AHC: Electoral College outcomes like this

[ersatz-york]

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to craft a scenario with a POD no earlier than 1975 where modern (2000s onwards) Generic R vs Generic D elections generally look like this:

Close R:

Generic R: 278 EV
Generic D: 260 EV

Convincing R:

Generic R: 314 EV
Generic D: 224 EV

R-slide:

Generic R: 404 EV
Generic D: 134 EV

Close D:

Generic D: 289 EV
Generic R: 249 EV

Convincing D:

Generic D: 319 EV
Generic R: 219 EV

D-slide:

Generic D: 399 EV
Generic R: 139 EV

 

[Jonathan]

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to craft a scenario with a POD no earlier than 1975 where Generic R vs Generic D elections generally look like this:

R-slide:

Generic R: 404 EV
Generic D: 134 EV

This is the 1980 Presidential election, where Democratic and Incumbent Presidential candidate Edward Kennedy is beaten by Republican Candidate and former California Governor, Ronald Reagan.

(Or is this to easy?)

 

[ersatz-york]

This is the 1980 Presidential election, where Democratic and Incumbent Presidential candidate Edward Kennedy is beaten by Republican Candidate and former California Governor, Ronald Reagan.

(Or is this to easy?)

Well, I suppose I should have mentioned that the maps are set in a modern context (even if the POD is sometime in the '70s), but I suppose that description works for 1980.

 

[Jonathan]

Well, I suppose I should have mentioned that the maps are set in a modern context (even if the POD is sometime in the '70s), but I suppose that description works for 1980.

I was thinking the votes of each state was different I will try again for an alternative 2016 results.

 

[Indicus]

This is incredibly easy: the Democratic Party remains pro-coal, and thus keeps West Virginia. The rest of the map works quite well as a present-day map, other than New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Oregon being a little more red than OTL, Iowa and Missouri being a little more blue than OTL, and California and Washington being a lot more red than OTL. New Mexico is easily explained by a lower Hispanic population. Iowa can be explained by the Republicans being anti-ethanol. Oregon could have gone Republican in 2000 thanks to Nader, so the more pro-coal Democratic Party enraged the green wing of the Democratic Party. This also explains the redder Wisconsin, and the more pro-coal Democrats would have also gained support from coal workers in Missouri, which nearly went for Obama in 2008. I'm guessing the redder states of California and Washington are because of angered pro-environmental Democrats as well.

So, long story short, it's all because the Democrats are not environmentally-minded.

 

[glenn67]

It is interesting that in all the pro Democratic scenarios, the Democrat wins both California and West Virginia.

 

[Sabot Cat]

This is incredibly easy: the Democratic Party remains pro-coal, and thus keeps West Virginia. The rest of the map works quite well as a present-day map, other than New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Oregon being a little more red than OTL, Iowa and Missouri being a little more blue than OTL, and California and Washington being a lot more red than OTL. New Mexico is easily explained by a lower Hispanic population. Iowa can be explained by the Republicans being anti-ethanol. Oregon could have gone Republican in 2000 thanks to Nader, so the more pro-coal Democratic Party enraged the green wing of the Democratic Party. This also explains the redder Wisconsin, and the more pro-coal Democrats would have also gained support from coal workers in Missouri, which nearly went for Obama in 2008. I'm guessing the redder states of California and Washington are because of angered pro-environmental Democrats as well.

So, long story short, it's all because the Democrats are not environmentally-minded.

My POD to accomplish that would be the early 1990s recession starting in 1989 and not 1990, thus ending in 1992 instead of 1993. George H.W. Bush is overwhelmingly re-elected and sticks to his guns on environmentalist issues, while a majority of the public (including Republicans) stay environmentalist with no partisan gap emerging on the issue (1, 2).

 

[Indicus]

My POD to accomplish that would be the early 1990s recession starting in 1989 and not 1990, thus ending in 1992 instead of 1993. George H.W. Bush is overwhelmingly re-elected and sticks to his guns on environmentalist issues, while a majority of the public (including Republicans) stay environmentalist with no partisan gap emerging (1, 2).

Won't be enough, I think, for him to be overwhelmingly reelected. The 1990s recession did lead Clinton to lose Congress in 1994, after all. However, he may be able to win with such a POD, and he'd likely sideline Gingrich and Co., making Hispanics more red. And that would help make California and Co. more red.

And perhaps environmental achievements would make the GOP more environmentalist.

 

[ersatz-york]

Good answers everyone; in general I was aiming for a GOP that was stronger in the West and Midwest at the expense of some states in the East and South.(though in general the map is more favorable to the GOP than in OTL)

I was thinking that the GOP would become stronger in the West by never having Prop 187 or similar legislation passed in California, thus allowing the GOP to stay competitive there and never paving the way for similar legislation all along the Sun Belt.

In general, this GOP does better with Hispanics and both parties are more moderate and ideologically diverse across the board. At the center of the GOP playbook is the "Sun Belt Strategy" with it's roots in [a successful Bush the Elder campaign in 1980?] to win over moderate suburbanites in the rapidly growing swath of the country from which the strategy takes its name.

 

[Indicus]

Good answers everyone; in general I was aiming for a GOP that was stronger in the West and Midwest at the expense of some states in the East and South.(though in general the map is more favorable to the GOP than in OTL)

I was thinking that the GOP would become stronger in the West by never having Prop 187 or similar legislation passed in California, thus allowing the GOP to stay competitive there and never paving the way for similar legislation all along the Sun Belt.

In general, this GOP does better with Hispanics and both parties are more moderate and ideologically diverse across the board. At the center of the GOP playbook is the "Sun Belt Strategy" with it's roots in [a successful Bush the Elder campaign in 1980?] to win over moderate suburbanites in the rapidly growing swath of the country from which the strategy takes its name.

I guess that could work, other than West Virginia. What was your thought behind blue-leaning WV?

 

[ersatz-york]

I guess that could work, other than West Virginia. What was your thought behind blue-leaning WV?

I was thinking that the GOP's primary concentration on suburban voters in the Sum Belt would weaken it in Appalachia; I might want to go back and make KY and TN Democrat or a lighter shade of GOP.

I don't think I want to make the Democrats economically populist or anything, but that might have to be done to explain Democratic WV.

Here's a question: How would a mainstream Democrat who is economically and socially liberal (also protectionist, I suspect TTL's GOP would be the party of free trade) and at least ambivalent on coal do in WV?

If the answer is "well", then that would explain it.

If it's "mediocre and poorly", it may be the case that TTL's West Virginia (and probably Appalachia as a whole) isn't really catered to that well by TTL's main two parties, and so it votes Dem/GOP/whatever mainly out of "tradition" (is this a significant enough thing to work?) but turnout is low and it would be fertile ground for a populist.

To add on to my previous post, TTL's GOP is more socially moderate (no Reagan '80 = weaker Christian Right/Moral Majority?) than that of OTL, but is still to the right of the Democrats, especially on guns and whatnot.

I think I may need to re-do the South as a whole, once I look at the urban-suburban-rural divides for the various states.

 

[Indicus]

Here's a question: How would a mainstream Democrat who is economically and socially liberal (also protectionist, I suspect TTL's GOP would be the party of free trade) and at least ambivalent on coal do in WV?

I think it depends on the Republican views on the environment. As @Sabot Cat shows, the GOP was a lot more environmentalist in the 1990s. If both parties have similar views on the environment, West Virginia and quite a few more people from the Upper South would vote Democratic because of Democratic fiscal views.

 

[ersatz-york]

I think it depends on the Republican views on the environment. As @Sabot Cat shows, the GOP was a lot more environmentalist in the 1990s. If both parties have similar views on the environment, West Virginia and quite a few more people from the Upper South would vote Democratic because of Democratic fiscal views.

They might have similar views on he environment/energy.

The GOP will probably have more support for solar power (the Southwest) but on the other hand controlling and maintaining some SW/Mountain West states will probably also require the GOP to hold the OTL line on oil, natural gas, and even coal and nuclear power.

This leaves me very confused on where the GOP has room to be pro-environmentalist and what room the Democrats have to be pro-environmentalist while still keeping states like WV.

I see two primary solutions to this question:

1) The Democrats are more pro-environmentalist but are able to hold on to WV due to anti-union stances, stances on fiscal issues, and/or inadequate levels of social conservatism on the part of the GOP. In that case, varying portions of the South might be battleground states.

2) Both the parties have roughly similar views on the environment, it's just that none of them are significantly to the left on the issue. That, however, would lead to the rise of a Green Party.

I'm leaning towards 1. I think I'll re-do the maps tomorrow and change up the South to reflect it being one of the country's major electoral battlegrounds. The premise is essentially that Nixon's original Southern Strategy is redirected/retooled/replaced mid-course as a result of a moderate Republican Bush Revolution by a Sun Belt Strategy targeting much of the same geographical area but with some adjustments to the target audience.

The Solid South is dead, and figurative political war machines roar to life from the Cumberland Gap to the Mississippi Delta in a conflict of red against blue. BATTLEGROUND, 1984.

That last bit sounded kinda TL-y, dontcha' think? Maybe if I ever write a TL on this site, it'll be about that.