Alternate Electoral Maps III

Once Upon a Time at the Ballot Box: A Tale of a Cowboy, a Mormon, and a Southern Segregationist

JFK's second term sees the full implementation of his domestic policies and a period of relative peace abroad. Congress passes Kennedy's tax cut and approves Medicare, Medicaid, and the Voting Rights Act. Congress also enacts the Job Corps and Head Start programs in order to combat poverty. With South Vietnam on the brink of collapse, Secretary of Defense Robert F. Kennedy negotiates a ceasefire and takes up a British proposal to create a neutral government in Vietnam. President Kennedy authorizes a limited bombing run against strategic targets in Vietnam, backing up America's diplomatic hand with military force - and the threat of further intervention. After a period of intense diplomacy the plan is adopted by North and South Vietnam in 1965 and an all-out American war in Southeast Asia is narrowly avoided. However, by 1967 violence resumes in Vietnam and Saigon falls to the Communists after Kennedy leaves office. In 1966 President Kennedy remains very popular, but the Republicans make a resurgence in the midterm elections.

In 1968 the 51 year old John F. Kennedy serves out his final year as President of the United States. He signs the Housing Act of 1968, the landmark SALT I arms control treaty with the Soviet Union, and the Gun Control Act of 1968 in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination. With a roaring economy at his back and JFK's approval ratings at 60%, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson of Texas has high hopes for 1968. He easily wins the Democratic Presidential nomination and chooses his friend Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. With former Vice-President Richard Nixon retired from politics for good, Michigan Governor George Romney emerges as the GOP's standard bearer. Disgusted with both parties, Alabama Governor George Wallace pulls the trigger on a segregationist third party candidacy.

The Presidential election of 1968 is one of the most unique and dynamic in recent memory - a battle between the tall Texan cowboy, the first ever Mormon to be nominated on a major party ticket, and a populist segregationist. LBJ touts the strong economy and promises to continue President Kennedy's New Frontier. Romney reminds voters of the riots and disorder that occurred during Kennedy's second term and makes the case for change. For his part Wallace hopes to deadlock the electoral college and play kingmaker in the House of Representatives. As in 1960 and 1964 TV plays a critical role: Wallace is excluded from the debates, depriving him of a major platform. While Romney expects to out-do LBJ on the debate stage, he shocks the nation with his awkward responses to policy questions and a mind-boggling gaffe about arm control, saying, "you know, some of the nicest people are Communists." In contrast, the calm and articulate Johnson is the clear winner. On election day, Romney and Wallace don't stand a chance:

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Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX): 313 Electoral Votes, 46.8% in the popular vote
George Romney (R-MI): 178 Electoral Votes, 41.4% in the popular vote
George Wallace (I-AL): 47 Electoral Votes, 11.5% in the popular vote

A New Sheriff in Town: The B-Movie Actor Takes on Big Government

In his inaugural address President Johnson pledges to expand the New Frontier to forge a "Great Society" for all Americans to enjoy. LBJ's speech is met with applause from all corners of the nation - in particular from former President John F. Kennedy who happily retires to Massachusetts. Johnson hopes to create even more government programs than Kennedy and ultimately bring forth the long awaited health care reform that had evaded past Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt. With decades of high-level experience and a Democratic Congress, it looks like Johnson's dreams will come true.

But those fantasies are quickly shattered by a hard, cold reality. Johnson squanders much of his political capital by nominating Abe Fortas to succeed Chief Justice Earl Warren. Fortas is rejected by the Senate over corruption concerns, and Johnson is forced to appoint Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg instead. Worse, a recession materializes throughout 1969 and in Southeast Asia the Communists conquer South Vietnam. In the wake of these emerging problems at home and abroad LBJ's poll numbers begin to suffer. Nonetheless LBJ doggedly pursues a liberal domestic agenda: he creates new protections for the environment and strengthens workplace safety laws. Court rulings demanding racial integration in the South are stringently enforced, and Eisenhower's moderate Republican judges are replaced with progressive Democrats equally committed to the cause of civil rights - if not more so.

Yet the ongoing recession and public impatience with the high taxes used to pay for government programs lead to political disaster for the Democrats in 1970: for the first time since 1955, the Republicans regain both Houses of Congress in the midterm elections. With LBJ a lame duck, the Great Society and his dreams of passing universal health care are dead in the water. But not all is lost: in the 1972 Republican primaries moderate New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller once again loses the GOP Presidential nomination, this time to California Governor Ronald Reagan. A former B-movie actor who vocally supported Barry Goldwater in 1964, Reagan is widely perceived as a right wing extremist and LBJ ruthlessly exploits that toxic image in a negative TV ad campaign. Additionally, with the economy improving many voters who abandoned the Democrats in 1970 now give LBJ credit for the recovery. Despite his early setbacks LBJ isn't down for the count.

Reagan hits back against LBJ by distancing himself from Goldwater and projects a sunny, optimistic demeanor. He pledges to restore America to full prosperity, lower taxes, and eliminate government waste. With Alabama Governor George Wallace out of the race after he was paralyzed by an assassin's bullet, Reagan attempts to appeal to his former supporters by attacking "activist judges" who "enforce federal standards on the states" - an obvious dog whistle directed at white racists. This backfires when civil rights leaders blast Reagan for his stance, helping to energize minority turnout for the Democrats. By October, polling puts LBJ ahead of Reagan by 3%.

But the TV debate is where it would all come to an end for Lyndon B. Johnson. Four years earlier LBJ had impressed the nation by routing George Romney. But in 1972 the President is slow, stumbling, visibly tired and clearly ready to give up the Oval Office. He struggles through questions about the economy and healthcare, while the former actor Ronald Reagan shines on TV. The end result is close, but ultimately Ronald Reagan is elected to be America's 37th President:

LBJ vs Reagan 1972.png
 
I was sitting around thinking, as I'm known to do frequently, and I had a thought... what would the national map look like if the Democratic nominee for President won West Virginia by a little over 3% like Joe Manchin did last year? I made this map in response to said thought. the Democratic nominee wins every state, with the closest state being Wyoming, which is probably decided by a near-recount margin in favor of the Democratic nominee. I assumed that the Midwest and Mountain West states would swing dramatically Democratic as they're prone to wild swings, and I also assumed that the urban/suburban vs rural/exurban divide would largely continue, although as compared to 2016 the Democrat does perform dramatically better than Hillary Clinton in rural areas, and even much better than Obama '12, in most cases. suburbs also swing quite dramatically to the left as you would expect, with the Democrat getting 70-80% in areas like NOVA, the Chicago Collar Counties, the Atlanta metro area, etc. I didn't count, but I'm not certain if the Democratic nominee wins a majority of counties even in this massive landslide. does anyone (particularly @Calthrina950 and @TimTurner) want to make any guesses as to the vote by demographic, by congressional district, and so forth? and what about the NPV? I'd guess it's something like 66-33 Dem.

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Well it seems every IA CD went D by double digits.
 
With modern demographics, this would probably be a very comfortable Dewey victory.
Yeah, the numbers Dewey gets out of North and Central Arkansas are pretty crazy, with him breaking 90% in 5 counties and 95% in two of those 5. comparatively Thurmond only breaks 80% in 6 counties and all six of those are sparsely populated.
 
Illinois House of Senators Election 2018

(This is based in the same timeline as this post.)
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Illinois, the largest of the seven republics that comprise the Great Lakes region of the American Federation, is somewhat notorious for corruption in its politics, but the election to the House of Senators, the republic's upper chamber, held in 2018 saw these take centre stage not just in the republic itself, but across the world.

Since the constitutional revisions passed by then-Prime Minister Everett Dirksen in 1965, Illinois' House of Senators (generally referred to by Illinoisans as the 'upper House' to differentiate it from the Federation-wide Senate) has been democratically elected instead of appointed. However, the reforms greatly benefitted the Republican Party which Dirksen represented; he and his party strongly opposed 'one-man-one-vote' on the basis that their mainly rural voter base could be easily outvoted by voters concentrated in the state's largest city, Chicago. As a result, while the 102 Senators were technically democratically elected, they were elected to represent each county instead of any kind of proportional system, and the county boundary system was set in stone in the laws that comprised the original reform.

Despite strident opposition from the Labor Party, the left-wing opposition to the Republicans, the reform was well-received by most Illinoisans outside of the largest cities, and many both within and outside the republic saw Dirksen's argument for choosing the system he did. While Labor prime ministers Adlai Stevenson III (1982-87), Paul Simon (1987-94) and Rod Blagojevich (2002-10) all made efforts during their terms to reform the upper House, public sympathy went as far as reducing the Senators' veto powers and shortening their term from the six years Dirksen originally arranged to four to bring it in line with the elections to the House of Delegates (the former achieved by Stevenson, the latter by Simon; Blagojevich was dogged by corruption scandals of his own, which helped stymie his credibility on attempting to reform the upper House).

By 2018, the Republican government of Bruce Rauner (who had succeeded fellow Republican Mark Kirk as Prime Minister in 2015) had become highly unpopular, whilst his Labor challenger, Tammy Duckworth, was seen as likely to win a landslide; her potential status as the first woman or person of colour to be Illinoisan PM and her generally liberal record appealed to the Labor base, whilst her limited connections with the more unsavory elements of the party helped distance the party from the spectre of Blagojevich and Pat Quinn, its leader from 2009 to 2016. Sure enough, Labor won a landslide in the Illinois House of Commons, taking 157 of the 250 seats, Labor's biggest majority in the lower House since 1948. The result in the upper House, however, got even more attention in the days following the election.

Labor won the upper House by an even larger margin than the lower House, with a 20.1% margin of victory compared to the 16.3% by which they won the House (mostly due to the lack of votes for minor parties such as the Whigs and Greens; the 'other' vote in the upper House election was 4.7%, less than half the 9.6% for the lower House), by far the biggest Labor win in the popular vote for the upper House since it was founded. Despite this, they gained 34 seats and won just 40 of the 102 upper House seats compared to 62 for the Republicans, allowing the latter to keep a fairly comfortable majority. Labor had won the popular vote in the upper House before, but this was by far the most lopsided result in the chamber's history.

The international press swarmed on Illinoisan politics as a result, and for once, the republic's PM was not the centre of the controversy so much as the one benefitting from it. Duckworth initially announced she sought to 'find a productive way to reform the House of Senators into a more modern institution that will reflect the will of the people', but John Shimkus, the Republican Leader of the House of Senators (the most senior position in the upper House), repeatedly refused to budge on the issue, defending the importance of the upper House as it stands to the constitutional rights of Illinoisans.

In response, Duckworth made an aggressive series of policy maneuvers. Since the upper House is not permitted to block an appointee to the Illinois Supreme Court, and due to both the sizeable Labor majority in the lower House and newfound public sympathy for upper House reform, she appointed a liberal justice, Michelle Robinson, to the court once a vacancy opened in May 2019. In July, the court declared the upper House as it stood unconstitutional for its 'purposefully disproportionate representation of voters', and though it did not recommend a new form for the upper House, Illinoisans were not sympathetic to simply abolishing the chamber (as some on the Labor left favored), and it was generally agreed that the best alternative would be to introduce a proportionally elected upper House.

As of this writing, the exact form of this House has yet to be decided; Duckworth has stated she favors a system with constituencies drawn by an impartial commission with members elected to these constituencies by single transferable vote, whilst others (most notably, Whig leader Bob Dold and Green leader LeAlan Jones) have declared their support for a single proportional constituency comprising the whole country in the style of the Netherlands and Israel and the Republicans have pushed for a FPTP system with higher electorates and fewer members than the lower House. What is known for certain, however, is that the 2018 upper House election is the last to have been held under the system Dirksen designed.
 
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