Alternate Electoral Maps III

1955 Adamville General Election

Adamville was established in April 1955 by 150 communist settlers who wanted a democratic society which enacted communism. Finding no suitable plots of land to build their communist utopia on, they set out to find an island that had not yet been discovered. After a while of searching the oceans for such an island, the 101 surviving settlers, lead by Vladimir Adams, found an island that had somehow evaded satellite detection. They explored the island for a while. The island was full of fertile soil, so the settlers could settle anywhere. In the end, they chose a hill, which they called the Jalavoix hill. This hill was adjacent to a river, which was named the Tsolomes river. In order to determine where the settlement limits were, Adams was given a stick and asked to draw a line that both went along the river and encompassed the hill. While he was at it, Adams also drew three regions of the settlement. The smallest region, in the southeast, was named after the Tsolomes river, which it went along. The biggest region, in the north, was named after its general direction in relation to the rest of the settlement. The remaining region was named after the Jalavoix hill, which it took the lion's share home.

Everyone staked their claims, mostly concentrating on the Jalavoix hill and along the Tsolomes river. With their claims staked, everyone built shelters out of whatever building materials they could find. Some shelters were holes in the ground. Others were wood huts. Construction was built in an impressive three months. Now that the settlement was built, it was time to declare the settlement official. The Utopia of Adamville was established, named after Vladimir Adams. It would take another three months for a charter to be written, but once it was, it was time to declare elections in this new democratic communist utopia. Adams himself was expected to compete, however, to the surprise of everyone, he didn't. This was because he intended to oversee the elections to make sure they were fair, and it would not be fair for an overseer to compete in an election they were competing in, or even voting in. The election for the Council was held via first past the post in single-member constituencies, the Mayor was chosen by the Councillors, and there were two factions competing.

They were loose to prevent anyone from feeling excluded, but in general, the Communist faction was more supportive of a strong central government while the Democratic faction was more supportive of power being in the hands of the individual settlers. Membership in a faction was not necessary to run, but none of the voters who joined a faction had any interest in running, just seeking to vote. It also so happened that only one candidate per faction per constituency ran. This is because most would-be candidates wanted to see how the system functioned before throwing their hats into the ring. Given that the purpose of the settlement was to have a democratic communist society, the Communists had a clear advantage. However, the desire for democracy led to some supporters of the Communist faction voting for candidates who affiliated with the Democratic faction. In the end, the Communists won 3-1 in the popular vote (75-25), and won four of the five Council seats. They secured the North constituency after a coin was flippped due to a tie between the Communist Pietra Cumberwroth and the Democrat Drake Steele.

Phew, that was more backstory than I intended or even wanted to give. I just wanted this inherently ASB scenario to make sense, and I can go on and on in justification.



Adamville General Election, 6 August 1955

Lower Tsolomes

Trumaine Wambold (Communist): 18
Henrietta Lupton (Democratic): 2

Upper Tsolomes

Conney Friesinger (Communist): 16
Gratia Hehlgans (Democratic): 4

Inner Jalavoix

Merry Koseluk (Communist): 20

Outer Jalavoix

Aundrea Kjonegård (Communist): 11
Langsdon Barchard (Democratic): 9

North

Pietra Cumberworth (Communist): 10
Drake Steele (Democratic): 10

Mayoral Election

Trumaine Wambold (Communist): 3
Aundrea Kjonegård (Communist): 2


c4rL74g.png

Results by constituency. Red represents a constituency won by a member of the Communist faction.
Sequel?
 
To help show the extreme rightward trend of West Virginia, I'll be doing national (and county) maps for what presidential elections between 2000 and 2016 would have looked like if the Democratic nominee had won West Virginia by an exactly 1 percentage point margin. for starters, here's what 2000 would have looked like if Gore won WV by 1%, using a uniform swing:

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Al Gore (D-TN)/Joe Lieberman (D-CT) 362 electoral votes - 52.4% popular vote
George W. Bush (R-TX)/Dick Cheney (R-WY) 176 electoral votes - 44.2% popular vote
 
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"The unexpected success of the Castro campaign in the polls has shown the same thing that Senator O'Rourke and Governor Sinema have. Democrats will win in 2020, not by trying to capture lost glories, but by fighting for the future. If Hillary had campaigned in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Utah the way she campaigned in Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, she would be President of the United States today."
-A Southwestern Strategy, written by tx07 on Daily Kos, Sept. 2, 2019
I don’t want to be that guy but they don’t allow modern politics here.
 
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"The unexpected success of the Castro campaign in the polls has shown the same thing that Senator O'Rourke and Governor Sinema have. Democrats will win in 2020, not by trying to capture lost glories, but by fighting for the future. If Hillary had campaigned in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Utah the way she campaigned in Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin, she would be President of the United States today."
-A Southwestern Strategy, written by tx07 on Daily Kos, Sept. 2, 2019
I don’t want to be that guy but they don’t allow modern politics here.
I don't wanna be that other guy but here's my thread you can post it in
 
To help show the extreme rightward trend of West Virginia, I'll be doing national (and county) maps for what presidential elections between 2000 and 2016 would have looked like if the Democratic nominee had won West Virginia by an exactly 1 percentage point margin. for starters, here's what 2000 would have looked like if Gore won WV by 1%, using a uniform swing:

2004:

genusmap.php


John Kerry (D-MA)/John Edwards (D-NC) 55.1% popular vote, 385 electoral votes
George W. Bush (R-TX)/Dick Cheney (R-WY) 43.7% popular vote, 153 electoral votes
 
2004:
John Kerry (D-MA)/John Edwards (D-NC) 55.1% popular vote, 385 electoral votes
George W. Bush (R-TX)/Dick Cheney (R-WY) 43.7% popular vote, 153 electoral votes

2008:

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Barack Obama (D-IL)/Joe Biden (D-DE) 59.95% popular vote, 464 electoral votes
John McCain (R-AZ)/Sarah Palin (R-AK) 38.65% popular vote, 74 electoral votes
 
Now for 2012, in which Obama would have had to have won the NPV by more than literally any other Presidential candidate in a contested election in history just to win West Virginia by 1%:

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Barack Obama (D-IL)/Joe Biden (D-DE) 64.86% popular vote, 517 electoral votes
Mitt Romney (R-MA)/Paul Ryan (R-WI) 33.3% popular vote, 21 electoral votes
 
So adding here alternate South African Elections in 2014:
upload_2019-9-4_21-41-6.png

The Bantu Constituencies:
  • ANC wins with 136/200 (green).
  • DA contests with 31/200, mainly in Cape Town, the Zulu Coast and Gauteng (blue)
  • Inkatha Freedom Party wins in KwaZulu with 24/200 seats (red)
  • United Democratic Movement (light blue) wins a couple of constituencies in Transkei (5/200)
  • EFF wins 3 constituencies (pink), mainly in the northwest
  • AZAPO wins a lonely constituency in Limpopo (1/200)
upload_2019-9-4_21-45-21.png

The Whites:
  1. DA still leads 52/100, winning mostly in the Cape and Joburg (blue)
  2. VF+ challenges DA with 26/100, mainly in inland rural areas (dark orange)
  3. Nasionale Party retains 16/100 seats (light orange)
upload_2019-9-4_21-47-44.png

The Coloured vote:
  1. DA wins in the Cape with 52/75 (blue)
  2. COPE (Congress of the People) gets 16 seats (yellow)
  3. Independent Democrats gain 4 seats (brown)
  4. National Party is down to 2 seats of the coloured vote
  5. Al Jama wins a lone seat in the Cape
upload_2019-9-4_21-50-3.png

Ultimately, the Indian vote. DA gets 17 seats, the remaining 8 are held by Minority Front.

Put together, we have a 400-seated parliament, with DA being the largest party of 156, across all racial groupings. The ANC is the second largest with 136 seats, followed by a Bondstaat Alliance (constisting of VF+, IFP, Minority Front and Congress of the People, as well as the UDM of the Xhosa). The National Party has 18 MPs, smaller centrist parties have 4 and Bantu leftists have another 4. The government is formed by a DA+ Bondstaat coalition, with the VF+ taking the resorts of agriculture, finance, interior and defence.
 
The 2017 East Florida General Election was the first to occur under the reign of Juan Carlos. The Liberal Party gained 4 seats in the elections, bolstering it's plurality in the legislature. The Green Party gained 3 seats bringing it to a total of 9 seats in the General Assembly, a high for the Party. The Lord-Governors' Liberal-Centralist Party remained in power following the election, maintaining it's 2014 coalition with the Green Party and the Christian Democrat Party.

eastfloridaelection-png.481042


Speaker of the Assembly: Luis Omar Oteño (Liberal-Centralist Party; Green Party/Christian Democrat Party Coalition)
  • Liberal-Centralist Party: 41 seats
  • Green Party: 9 seats
  • Christian Democrat Party: 7 seats
Opposition:
  • Farmer-Labor Party: 26 seats
  • Gran Florida Party: 14 seats
  • Liberator Party: 3 seats
 
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I hope it's OK for me to finally continue my The Elephant And The Bull Moose idea even though it's from the old thread, since I finally had more ideas for it.

*

1968

Having been re-elected with the biggest popular vote share and second-biggest electoral vote of any contested presidential election, President Nixon, perhaps understandably, felt he had an enormous mandate going into his second term. However, what he used that mandate for during the next four years would turn him into one of the most notorious presidents of the 20th century.

Nixon was, of course, an avowed anti-Communist, and was mortified by the prospect of losing South Vietnam to communism, both for diplomatic and ideological reasons, rating it as an even higher priority than civil rights. As a result, in January 1965 he used the comfortable Republican majority he had won with his coattails to provide US military support for South Vietnam. Unfortunately, this decision had significant repercussions for his leadership, as many civil rights groups and leaders who had supported Nixon over Wallace were disgusted at him putting war first and equality second. While he did finally pass a Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act with support from Congress (including most non-Southern Democrats) in May and October 1965 respectively, the praise he received for it was muted.

This only got worse during 1966, especially when he finally enforced conscription due to limited progress in Vietnam. Capitalizing on this, liberal Democrats in northern and western states tied themselves to the anti-war and counterculture movement, railing against what they called 'Nixon's war' and effectively muffling the segregationist wing of the party. While this led to discontent from Southern Democrats, some of whom even switched to voting for the Republicans, the Democrats retook both Houses in the 1966 midterms with ease.

As atrocities from the Vietnam war continued to be reported and Nixon continued to show limited remorse, the Republicans looked increasingly unlikely to win again in 1968, and with the Democratic Congress's more liberal northern members voicing support for welfare programs to capitalize on the strong economy while Nixon continued ranting about Vietnam, some people questioned whether the Democrats were about to abandon their Southern base.

Those 'some people' included Democratic Senator George Smathers of Florida, who had regularly voiced his dissent from the views of many liberal Democrats in Congress, and was the favourite of Southern delegates during the 1968 Democratic primaries. He battled aggressively with the favorite of the liberals, Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, but the winner was ultimately someone significantly less favourable to the left of the party than one might have expected: Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson of Washington, who shared their support for government programs to help the poor, but was also hawkish and would not commit to withdrawal from Vietnam. The party elite saw him as a good compromise, and managed to convince enough defections from both the liberal and Southern delegations to get him the nomination. His running mate was more left-wing on civil rights, namely Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, to compensate for Jackson's ambivalence on the issue.

The clash for the Republican nomination, despite its few participants, also involved a fierce conflict between factions. The only serious contenders were Vice President Scott and right-wing firebrand Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona; while Goldwater did better than expected, he was never in with a real chance of winning the nomination, especially when Nixon refused to endorse him over his VP despite Goldwater's more strident support for Vietnam. As Scott knew he was not popular with liberals due to his percieved complicity in the Vietnam war, he decided to showcase the biggest domestic achievement of Nixon's second term by making Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts his running mate.

Smathers was dismayed by the liberalism on civil rights both parties were showing, and decided to form his own, more conservative ticket. With his campaign in part bankrolled by Harland 'Colonel' Sanders, the KFC founder who was sympathetic to Smathers' conservative-but-not-segregationist approach to civil rights, Smathers and his running mate Governor Daniel Mahoney of Maryland (one of the few newcomers from the 1966 Democratic wave to not be pro-civil rights) used their sizeable war chest to campaign against liberal counterculture and calling for 'law and order'. This charge was strengthened when the infamous Republican National Convention in Miami was met with aggressive protests, with Smathers giving speeches criticizing what the 'permissiveness' he perceived as emerging was doing to his state.

Despite these setbacks, Smathers generally remained behind Jackson and Scott outside of the South, and in the rest of the country those two were neck-and-neck. Jackson was unable to muster huge amounts of eagerness from liberal Democrats and conservatives were inclined to break for Smathers, and when Scott announced he would instigate a bombing halt in cooperation with Nixon in September, it suddenly looked like he might eek out a victory after all.

But then the debates happened. While Scott aggressively criticized Smathers as 'a racist who minces his words', Jackson came off as much more affable, politely explaining his objections to things like busing and withdrawal from Vietnam, outlining his alternative plans, and building up the concept of what he called the 'Great Society', a series of programs intended to reduce poverty in America which he promised would be implemented 'regardless of race'.

Jackson's composure, as well as some allegations about Nixon's domineering behaviour and claims he had been wiretapping the Wallace campaign in 1964 (unfounded as these seemed to be), helped put him back in contention, and by election day no one knew what would happen. Some thought Jackson's 'Great Society' plan would be enough to reinvigorate liberal support, others expected Scott would come through the middle in the South and win by pluralities in enough places to win, others still that Smathers would hang the electoral college.


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Jackson/Symington (Democratic): 327 EVs, 42.1%
Scott/Brooke (Republican): 147 EVs, 39.3%

Smathers/Mahoney (Independent): 64 EVs, 16.8%

Jackson's promises of the 'Great Society' had won him support from urban voters and avoiding the race issue had paid huge dividends in the South, where only six states ultimately did break for Smathers and only Virginia went to Scott. While the selection of Brooke did benefit Scott in the northeast, as he took every state in the region except New Jersey and New York, it caused large numbers of white suburban voters in states like California, Illinois and Michigan to vote for the 'race-blind' Jackson instead, costing the Republicans significantly in those states.

With Jackson's victory came a further increased Democratic gain in 1968, and with it a sizeable mandate for his Great Society. What came next was to be almost as contentious a period as the 1930s and 40s had been.

*

1972

Jackson's 'Great Society' programs were ambitious, to say the least. He pumped funds into major cities like New York City, Chicago, Cleveland and Los Angeles to try and prevent ghettoisation and 'white flight', used the Democratic majorities in Congress to create the Medicaid program for disadvantaged groups to have free at the point of delivery healthcare (finally realizing an ambition that had existed since the days of Teddy Roosevelt), increased the hourly minimum wage by $1.25 an hour, and introduced new federal grants for non-segregated schools while discontinuing busing schemes nationwide. Partially to pay for this, he gradually reduced troop deployments in South Vietnam and funding to the war, as even by the time he took office in January 1969 it was clear the North Vietnamese had the edge.

As a result of these programs, which were applauded by liberals despite the fierce objections of conservatives, the Democrats did not suffer particularly sizeable losses in the 1970 midterms, losing 3 seats in the Senate and a dozen in the House but no more. As a result of Jackson's popularity, there was little enthusiasm in the Republican ranks to challenge him in 1972. Except, that is, from one quarter of it.

The main figure running for the Republican nomination in 1972 was Arizona Congressman and Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee John Rhodes, an outspoken conservative who criticized Jackson for 'government wastage' and aggressively attacked him as a 'socialist'. He saw off a few more moderate challengers like George W. Romney and Gerald Ford, but his campaign was stifled almost instantly when Jackson announced a spending increase to American forces in South Vietnam and famously quipped at a press conference, 'For a socialist, I'm awfully keen on warring with communism'.

Rhodes' choice of Hawaii Senator Hiram Fong as his running mate also did little to ingratiate moderates to his ticket, as despite Fong's potential status as the first Asian-American Vice President, he was also an avowed conservative who had voted against the Civil Rights Act 7 years prior. Due to Jackson's sizeable poll leads, no debates were organized for Rhodes to really raise his profile, and his campaign remained fairly insular.

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Jackson/Symington (Democratic): 516 EVs, 60.7%
Rhodes/Fong (Republican): 21 EVs, 36.6%

Jackson won the election in a blowout, with all but five states backing his re-election, winning the popular vote by almost as big a margin as Nixon had eight years prior and winning seven more electoral votes (it would have been eight were it not for a faithless elector in Virginia). He also surprised many pundits both by becoming the first Democrat ever to win the District of Colombia, which turned against the Republicans due to their ardently conservative candidate, and the first Democrat in 120 years to win Maine, traditionally one of the most ardently Republican states in the nation, something no Democrat since has achieved.

Jackson's enormous victory, however, meant he would be President during perhaps one of the most tumultuous times one could be elected to the office.
 
The Elephant & The Bull Moose: 1968 and 1972

1976

After his landside re-election, Jackson's hawkish reputation soon landed him in hot water. During 1973, he made it clear the US government would be further rolling back their forces in Vietnam, as his advisors had begun to see the odds of a South Vietnamese victory as increasingly remote, and after the US backed Israel during the Yom Kippur War, the Arab states issued an oil embargo that severely affected Western countries, and Jackson's solution to start drilling for oil in Alaska was met with outrage from native American groups in the state. The conflicts between blue-collar voters and native American activists in the state did not exactly make for good publicity for the Democrats, and predictably, the Republicans enjoyed a sizeable wave in 1974, slashing the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate significantly.

Undeterred, Jackson tried to gain good publicity for himself during his final two years, most notably by making moderate cuts to certain Great Society programs to placate conservatives and by announcing the so-called Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional measure designed to outlaw discrimination by businesses against people on the basis of gender, to encourage the support of liberals. These actually worked out fairly well for him and did improve his approval ratings somewhat, though many Democrats of both stripes still held his shifting on major issues, especially in terms of international relations, against him.

The 1976 Democratic primaries were to prove particularly contentious, especially as under Jackson the party had finally democratized the system by prioritizing the primaries rather than allowing party bosses to control the nomination. However, this system effectively allowed the different wings of the party to go all-out against each other, with moderates like Nebraska Governor Jim Exon and Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen going head-to-head with liberals like South Dakota Senator George McGovern and the eventual winner, former Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, who managed to utilize the support of fellow Oklahoman and ex-Speaker of the House Carl Albert to propel his Presidential bid as well as capitalizing on his unexpectedly strong early performance in the Iowa caucus and the man-of-the-people image he cultivated by campaigning from an RV and by stressing his support for the positive elements of the Great Society programs. For his running mate, to balance the ticket he went with Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp, who was fairly well-liked in his home state for his institution of a no-deductions income tax and his role in the recovery efforts after Hurricane Agnes.

On the Republican side, one might have expected them to be seeking a candidate who would capitalize on the backlash to Jackson by going heavily against the Great Society, but outside the conservative wing of the party most were very wary of associating themselves with the Rhodes disaster of four years prior. As a result, the nominee to come out on top was viewed by some as going dramatically the other way- Senator Jacob Javits of New York, who not only achieved positive attention for his much more amenable stances on Great Society programs but ingratiated himself to the party's right when, after winning the New Hampshire primary, he gave a speech asserting the need for unity despite ideological differences in the Republican party, and promised he would seek a more right-wing running mate than himself. This was a promise he kept, picking Kansas Senator Bob Dole, a senior conservative-leaning member of the Republican minority in the Senate, when he won the primary despite challenges from conservatives like Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes and former Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska.

In the general election, Harris ran a campaign mostly focused on warning Southern voters of the risks that a Javits presidency would put on the achievements of the Great Society (despite Javits' support for most of its measures) and reaffirmed his support for minority rights, trying to court native American and non-white voters in states like the Dakotas, New Mexico and especially across the South. Javits, on the other hand, courted northern and western voters, stressing his bipartisanship and running on the slogan, 'A More Efficient America'.

In the end, this slogan proved fitting, as Javits managed to more efficiently unite the wings of his party than did Harris.

genusmap.php


Javits/Dole (Republican): 349 EVs, 52.1%
Harris/Shapp (Democratic): 189 EVs, 47.4%


The race was definitely close, but Javits managed to court a sizeable contingent of liberal and moderate voters without alienating conservatives too much, while Harris did well across the South and in states with sizeable minority populations, but had less success elsewhere, especially with his underperforming in the Northeast besides Pennsylvania. Effectively, most voters were fairly satisfied with the Great Society, but wanted new leadership in charge of it, and Harris did not really represent what they wanted from it.

Four years later, a very different situation would arise, and instead of both parties catering to it, now both parties would be fundamentally opposed to it.

*

1980

The last four years of the 1970s proved to be particularly difficult ones, especially for President Javits. While he was able to continue building support for the Equal Rights Amendment, getting it passed with bipartisan approval by 1979, the economy continued to stay fairly stagnant. While Javits and liberal members of Congress disputed arguments that this was due to overspending for the Great Society, most famously in Javits' 'ups and downs' speech where he explained his plans to cushion the impact of the recession without overspending on public services or slashing tax rates for businesses.

However, this centrist move angered both left-leaning voters who wanted greater public spending and conservatives for denouncing the free market economics they wanted to embrace. To make matters worse for the President, in November 1979 a hostage situation initiated by Iran's new ruler Ayatollah Khomeini saw 52 American diplomats and citizens held hostage by the Iranian government. As a result of these problems, the popular Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who had succeeded Jesse Unruh in 1978, announced he would be primarying Javits come 1980.

Despite Reagan's aggressive campaign, outside his home state he was best known as 'that actor who was in a movie with a chimp in the 1950s', and this profile would prove his downfall. Javits won renomination with 56.3% of the vote to 41.5% for Reagan after the primaries. Despite this, Reagan decided to run as an independent nominee, and recruited Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky as his running mate.

On the Democratic side, meanwhile, another pitched battle between liberals and conservatives was ensuing. The two main figures seeking the nomination were Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, the darling of the party's left, and Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia. The two engaged in aggressive mudslinging, with Kennedy criticizing Byrd's record of voting against civil rights and other such issues and Byrd pointing to personal scandals associated with Kennedy and his family, like his older brother's alliance with George Wallace and the Chappaquiddick scandal of 1969. In the end, Kennedy just about won out, and to avoid upsetting Southerners disappointed at Byrd's defeat he chose a Southern moderate, Governor George Busbee of Georgia, to be his running mate.

While Kennedy and Javits initially fought an aggressive campaign, with Kennedy criticizing Javits for his complicity in the recession and for the failure of the hostage situation and Javits claiming Kennedy would not be able to handle the complexities of getting America out of a recession, they both mostly ignored Reagan. The California Governor capitalized on this by playing up to his status as a dark horse; he famously held a rally in San Francisco, declaring that 'even in a city as liberal as this, there are clearly many people unhappy with the liberal consensus our government has fostered upon us'. By July 1980, he looked set to win almost 20% of the vote, and as a result he demanded that he be included in the debates.

Ironically, these debates were what really stopped the momentum of his campaign. While Javits and Kennedy both made an effort to be more civil to each other, Reagan came off as an ideological firebrand, and when the moderator asked what he thought of the view that his tax cuts would funnel money up to the rich and hurt poor people already suffering in the recession, he stumbled badly on the question, outlining his theory that wealth would 'trickle down', which Kennedy rebuked by asking, 'How do you know rich people will just give that extra money away out of their own goodwill?'

As a result of the debates, and the hostage situation continuing, the general consensus by election day was that the Republican vote was too split to allow for anything but a Kennedy victory. This consensus was wrong.


genusmap.php

Javits/Dole (Republican): 277 EVs, 39.3%
Kennedy/Busbee (Democratic): 260 EVs, 39.5%
Reagan/Zorinsky (Independent): 1 EV, 18.8%


Against all odds, Javits just barely won a second term, despite losing the popular vote by 0.2%. Democrats and Reagan supporters were outraged at the result, and the latter were even more dismayed that (despite coming extremely close in a handful of states, most notably California, Nebraska and New Hampshire, and overtaking Kennedy in nine states and Javits in six) their preferred candidate had not won any states (though a faithless elector in Washington gave Reagan a single electoral vote). Since the vote in Ohio and Missouri was so close, the Kennedy campaign called for recounts in both states, although in late November both were concluded in favour of Javits and Kennedy conceded.

Reagan did not take his defeat so well, vowing to run for the Republican nomination in four years and secure the support of the party for his ideals. In four years time, however, the US would be a very different place.
 
1968

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Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN)/Edmund Muskie (D-ME) 361 EV (25,627,484 PV, 44%)

Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)/John Tower (R-TX) 121 EV (22,808,912 PV, 39%)
George Wallace (AIP-AL)/Curtis Lemay (AIP-TN) 56 EV (9,635,501 PV, 16%)
 
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Mark1878

Donor
1968



Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN)/Edmund Muskie (D-ME) 361 EV (25,627,484 PV, 44%)

Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)/John Tower (R-TX) 121 EV (25,808,912 PV, 39%)
George Wallace (AIP-AL)/Curtis Lemay (AIP-TN) 56 EV (9,635,501 PV, 16%)

How does the higher pv give a lower percentage?
 
The Elephant & The Bull Moose: 1976 and 1980

1984

Javits had occasionally compared himself to Teddy Roosevelt during his first election campaign. But as he began his second term, he would end up having a particularly unfortunate event in common with Roosevelt; on March 30th, 1981, he was shot by an insane and obsessive man named John Hinkley Jr. in Washington D.C. A week later, Javits died of the health complications, becoming the third President to be assassinated in the 20th century. Politicians across the political spectrum offered their condolences, but a peaceful atmosphere could not be sustained for long; when Speaker of the House Tipp O'Neill proposed an expansion of background checks for gun owners to try and prevent any future incidents, newly inaugurated President Dole vetoed it without consideration, and a fierce battle- some called it a 'culture war'- emerged, with conservative activists like Phyllis Schlafly bemoaning recent political programs and policies like the legalization of abortion after Roe V Wade, the abolition of the death penalty and the failure of the Gregg V Georgia case in overturning its abolition, the Twenty-seventh Amendment (which the Equal Rights Amendment had become after it passed) and especially the Great Society and its welfarism as 'degrading American values and freedoms'.

However, the fact these conservatives were allying themselves with blocking background checks to prevent shooters murdering people- O'Neill even clarified even though he disliked guns that he would not push for any full bans to ensure Second Amendment rights were respected- did not do their public image any good, and Dole received sizeable backlash for blocking the bill. Eventually it was passed, albeit amended to allow states to decide the conditions by which one would fail a background check, but the fiasco damaged Dole's credibility. His attempt at damage control didn't go much better; he managed to pass a sizeable reduction in the top rate of tax in the autumn of 1981 with the help of conservative Democrats... and immediately deepened the recession, especially when an attempt to slash public spending was narrowly blocked by Congress. Predictably, all of this led to the Republicans losing significant ground in the 1982 midterms.

On top of all this, Dole's foreign policy had not been well-recieved either. When he stumbled badly during the Falklands crisis, hesitating when he was torn between backing either the UK or Argentina, two of America's allies, he came off as incompetent and out of his depth, and his aggressive stance against Soviet Presidents Brezhnev and Andropov was seen as merely putting on an act.
Unsurprisingly, in the light of all this he had a fight on his hands to even get re-nominated in 1984. In fact, the Republicans might well have dumped Dole if he had been faced by a politician who wasn't Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the perfect metaphor for the trouble facing the Republicans was when, in the Nevada primary, both Dole and Reagan lost to the 'None Of These Candidates' option, which got a small plurality of 38% of the vote. But in the end, Reagan's 1980 campaign and constant gaffes (most infamously his proposal of a program that would use lasers to destroy Soviet missiles, nicknamed Star Wars by his critics) meant he was always going to have a mountain to climb to win the nomination.

Meanwhile, the Democrats seeking the nomination were mostly to Dole's left, with the main contenders being Senator John Glenn of Ohio, Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, and the somewhat more conservative alternative, Governor Mark White of Texas. Due to his name recognition as one of the first astronauts and his popularity with the party's rank-and-file, Glenn won out, and it seemed probable that Dole would lose his bid for a second term in a landslide.

Then came the candidates' selections of running mates. Dole's choice was canny- as a carrot to conservative voters who wanted someone less infamous than Reagan on the ticket and expected the moderate Dole to pick a liberal to balance the ticket, Dole instead chose Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, who had been elected four years prior against a split vote. The decision was a fairly obvious move to try and appeal to southern Democrats reluctant to vote for a liberal Democrat at the top of the ballot. Suddenly, for the first time in 108 years, the South was seriously in play.
To try and stifle the move, Glenn also chose a Southerner for his ticket, namely Governor Martha Layne Collins of Kentucky, a move also intended to placate the fears of liberals by ensuring his ticket had the first woman ever nominated by a major party. Collins, a moderate Democrat who nonetheless had committed to supporting education funding increases in her state, went over fairly well with the party's delegates and her acceptance speech garnered a decent amount of positive attention for the ticket.

When the debates rolled around, however, Dole suffered badly. Glenn hammered him on issues such as foreign policy and criticized him for 'caving in to Reaganism', referring to his pick of the fairly conservative Cochran for his running mate. The Republicans got off even worse in the Vice Presidential debates, with Cochran attacking Collins several times in ways which many voters considered sexist, and the second debate saw Dole make a remark about 'building a bridge to the past' to comfort voters, which Glenn famously rebuked by declaring, 'We need a bridge to the future more than a bridge to the past, Mr President.'


genusmap.php

Glenn/Collins (Democratic): 392 EVs, 53.2%
Dole/Cochran (Republican): 146 EVs, 45.6%

Dole's gamble had not paid off; while his defeat was not as huge a landslide as one might have expected, it was still a pretty resounding loss, and even his strategy of picking Cochran had given limited reward, with only Cochran's home state of Mississippi flipping Republican against the trend and even then quite narrowly. To add insult to injury, his open Senate seat flipped back to the Democrats. Needless to say, Dole was leaving office quite a pariah to the Republicans, and Glenn entering it a fairly well-liked Democrat, especially as the first in 8 years.

By 1988, the situation would be practically reversed.
 
The Elephant & The Bull Moose: 1984

1988

The Glenn administration had a fairly mundane start, with Glenn managing to establish his credentials on the world stage by establishing an authoritative stance over President Gorbachev, the new Soviet leader, while welcoming the President's desire for reform of his country to cool the tensions of the Cold War. Furthermore, he abandoned the tax cuts to the rich Dole had put in place, oversaw an expansion of nuclear energy programs to provide more environmentally friendly power after the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer became major news, and had a fairly sensitive approach to the brewing AIDS crisis (though he said little in the way of support for the non-heterosexual individuals involved with the crisis, he did provide funding to sex education and medical research to help alleviate the problem).

As 1986 rolled round, though, things started going wrong. On the 28th January, the Challenger space shuttle exploded in flight just over a minute after launch, killing all seven crew members. The disaster proved a particularly harrowing one to the President due to his background, who almost broke down when speaking about it at a press conference a few days later. Just under three months later, on the 26th April, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in Kiev. While these two disasters obviously had little to do with the policy agenda of Glenn, the stigma they created was significant, and Glenn shelved his nuclear programs after Chernobyl. Unfortunately for him, this constituted a sizeable waste of government funds, and the Republicans were able to capitalize on the sombre public mood much more tactfully than they had in 1981, retaking both Houses and eleven governorships in the 1986 midterms.

1987 wasn't much better for Glenn. Not only did the farm crisis intensify, increasing anger towards the government (especially when Glenn criticized farmers in the Midwest for refusing federal grants, not understanding that many of them saw such a move as condescending), he landed himself in hot water late in the year after the 'Black Monday' stock market crash dented the economy. Worse still, it emerged he had pushed for the federal government to provide a bailout grant to Charles H. Keating Jr., the chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, and that Keating had financed several of Glenn's campaigns, including his first Presidential run. The grant was rescinded, Lincoln went under and Glenn suffered a sizeable embarrassment going into his re-election in 1988.

Having lost in 1984 on a fairly conservative ticket, the liberals and moderates in the Republican Party were emboldened. The main figureheads to achieve prominence in the primaries were New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, who had been re-elected in a landslide in 1985 and overseen a sizeable improvement in the economy of his home state; Governor Mike Hayden of Kansas, who had built up a positive reputation by personally meeting with voters in rural communities, an unusual strategy he carried over from his gubernatorial primary and which garnered him sizeable media attention; and the more moderate Senator George Bush of Connecticut, who had some stigma as part of a wealthy Republican New England family but brought with him a sizeable war chest. Kean, however, was the one to come out on top, making a point of Hayden's property tax reappraisal raising taxes on many citizens in his state and making fun of Bush as 'having a Senate seat worn in by his papa'. Kean's running mate, the Senate Majority Whip Alan Simpson, was a moderate conservative seen as inoffensive to centrist voters and comforting to conservatives not fond of Kean.

By making New Jersey a centerpiece of his campaign, and contrasting it with Glenn's difficult first term, Kean was able to come off as more competent, especially with his famous promise at the Republican convention in Dallas that he would provide 'no more bailouts, no more taxes, no more waste'. And with moderates and conservatives basically on board with Kean while liberals were disillusioned with Glenn, there was only one way the election could go.


genusmap.php

Kean/Simpson (Republican): 392 EVs, 53.0%
Glenn/Collins (Democratic): 146 EVs, 44.7%


In the end, the electoral vote was exactly the reverse of 1984, and Glenn did slightly worse than Dole had four years prior in the popular vote. The Democrats were pushed back to their main strongholds in 1988, with only the bulk of the South, Alaska, Massachusetts and Rhode Island comfortably backing Glenn, though he did win Kentucky and Ohio thanks to his and his running mate's home state advantages. Kean did so well he managed to win four former Confederate states, most of the Northeast, and even came close to snatching heavily-Democratic Minnesota thanks to anger at the Democrats over the farm crisis. That same trend gave him towering margins in the rural West, with only New Mexico and California voting for him by less than 10 points.

As one might assume from the mandate he got, Kean was entering the White House on a wave of optimism. And as always seems to be the way, that optimism would not last.
 
1976 with 1972 PV (R+23.15%):


genusmap.php


Ford performs better than Nixon did in nearly every non-Southern state, while (of course) dramatically underperforming him in the South. the electoral college is 517-21 for Ford. I'm also working on a county map for this which should be done fairly soon.
 
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