AHC: Have a 21st Century President win in a landslide

With a POD of January 1, 2000 have a President win at least 375 electoral votes.

Your easiest option these days is probably to have a strong third-party candidate who hinders their established counterpart just enough to let the other candidate walk away with all the electors. Bernie Sanders or Mitt Romney also running in 2016, something like that. I'm not sure how plausible it might be, but we're not going to see Reagan-Mondale again for a long, long time.
 
With a POD of January 1, 2000 have a President win at least 375 electoral votes.

If you mean a presidential candidate, Obama won 365 in 2008. All you need to do to get him to 376 is for him to win MO--which he lost by only 0.13% of the vote! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008

If you mean an incumbent president, that's harder--Obama got 332 votes in 2012 and could easily have brought it up to 347 with NC, but beyond that he didn't really come close to carrying any state he lost.
 

samcster94

Banned
Your easiest option these days is probably to have a strong third-party candidate who hinders their established counterpart just enough to let the other candidate walk away with all the electors. Bernie Sanders or Mitt Romney also running in 2016, something like that. I'm not sure how plausible it might be, but we're not going to see Reagan-Mondale again for a long, long time.
I can see a Clinton-Dole equivalent though(which would be 2008 with Missouri).
 
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Well a few possibilities.

2008 is the easiest. Obama got 365 and lost NC by a narrow margin, so that gives him 380..

Add in a McCain gaffe or some other swing event to swing the less than 10 pt McCain states and you get him into the low-mid 400s


2004: No Iraq invasion so Bush retains some of the benefits from 9/11.. Democrats end up nominating Dean/Edwards... Dean has his screaming incident in October, Edwards scandals break. You could swing the states where Kerry won by less than 10 pts and give Bush around 380-385.

2012 is harder because it was a pretty baked in electorate for that one.

2016 is possible if Trump scandals break earlier and harder resulting in a big swing to Clinton
 
Well a few possibilities.

2008 is the easiest. Obama got 365 and lost NC by a narrow margin, so that gives him 380.

No, he carried NC very narrowly in 2008 (and lost it in 2012). It's MO (with 11 electoral votes) he very narrowly lost in 2008, but that would have been enough to get him over 375 (376 to be exact).
 
If you mean a presidential candidate, Obama won 365 in 2008. All you need to do to get him to 376 is for him to win MO--which he lost by only 0.13% of the vote! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008

If you mean an incumbent president, that's harder--Obama got 332 votes in 2012 and could easily have brought it up to 347 with NC, but beyond that he didn't really come close to carrying any state he lost.
I’ll count that, since you become president through the electoral college. They don’t have to be running for re-election.
 
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Obama just needs Missouri to break 375 in 2008. We could get more creative though.

2000: Nader does better somehow (Gore picks a running mate more alienating to conservatives and Nader gets a stronger running mate like Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney) and leads to Bush winning bigger. Bush meanwhile picks a running mate with stronger moderate appeal (Tom Ridge maybe). New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Oregon all went for Gore by under 0.5%. Maine's 2nd, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania were under 5%. Maine, Michigan and Washington were under 6%. Those states get you to 366 EV. After that the closest states are Maine's 1st and Vermont (both under 10%) and that gets you to 370.

2004: Polling about a Kerry-McCain ticket had Kerry up 15 points. Alternatively, get a Gore-McCain ticket, as it has the advantage of democratic excitement (he was the legitimate president in their eyes after all) and the crossover factor.

2008: Obama barely lost Montana and Missouri. Meanwhile Georgia, South Dakota, Arizona, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Nebraska's first district were all lost by under 10 points. Also Alaska was within a 3-point margin before McCain picked Palin. Gingrich meanwhile said that if McCain picked Lieberman, Barr would end up with 15%. That's probably hyperbolic, but McCain would lose a lot of support. Have McCain pick Lieberman, Obama pick a running mate more palatable to conservatives (Nunn would guarantee Georgia for him and mean strong southern appeal) and either give Barr a stronger running mate (Barry Goldwater Jr, Mike Gravel, Vice-Admiral Michael Colley who was on the LNC, or Judge Jim Gray) and you could see Obama breaking 400.

2012: Give Gary Johnson a stronger running mate (Gravel, Colley, Roemer, Goldwater Jr, or somebody else) and have Gingrich or Santorum win the Republican primary (or worse - have the speculated Gingrich-Santorum unity ticket go through). GOP ticket collapses and Obama wins NC, Nebraska's Second, Georgia, and Arizona, getting 375 exactly.

2016: Have any Republican not named Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson win the Republican nomination and face down Hillary Clinton. Alternatively, have Joe Biden or some other mainstream not-Hillary (sorry Bernie, but that Colorado single-payer referendum's results did not bode well for you) candidate be Trump's opponent. OR, have Trump pick Christie over Pence, not rally the GOP coalition (Pence was a great pick given where Trump was weak) and collapse as social conservatives, free marketeers, and Republicans who don't like Christie's sleaze stay home.

I think that if Kasich faced down Clinton in 2016, it'd have been a mess for Clinton - however the only way Kasich was going to be nominee would probably require a deal with Cruz for a brokered convention, which might affect how well he does. Still, I can see him winning all those rust belt states that Trump won (his primary supporters were actually the ones most similar to Trump's, fascinatingly) as well as other close states like New Hampshire, Minnesota, Nevada, Maine, Virginia, and Colorado. I think if Kasich managed to get another conservative-who-is-tempermentally-moderate figure on the ticket (Tim Scott's stance on racial disparities in policing and his focus on family-oriented policies would make him strongest and most in-synch with Kasich I think) he'd do very very very well.
 
I wish the original post had explicitly kept 2016 out of this. 2016 is current politics. Not only was it less than two years ago but it involves a lot of people who are likely to run (again) in 2020.

There is a place for current politics--Chat.
 

samcster94

Banned
I wish the original post had explicitly kept 2016 out of this. 2016 is current politics. Not only was it less than two years ago but it involves a lot of people who are likely to run (again) in 2020.

There is a place for current politics--Chat.
If you want a recent election, 2012 can do the job even if it is the 1996 of the 2010's.
 
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