AHC: A dems gets more than 400 electoral votes

samcster94

Banned
I Know there is a similar thread of this, but mine is less time constrained than theirs and my demands are smaller. What can be done to get this kind of margin at any point with a POD of 1980(which goes as it does OTL)???
 
Short of orchestrating a magical Trump meltdown in 2016 (and the question of how to do that is incredibly loaded), Bill Clinton is your only option here.

Obama in 2008 got 365. Missouri (0.13%) and Montana (2.26%) get him to 379. Georgia (5.21%) gets him to 394, and South Dakota (8.41%) to 397. The tipping point to get to 400 is Arizona at 8.52%. In 2012, Obama's 400 tipping point would have been Indiana at 11.2% (along the way, picking up North Carolina, Nebraska's 2nd CD, Georgia, Arizona, Missouri, and South Carolina).
 
A number of ideas:

1) Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton came very close twice in 1992 and 1996 so I don't see why he couldn't pull it off with some minor butterflies.
2) McCain picks Lieberman for his VP, conservatives don't show up to vote, and Bob Barr runs a less terrible campaign that clears 2% and does especially well in SC and GA. Obama wins Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Georgia
3) Obama v Santorum v Johnson. Johnson picks a better VP (Goldwater Jr went to Johnson Rallies, Roemer endorsed him) and Santorum reacts to Todd Aikin and Richard Mourdock very poorly. The Santorum meltdown crossed with a viable third-party Tea Partyesque ticket siphoning votes from Santorum leads to Obama sweeping over 400.
4) Biden-Booker is the 2016 Democratic ticket. Biden plays strong to the rust belt, responds well to Trump's attacks, and Booker boosts youth and African-American turnout. They sweep past 400 electoral votes.
 
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Deleted member 109445

Hillary 2008 or a more blue dog Hillary 2016

Bill Clinton if the Republicans mess up and nominate Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot doesn't run in 1992 or 1996
 
Ford or Reagan win in a narrow 76 win, things got much like OTL and added to long term incumbency whichever Dem gets the ticket wins in a landslide
 
Jerry Brown wins 1992 Democratic nomination, after Perot drops the out the first he decides to endorse Brown and not reenter the race (they were very similar economically) and the majority of Perot voters vote Brown
 

Wallet

Banned
Obama picks Hillary Clinton for VP.

16% of John McCain's vote came from Hillary Clinton voters who were unhappy she wasn't the nomaniee. Just half of them staying Democratic is a another huge boost for Obama that probably gets Obama to 400.

Maybe Mitt Romney is the nomanie. A businessman running during a recession caused by big buisnness. The ads write themeslves,
 
A number of ideas:

1) Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton came very close twice in 1992 and 1996 so I don't see why he couldn't pull it off with some minor butterflies.
2) McCain picks Lieberman for his VP, conservatives don't show up to vote, and Bob Barr runs a less terrible campaign that clears 2% and does especially well in SC and GA. Obama wins Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Georgia
3) Obama v Santorum v Johnson. Johnson picks a better VP (Goldwater Jr went to Johnson Rallies, Roemer endorsed him) and Santorum reacts to Todd Aikin and Richard Mourdock very poorly. The Santorum meltdown crossed with a viable third-party Tea Partyesque ticket siphoning votes from Santorum leads to Obama sweeping over 400.
4) Biden-Booker is the 2016 Democratic ticket. Biden plays strong to the rust belt, responds well to Trump's attacks, and Booker boosts youth and African-American turnout. They sweep past 400 electoral votes.

I think 2) 3) and 4) are wrong. By 2008-2016 American politics had just become too polarized for any Democrat--or Republican--to get 400 electoral votes. Conservatives would have swallowed McCain-Lieberman to defeat Obama, likewise enough mainstream Republicans would support Santorum, and Trump was never going to be wiped out.

To show how things have changed: In 1992, there were only four states where Bill Clinton was more than ten points behind GHW Bush--and none where he was more than 17.18 points behind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1992 (I don't think this is mainly because of Perot, who, as exit pols showed, took votes from both major party candidates.) By 2008, there were fifteen states which Obama lost by at least 11.77 points. If McCain just carried all those states which in OTL he carried by 8.41 points or more, Obama would be short of 400. (Moreover, Lieberman might gain as well as lose votes for McCain.)

I think it's misleading to think the reason third party candidates have done poorly lately is that they ran poor campaigns. They may indeed have run poor campaigns, but that's not the main reason. The main reason is that so many people think that the major party that they dislike is not only misguided but evil, and therefore defeating it must be the first prioirity.
 
If Trump hadn't been nominated in 2016, I am sure that plenty of people here would say that any Democrat could have gotten 400 electoral votes against him...
 
Obama picks Hillary Clinton for VP.

16% of John McCain's vote came from Hillary Clinton voters who were unhappy she wasn't the nomaniee. Just half of them staying Democratic is a another huge boost for Obama that probably gets Obama to 400.

Maybe Mitt Romney is the nomanie. A businessman running during a recession caused by big buisnness. The ads write themeslves,

(1) I doubt that all the people who voted for HRC in the Democratic primaries would have voted Democratic in November even if she were the presidential nominee. Some of them were simply motivated by a desire to stop Obama. (That people who vote for candidate X in a primary vote for the other party against X in November is not at all unusual. Polls in West Virginia in 2016 showed not only that a plurality of Sanders voters in the primary would vote for Trump if the Democrats nominated HRC--no surprise there--but that many of them would voter for Trump even if the Democrats nominated Sanders!)

(2) Although Obama's poor showing in Appalachia in 2008 is often blamed on HRC supporters, the fact is that the Democratic presidential percentage in Appalachia has declined in every election since 2000 compared with the previous election. This suggests that something is going on deeper than individual candidates.

(3) Even if we are to assume that a large percentage of McCain voters would have voted for HRC for president (something different from whether they told exit pollsters they would do so) I doubt that more than a small percentage of those who voted for McCain would have been appeased by HRC being nominated for vice president. The literature on the minimal effect of vice-presidential choices on election outcomes is extensive--some scholars even doubt whether VP candidates help the ticket in their own states, unless it is a small state.

(4) There are even some Obama voters who in 2008 might not have voted for him if HRC had been his running mate. We must remember that when the exit polls were taken (on Election Day 2008) there had been nothing but praise for HRC from both parties for months, because both parties were anxious to get the votes of her supporters. This may mean that the exit polls exaggerated her popularity and understated her negatives.

(5) Finally, let's grant that somehow just having HRC on the ticket would increase Obama's margin (or diminish McCain's) by eight percentage points in each state. This is probably a far greater effect than any vice-presidential candidate has ever had even in his or her own state, but let's somehow assume it happens. Even that would not be enough to get Obama 400 electoral votes. It is plausible that it would have led to Obama carrying Missouri and Montana--maybe even Georgia, though I think that given the racial polarization in that state, it would be hard for Obama to overcome McCain's 5.21 point margin there. But those three states only get Obama up to 394 votes. Even SD (8.41 point McCain margin) only gets you up to 397 votes. The next closest state is AZ, which McCain won by 8.52%. Somehow I don't think a different running mate or anything else could enable Obama to beat McCain in what was not only a Republican state but his home state.

(6) To turn to Romney, he did about as well as a Republican candidate could have been expected to do in 2012 and I believe that this would also have been true in 2008, meaning he would have done about as well as McCain. Yes, some people would resent Bain Capital, but others would believe that a successful businessman is exactly what we need to solve the country's economic problems. (IIRC, some candidate was fairly successful with that theme in 2016...) I think Romney might well have lost MO, but that is about it, so far as states McCain carried. (OK, maybe Montana, too.)

IMO threads like this show a tendency to overestimate the number of "persuadable" voters. They can certainly make a difference in a close election like 2016, but there are really not as many of them as some people imagine. Even in 2016, there wasn't that much turnover from the previous election: 9.2 percent of Obama voters supported Trump and 5.4 percent of Mitt Romney voters supported Clinton--not atypically high percentages. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...5d06bc-7920-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html
 
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Bill Clinton picks Ann Richards as VP and takes Texas in 1992. Done.

There is some controversy as to how much vice-presidential candidates help the ticket in their home states. Some have even claimed that there is no home-state advantage at all, except in small states: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-vice-president-qa-20160702-snap-htmlstory.html For a contrary conclusion, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-in-their-home-states/?utm_term=.9824e4bd2fa7 "Overall, we find that vice presidential candidates add an average of 2.7 points in their home states. In crucial swing states, they added 2.2 points." But even that makes it questionable that Richards would be enough to overocome Bush's 3.48 point lead in Texas in 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1992
 
Hillary 2008 or a more blue dog Hillary 2016

Bill Clinton if the Republicans mess up and nominate Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot doesn't run in 1992 or 1996

(1) I do not believe that HRC would have gotten 400 electoral votes in 2008 (let alone 2016).

Now, it is true that exit polls in November 2008 showed that HRC would have done better against McCain than Obama did. "52 percent said they would have backed the former Democratic candidate; 41 percent would have voted for McCain, wider than Obama's 7-point margin over McCain." http://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-those-clinton-mccain-crossover-voters/

Yet that does not necessarily mean that HRC would in fact have won by four percentage points more than Obama. For in the past few months before the poll, nobody had attacked HRC at all--the Democrats of course wanted to be sure her supporters would back Obama, while the Republicans wanted to attract her supporters to McCain. HRC as an actual candidate would have had to undergo many more attacks.

But let's indeed assume that HRC beats McCain by eleven points (four points better than Obama did). That still wouldn't get her 400 electoral cotes. The only states which McCain lost by less than five points were MO and MT, with a total of 14 electoral votes. Together with the states Obama carried, that still gives her only 379 electoral votes. But let's say that she somehow also carries GA, which McCain won by 5.21%. (I don't for a moment think she would do that. GA has a large African American vote, and many African American voters might be angry about Obama being denied the nomination, or at least insufficiently motivated to go to the polls.) That would give her another 15 electoral votes, but that's still only 394. The next closest state is SD, which McCain won by 8.41%. There is no reason at all to assume that HRC would win that state, which since 1940 has gone Republican in every presidential election except 1964. But even if she wins it, she still has only 397 electoral cotes. And then we come to AZ which McCain won by 8.52 points and which is his home state...Sorry, I just don't see it.

The idea that a more "blue dog Hillary" can win 400 electoral votes in 2016 seems even more unfounded to me. Trump could have kept her below 400 electoral votes just by winning the states (including ME-02) where he won by nine points or more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016 And I'm not even sure what "blue dog" means here--by 2016 it is way too late for HRC to rebrand herself as a social conservative, and if she tried to do so, she could never have won the Democratic nomination. The Democrats had moved too far to the left for that. OTOH, if "blue dog" means economic conservative, one can actually argue that HRC was too much of one in OTL--e.g., the leaked speeches to Wall Street audiences...

(2) As for Bill Clinton, I agree he had a real chance in both 1992 and 1996--he just had to carry a few closely contested states. But I think there are much more plausible POD's for him to do this than the very unlikely prospect of the GOP nominating Buchanan in either 1992 or 1996. (Perot not running might do it--he drew votes from both major party candidates but even if he drew only a few more from Bush or Dole than from Clinton, that could be enough to change the results in some close states.)
 
Yeah, honestly, I doubt Clinton would do as well as Obama in 2008, even if Blue Dogs in a few upper south states wouldn't drop out: it's not just that African American and youth turnout would probably drop to Kerry levels (there *would* be resentment of the campaign that was run against Obama, which was moot by the time he was nominated) but her wing of the party was already tainted by support of the Iraq War.
 
I think 2) 3) and 4) are wrong. By 2008-2016 American politics had just become too polarized for any Democrat--or Republican--to get 400 electoral votes. Conservatives would have swallowed McCain-Lieberman to defeat Obama, likewise enough mainstream Republicans would support Santorum, and Trump was never going to be wiped out.

To show how things have changed: In 1992, there were only four states where Bill Clinton was more than ten points behind GHW Bush--and none where he was more than 17.18 points behind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1992 (I don't think this is mainly because of Perot, who, as exit pols showed, took votes from both major party candidates.) By 2008, there were fifteen states which Obama lost by at least 11.77 points. If McCain just carried all those states which in OTL he carried by 8.41 points or more, Obama would be short of 400. (Moreover, Lieberman might gain as well as lose votes for McCain.)

I think it's misleading to think the reason third party candidates have done poorly lately is that they ran poor campaigns. They may indeed have run poor campaigns, but that's not the main reason. The main reason is that so many people think that the major party that they dislike is not only misguided but evil, and therefore defeating it must be the first prioirity.

Gary Johnson in 2012 didn't even bother to think about asking Roemer to be VP and he had a 2.5 million dollar campaign. In 2016 he had a 10-11 million dollar campaign that was maybe a little bit better run than in 2012 but HRC spent 50 million going after him according to some reports (which in hindsight was pretty dumb considering Johnson and McMullin probably saved Minnesota and New Hampshire for her). Johnson polled up to 7-8% in 2012 and 13% in 2016, both campaigns never really getting that high in name-ID (Johnson never broke 30% name-ID pre-Aleppo). I'm not denying that as you approach the end of the race the numbers will drop (although in 2016 it oddly enough took 4-6 weeks longer than usual for Johnson's numbers to really start dropping below the 7-8% line) but it's a matter of "do better early, hold on to a large chunk of your base, do well by third party standards". I don't think a meltdown of one party's candidate is enough to break 400 in the hyper-partisan age. I think meltdown plus not-terrible third party candidacy is how you get past 400.


Obama was pretty close in 2008. Montana was a 2 point defeat and Missouri was .2%. Barr was from Georgia, so the idea of him campaigning not-crummily (a Barr-Gravel ticket maybe?) and spoiling McCain in that area where Obama lost by under 5 points (especially if Palin is not mobilizing folks) isn't that crazy. Alternatively Ron Paul could just run Libertarian with Barr or Goldwater Jr as his running mate.
Obama - Biden 53.4% (402)
McCain - Lieberman 43.2% (136)
Barr - Gravel 2.4% (0)

Santorum being the 2012 candidate, screwing up *two* abortion-related controversies (he endorsed Aikin after the legitimate rape comment - come on!) and losing the votes of abortion moderates or women to a Johnson-Goldwater/Roemer ticket as well as Obama isn't that nuts. If you throw something like Bob McDonnell being the VP, that's a complete meltdown of a ticket.
Obama - Biden 53.1% (402)
Santorum - McDonnell 41.2% (136)
Johnson - Goldwater 3.9% (0)


In 2016, after the Access Hollywood tape, Trump very effectively turned the discussion into an indictment of Hillary Clinton. Without the sordid background of the Clintons, I just can't see Donald Trump pulling such a thing against another candidate. Biden has the personality in which he could probably hit back against Trump bar-fight style. Biden could play well to the rust belt whereas Booker could boost black turnout. Plus Biden was just much less offensive than Clinton to a large swath of conservative Americans, so you'd see much less of that "we need to defeat Hillary" mentality there. Have Trump make a bad decision and pick Chris Christie for his VP (whom he considered rewarding for his loyalty with the role) and you've got a meltdown.
Biden - Booker 52.2% (474)
Trump - Christie 38.1% (61)
Johnson - Weld 7.27% (3) -Because Alaska doesn't care about normal politics at all
 
Gary Johnson in 2012 didn't even bother to think about asking Roemer to be VP and he had a 2.5 million dollar campaign. In 2016 he had a 10-11 million dollar campaign that was maybe a little bit better run than in 2012 but HRC spent 50 million going after him according to some reports (which in hindsight was pretty dumb considering Johnson and McMullin probably saved Minnesota and New Hampshire for her). Johnson polled up to 7-8% in 2012 and 13% in 2016, both campaigns never really getting that high in name-ID (Johnson never broke 30% name-ID pre-Aleppo). I'm not denying that as you approach the end of the race the numbers will drop (although in 2016 it oddly enough took 4-6 weeks longer than usual for Johnson's numbers to really start dropping below the 7-8% line) but it's a matter of "do better early, hold on to a large chunk of your base, do well by third party standards". I don't think a meltdown of one party's candidate is enough to break 400 in the hyper-partisan age. I think meltdown plus not-terrible third party candidacy is how you get past 400.


Obama was pretty close in 2008. Montana was a 2 point defeat and Missouri was .2%. Barr was from Georgia, so the idea of him campaigning not-crummily (a Barr-Gravel ticket maybe?) and spoiling McCain in that area where Obama lost by under 5 points (especially if Palin is not mobilizing folks) isn't that crazy. Alternatively Ron Paul could just run Libertarian with Barr or Goldwater Jr as his running mate.
Obama - Biden 53.4% (402)
McCain - Lieberman 43.2% (136)
Barr - Gravel 2.4% (0)

Santorum being the 2012 candidate, screwing up *two* abortion-related controversies (he endorsed Aikin after the legitimate rape comment - come on!) and losing the votes of abortion moderates or women to a Johnson-Goldwater/Roemer ticket as well as Obama isn't that nuts. If you throw something like Bob McDonnell being the VP, that's a complete meltdown of a ticket.
Obama - Biden 53.1% (402)
Santorum - McDonnell 41.2% (136)
Johnson - Goldwater 3.9% (0)


In 2016, after the Access Hollywood tape, Trump very effectively turned the discussion into an indictment of Hillary Clinton. Without the sordid background of the Clintons, I just can't see Donald Trump pulling such a thing against another candidate. Biden has the personality in which he could probably hit back against Trump bar-fight style. Biden could play well to the rust belt whereas Booker could boost black turnout. Plus Biden was just much less offensive than Clinton to a large swath of conservative Americans, so you'd see much less of that "we need to defeat Hillary" mentality there. Have Trump make a bad decision and pick Chris Christie for his VP (whom he considered rewarding for his loyalty with the role) and you've got a meltdown.
Biden - Booker 52.2% (474)
Trump - Christie 38.1% (61)
Johnson - Weld 7.27% (3) -Because Alaska doesn't care about normal politics at all

(1) I think you are exaggerating Barr's potential to change Georgia in 2008. He never had won office in Georgia as a whole (he lost--admittedly narrowly--to Paul Coverdell in the 1992 Senate primary), lost badly to John Linder in the 2002 congressional primary (despite an endorsement from the NRA), and in 2008 got only 0.73% in the state--not even his strongest showing in the nation (that was Indiana with 1.06%; he also got 0.73% in Utah) and not that much above his 0.4% in the US as a whole. Maybe with a better campaign he would have gotten 2% nationally and 2.5% in Georgia, but that wouldn't be nearly enough. As for, "without Palin, rural conservatives wouldn't have turned out for McCain" I doubt it (keeping Obama out of the White House would in the end be sufficient motivation) but even if true might be counterbalanced by a better showing for McCain in high-income Atlanta suburbs without her.

(2) Given conservative hatred of Obama in 2012, I can't see him winning a twelve point national margin against any Republican. As for Santorum's comments on Akin, his calling Akin a "good man" who made a "ridiculous statement" and who "didn't do a very good job in dealing with the problems that came from that statement, and he's suffering the consequences for it." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rick-santorum-akin-good-man-who-made-ridiculous-comment/ probably aren't that far from what most conservative Republicans thought. Santorum's position would hurt him with swing voters, but he would keep the base. Moreover, he might win some blue-collar workers who saw Romney as a heartless plutocrat. Would Santorum lose? Definitely. Would he do somewhat worse than Romney? Almost certainly. But the only state that Romney won that I see Santorum as likely to lose is NC. Even making the very dubious assumption that he would lose every state that Romney carried by less than ten points, that only gives Obama 387 electoral votes, and even if we give Obama Indiana as well (which Romney carried by 10.2 points), Obama still only has 398. The next closest states are SC (10.47) and MS (11.50) and if nothing else racial polarization makes it exceedingly unlikely Obama could win these states over any Republican. Even the Bill Clinton of 1992 lost SC by over eight points and the Bill Clinton of 1996 by over six points. (I also don't think McDonnell would particularly hurt the ticket, though I think Santorum was less likely to name him as a running mate than Romney was. McDonnell wasn't indicted until January 2014, and a controversy over the vice presidential candidate and gifts, until it actually reaches the stage of indictment, is hardly likely to change the minds of millions of voters for whom the big question is whether Obama should be returned to the White House.)

(3) I hate to comment at length on 2016 because it was so recent. I'll only say that I think that while IMO Biden would have done better than HRC, and would have won PA, MI, WI and probably FL (and the election) I just don't see him winning any of the states where Trump won by nine percent or more--and these states, by themselves, would be enough to keep the Democrats from winning 400 electoral votes. I think you vastly overestimate the number of votes that are actually in play. It is one thing to tell pollsters months before the election that you will vote for a third party candidate or won't vote for your own party's. It's a lot harder to actually act in that unorthodox a fashion when Election Day comes. (I'll go even further and say that I think third party candidates' showings in polls before autumn are junk, and should be disregarded--period. John Anderson was in the twenties, Ross Perot was actually going to win, a host of Libertarian candidates were in or near double digits, etc. Somehow, mysteriously, they all ran bad campaigns and did much worse in November. Quite a coincidence, right?)

I guess there is a more general disagreement between us. There hasn't been a single presidential race since 1984 won by more than 8.5 points (victories by more than that used to be common--1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984). I just don't think this is a coincidence . I think political polarization has reached such a point that true landslides just are not possible any more.
 
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