constitutional or not. For present purposes I will accept Lincoln's position that the "restored government of Tennessee" had sufficient authority to accept the separation. My real point is this: I have just done some arithmetic and have discovered that had Tennessee remained undivided, George W. Bush rather than Al Gore would have won the presidential race in 2000--even though Gore would still have won a popular plurality nationwide! Gore, who carried Tennessee far from overwhelmingly in OTL, would have lost in the "old" Tennessee--i.e., one including East Tennessee. The figures are as follows:
In OTL, as we all know, Gore won Tennessee but by an unimpressive margin, given that it was his home state. He got 694,525 (52.1 percent of the two-party vote) to Bush's 637,683 (47.9 percent). Bush easily won nearby East Tennessee, of course, by 424,266 to 287,195--which amounts to a 59.6-40.4 percent victory in the two-party popular vote of that state. In fact, Bush carried 27 of the state's 28 counties--Anderson, Blount, Bradley, Carter, Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Hamilton, Hancock, Hawkins, Jefferson, Johnson, Knox, Loudon, McMinn, Meigs, Monroe, Polk, Rhea, Roane, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi, Union, and Washington. Only Campbell County, on the northwestern edge of the state, went for Gore.
Now let's add the 28 East Tennessee counties to Tennessee. Result: Bush defeats Gore in this larger Tennessee by 1,061,949 to 981,720. In other words, Gore would get only 48 percent of the two-party vote in his own state! (Of course, it's possible that East Tennessee wouldn't have voted quite so heavily for Bush if Gore had had a "same-state" advantage there, but I doubt it. Even if the state stayed together, there would still be no love lost between East Tennesseans and a "Central"--as he would then be--Tennessean like Gore.)
In OTL, Gore won with 274 electoral votes for 265 for Bush, with one Gore elector from DC abstaining. (For those who have forgotten, the Electoral College consists of 540 members--there are 537 electors from the 51 states, corresponding to the 102 Senators and 435 Representatives; and to these you add the three electors from the District of Columbia. The "magic number" for a majority is of course 271.)
Had Tennessee remained undivided, there would be only 538 electors (with only 270 votes needed to win) and with Bush carrying all of Tennessee (with eleven electoral votes--right now, of course, Tennessee has eight electoral votes, and East Tennessee five; the loss of two electors is due to the fact that the combined states would obviously have two fewer Senators), the result would be 271-267 for Bush (actually 271-266 with one abstention--but I wonder if the woman from the District of Columbia would have abstained under those circumstances, since Bush's winning without a popular plurality would probably generate so much outrage among Democrats that all Democratic electors would be determined to stand together.)
Of course, this is ignoring butterfly effects. I suppose you will say that if Tennessee had remained united, US history would be so different that nobody would even have heard of Bush or Gore. And in any event, with the counties that now make up East Tennessee making it likely that Tennessee would go Republican, Gore might have written off his home state and spent more time campaigning in Florida, where Bush's victory in OTL was surprisingly close...
In OTL, as we all know, Gore won Tennessee but by an unimpressive margin, given that it was his home state. He got 694,525 (52.1 percent of the two-party vote) to Bush's 637,683 (47.9 percent). Bush easily won nearby East Tennessee, of course, by 424,266 to 287,195--which amounts to a 59.6-40.4 percent victory in the two-party popular vote of that state. In fact, Bush carried 27 of the state's 28 counties--Anderson, Blount, Bradley, Carter, Claiborne, Cocke, Grainger, Greene, Hamblen, Hamilton, Hancock, Hawkins, Jefferson, Johnson, Knox, Loudon, McMinn, Meigs, Monroe, Polk, Rhea, Roane, Sevier, Sullivan, Unicoi, Union, and Washington. Only Campbell County, on the northwestern edge of the state, went for Gore.
Now let's add the 28 East Tennessee counties to Tennessee. Result: Bush defeats Gore in this larger Tennessee by 1,061,949 to 981,720. In other words, Gore would get only 48 percent of the two-party vote in his own state! (Of course, it's possible that East Tennessee wouldn't have voted quite so heavily for Bush if Gore had had a "same-state" advantage there, but I doubt it. Even if the state stayed together, there would still be no love lost between East Tennesseans and a "Central"--as he would then be--Tennessean like Gore.)
In OTL, Gore won with 274 electoral votes for 265 for Bush, with one Gore elector from DC abstaining. (For those who have forgotten, the Electoral College consists of 540 members--there are 537 electors from the 51 states, corresponding to the 102 Senators and 435 Representatives; and to these you add the three electors from the District of Columbia. The "magic number" for a majority is of course 271.)
Had Tennessee remained undivided, there would be only 538 electors (with only 270 votes needed to win) and with Bush carrying all of Tennessee (with eleven electoral votes--right now, of course, Tennessee has eight electoral votes, and East Tennessee five; the loss of two electors is due to the fact that the combined states would obviously have two fewer Senators), the result would be 271-267 for Bush (actually 271-266 with one abstention--but I wonder if the woman from the District of Columbia would have abstained under those circumstances, since Bush's winning without a popular plurality would probably generate so much outrage among Democrats that all Democratic electors would be determined to stand together.)
Of course, this is ignoring butterfly effects. I suppose you will say that if Tennessee had remained united, US history would be so different that nobody would even have heard of Bush or Gore. And in any event, with the counties that now make up East Tennessee making it likely that Tennessee would go Republican, Gore might have written off his home state and spent more time campaigning in Florida, where Bush's victory in OTL was surprisingly close...