Alternate Electoral Maps III

the democrats are more conservative, and the republicans have a good mix of both, which led to many conservatives and liberals both voting for the republicans?
No, it has something to do with taking a specific margin and swinging the actual 1980 results to match that margin. but what margin did I use. i.e, how much does Carter win the PV by here?
 
No, it has something to do with taking a specific margin and swinging the actual 1980 results to match that margin. but what margin did I use. i.e, how much does Carter win the PV by here?
Does Carter win by the same margin that Reagan does in the popular vote? Thus 9.7% representing a 19.4% swing to Carter.
 
genusmap.php

Richard Nixon (R-CA)/Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) - 274 EV, 49.6% PV
John F. Kennedy (D-MA)/Stuart Symington (D-MO) - 244 EV, 49.1% PV
In this world JFK decides not to go with Lyndon Johnson as his running mate and instead goes with his original preferred choice of Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri. Because of his support among Catholics, labor unions, and political machines in the cities Kennedy does just as well as he did IOTL in the North, however without Johnson's presence on the ticket and southerner's distaste for the socially liberal Symington he fails to hold Texas and the South and with that loses the election narrowly to Richard Nixon. The defeat reinforces to the Democratic Party that the South is indispensable, leading them down a darker path as the civil rights movement progresses...
 
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The 2020 South Korean election under a pure proportional representation system. As I'm using the numbers from the list system and not FPTP constituencies, they are better for the UFP.

It's pure D'Hont with a 3% threshold at the constituency level.

Results (349 seats):

United Future Party: 33.84%, 148 seats [1 seat = 63,772 votes]
Democratic Party: 33.36%, 147 seats [1 seat = 63,310 votes]
Justice Party: 9.67%, 29 seats [1 seat = 93,021 votes]
People's Party: 6.80%, 18 seats [1 seat = 105,360 votes]
Open Democratic Party: 5.42%, 5 seats [1 seat = 302,496 votes]
Party for People's Livelihoods: 2.72%, 2 seats [1 seat = 379,341 votes]

The only viable majority other than the GroKo is a centre-left DPK+JP(+ODP) one, and it seems like the likeliest one. The sum of DPK and its splinter parties (ODP, PPL) plus the PP only adds up to 172, 3 seats short of a majority.

The degree to which the country's population is located in and around Seoul is astonishing. 174 out of 349 seats are located in the metropolitan region (Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi).

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For the first time in quite a while, an American Federation TL post.

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The 2010 Californian presidential election was generally regarded as a foregone conclusion. As Republican President Richard Riordan's second term wound up, his approval ratings were extremely low even for a national leader in the Great Recession; originally elected as a moderate against the scandal-tarnished Progressive Gray Davis in 2002 and winning re-election comfortably in 2006, Riordan had attracted significant ire both from the left for his refusal to offer significant pay rises and the shutdown of the capitol he presided over, and from the right for the country's worsening credit rating and his social liberalism on issues such as the death penalty (which he had supsended) and LGBTQ rights.

It was clear that both major parties' new candidates would be significantly more ideological than their predecessors. While in some elections California's blanket primary system for the presidency introduced by Davis has been highly significant in the election (most notably in 2002, when Riordan's narrow victory over the more conservative Bill Simon is often seen as integral to the Republicans winning the runoff), the 2010 election was mostly dominated by two figures: one was Progressive Mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom, who advocated for policies such as abolishing the death penalty, a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, sizeable increases to the welfare and CaliCare universal healthcare system budgets and tax increases on the rich for the first time since Bill Bradley left office two decades earlier and gay marriage (though to avoid offending conservative non-white or non-Anglophone Californians, he downplayed the latter).
His main opponent was the conservative former CEO of HP Carly Fiorina, who advocated for almost the exact opposite policy agenda: tax cuts for the rich, massive cuts to welfare spending, crackdowns on illegal immigration, reintroducing and expanding use of the death penalty and mandating marriage in the Californian Constitution as a union between one woman and one man.

In the blanket primary, Newsom came out ahead by some 12 points, mostly due to fewer moderate Progressives opposing him than moderate Republicans opposed Fiorina, so when the general election came about, Fiorina campaigned hard, attacking Progressive PM Maxine Waters for her 'complicity' in the economic crash, but when it became apparent she did not speak any Spanish her appeal outside of Anglophone California practically collapsed, especially when President Riordan fumbled on whether to endorse her, incensing conservative Republicans and making moderates question the party's credibility, especially compared to the mostly united front around Newsom.

When the votes for the runoff were counted, the Progressives reaped the benefits of the perfect cocktail of backlash to Riordan from conservatives and to Fiorina from moderates; some Republicans simply sat out the presidential election and just voted in the other contemporaneous elections, not that this did their party any good. When the votes were finally tallied, Newsom had won the biggest victory in a Californian presidential election since Earl Warren in 1950. Just 13 of California's 68 municipalities voted for Fiorina, and only the conservative retirement hotspot of Los Cabos kept Newsom from a clean sweep of Hispanic California.

Progressives were overjoyed that with their party holding a duopoly by regaining the presidency and holding the House of Commons easily, it seemed all that stood in the way of Newsom was conservative voter backlash. But needless to say, even in a state as left-wing as California, with the ideological division invited by the election this backlash was to come with some force.
 
I did a general election map for New England in the American Federation (AF), but here's another map in my usual format rather than a wikibox.

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The biennial election for county councillors in New England held on the 4th May 2020 were a source of contention right from the fact they were held at all. Prime Minister Andrew Cuomo, under pressure from the left of his party and the Liberty Union and Green parties, tried to have them postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Conservatives aggressively criticized him for this decision, particularly Tory Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg, who accused Cuomo of 'dictatorial tactics' and 'trying to avoid the will of the people'.

Many left-leaning voters were aggressively critical of the decision ultimately made to hold the elections as scheduled, and unsurprisingly they saw the lowest turnout for county council elections since 1926, with just 35.2% of voters in New England turning out to vote (ironically, given Bloomberg's protestations, these figures were particularly paltry in the capital; New York City, as one of the worst-affected places by the coronavirus not only in New England but across the AF, saw turnout of just 22.4%, with the sparsity of postal votes being partially blamed for the poor turnout; the dubious honour of lowest turnout in the nation went to Rochester's Monroe County, where just 14% of voters cast their ballots).

The poor turnout was one of the few things that overshadowed what was, in all other respects, a huge victory for the Conservatives, who won the popular vote in 78 out of 129 counties, outpaced Labor by over 10 points and formed part of 84 counties' governments. The Tories performed unexpectedly well, even given their solid lead over Labor in the polls, taking control of Nassau County in New York and Norfolk County in Massachusetts in two 'wrong-winner' results, winning an upset victory in Monroe County and controlling the council with Liberal support, gaining two councils in Vermont that had voted Liberty Union in 2018, and even winning the popular vote in Massachusetts, generally the most pro-Labor state east of New York.

Labor retained control of 27 counties' governments, but only kept overall majorities of seats in 15 of them, having to rely on coalitions in the rest (and only staying in government in the handful of upstate counties they won due to either strong city support or the non-competition pact between them and the Tories in Schenectady, St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties, where the local party branches for the two major parties are fairly infamous for their 'grand coalition' form of government and the Liberals effectively form the opposition).

Speaking of the Liberals, the centrist party performed far better than Labor, recovering from their recent poor performance in the 2018 elections and allying with both Labor and the Tories in many eastern county councils, as well as winning the popular vote and control of every council in Rhode Island (though they share control of two of these, with Labor on Providence County and the Tories in Newport County).

The Liberty Union Party, New England's biggest democratic socialist party, suffered in a similar fashion to Labor for its opposition to the elections being held, not least because its leader, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, campaigned through videos filmed from her home and advised supporters to use postal votes. Its support held up well in Vermont, its traditional base, though it did lose two councils to Tory-Liberal coalitions. Some have also suggested as a consequence of this election it may want to reverse its traditional policy of being the only party unwilling under any circumstances to form coalitions with the Tories or Liberals.

The Green Party did decently; having not protested the election as vigorously as Labor and the Liberty Union Party, it did not incur the same criticism, and although its hoped-for gains in New York did not really materialize, it did deprive Labor of a majority in New Haven County and consequently entered government there, upping it to being represented on 3 councils.

However, the most interesting news on election night, and pretty much the only downside for the Tories, was the emergence of the Maine Independents Party, a group funded by former Premier Angus King, an ex-Liberal who quit the party in the 1990s and sought to create 'an alliance against the incompetence of Tories currently in government in the counties of Maine'. The grouping performed excellently, winning control of eleven of the 16 counties in Maine (one of which they control in an alliance with Labor) and pushing the Tories to second there.

As one might expect, in the immediate aftermath of the election Cuomo was under considerable pressure to resign, with rumblings that Ed Markey was to challenge him for the leadership if he did not. However, Cuomo made a very shrewd move the day after the election, pledging an increase to Medicare funding and to raise the furlough pay of all workers from 75% to 85%; the implicit message was that while the Tories had won an election through disregarding the pandemic, the government was working to support people through it. Consequently, his approval ratings improved considerably, and his leads over Tory leader Chris Sununu for who would make the better PM have increased too; combined with the large cuts to public services many Tory-controlled councils have announced, some have suggested the council elections may be more of a phyrric victory for the Tories than anything else.
 
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Like Mongolia, Tibet’s incorporation into the Republic of China when it was founded in 1912 was contentious at best, with a strong independence movement that repeatedly flared up during the so-called ‘protectorate period’ from 1912, when it became a protectorate of the Republic in part to stymie potential expansion of the British Empire into the country from India, until 1946, when after the independence of Mongolia was achieved following the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship in 1945 and the 1945 independence referendum, the Chinese military reoccupied Tibet (having previously done so from 1919-21) and implemented the so-called Seventeen Point Agreement, replacing the Tibet Area with the modern Tibet Province (though it is still generally referred to as simply Tibet).

In the following years, some of the few significant protests against Chiang’s authoritarian rule were from Tibetans who wished to be independent from China, though the Chinese government repeatedly used economic and military sanctions to repress them, as well as giving preferential treatment to the 8% of inhabitants who were Han Chinese compared to almost 90% who were Tibetan.

Perhaps predictably, this did not endear Tibetans to the Kuomintang once democratization began, although due to voting rights in Tibet being granted only to Han citizens this never showed before parties were legalized and the franchise was expanded following the Tiananmen Square Revolution. Since then, Tibet has been one of the worst provinces for the Kuomintang, never voting for their Presidential nominee and never in any democratic election- President, National Congress or provincial election- giving their candidates more than 40% of the popular vote. (Perhaps as a consequence, the party's branch in Tibet is one of the most pro-authoritarian in the country, being opposed to both independence and affirmative action for Tibetans.)

Despite this, unlike neighbouring Qinghai where the Progressives are even more dominant over the Kuomintang, in Tibet there is still a two-party system of sorts. The undercurrent of support for independence led to the formation prior to the first provincial election in 1991 (one of the last provinces to get its own provincial assembly elected, incidentally) of the Tibetan Party, which started life as a pro-independence party in contrast to the pro-affirmative action Progressives.

The latter easily won every three-yearly provincial election in Tibet until 2006, when the Great Recession was starting to hit home; in this election, the Tibetan Party allied together with all the other parties besides the Progressives and Kuomintang, establishing itself as a ‘big tent’ party of sorts and making numerous reforms which actually helped the province somewhat with rebounding from the recession, enabling it to get elected in 2009, 2012 and 2015. One of its provincial legislature members even managed to win Tibet’s 2nd district as an independent in the 2013 National Congress election, and in the 2015 presidential election 21.1% of Tibet’s voters voted for its nominee, Premier Lobsang Sangay*, over the two major party candidates; enough to push Progressive nominee Cho Jung-tai below 50% of the vote and almost enough to push President Wang to third in the province.

Going into the 2018 election, however, the ‘Tibetan coalition’ of Sangay was generally considered to be getting long in the tooth, and Dolma Gyari’s Progressives were several points ahead in the polls, energised by the general surge in support and membership of the party under Jiang Jielan. However, it was generally seen as unlikely that the Progressives could win the 75 seats needed for an overall majority given Tibet uses one national constituency in a ‘full PR’ system similar to those of Israel and the Netherlands for its provincial elections, leading to significant questions as to what alliances the parties would countenance.

A majorly controversial and rather unexpected turn came when the Kuomintang elected their first-ever Tibetan leader, Raidi, who despite outcry from the two major parties of being a ‘government bootlicker’ attracted significant support from Tibetan conservatives and prised them away from Sangay’s coalition, effectively providing an obstacle to both parties since the vast majority of moderate and left-leaning Tibetans strongly oppose the Kuomintang ever entering Tibet’s government again. Not surprisingly, when that party took an unusually high 15% of the vote- enough for 23 seats in the Provincial Congress- protests and even riots broke out in Lhasa.

As for the two major parties, the Progressives did indeed come out on top, but only by about six points over the Tibetan Party. The arithmetic effectively made the only two viable options a Progressive-Communist coalition, which would still be five seats short of a majority, or a Progressive-Tibetan grand coalition, which would put the Kuomintang in opposition. Consequently, the Progressives not only ended up holding talks with both those parties, but held three-way talks where it is suspected the responsibility of trying to purposely block the Kuomintang from the opposition to lessen racial tensions was discussed (though there is no concrete proof of this).

Ultimately, a measure which effectively put all three parties in positions of governance was agreed- Gyari became Premier of Tibet with the Communists in coalition, support from the Greens, and support on confidence issues from the Tibetan Party despite both of them being on the opposition benches. Some figures, especially conservatives, have been outraged at the disproportionate consensus between government and opposition seen in the Provincial Congress since the 2018 election, and the fact that the main conservative party is effectively stifled by a big tent party, but the alliance agreed upon has not only kept the government together, but stifled the racial tensions the Kuomintang surge caused.

In effect, it also seems to have somewhat quashed the anti-Progressive vote badly. The Tibetan Party have collapsed in the polls while the Kuomintang have also been badly hurt by the controversy over their 2018 performance, while the Progressive-Communist government alliance is looked upon fairly positively. With parliamentary opposition in disarray, the odds for Gyari’s government being re-elected in 2021 are seen as practically certain.

*both Sangay and Gyari were born in Tibet in TTL
 
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Like Mongolia, Tibet’s incorporation into the Republic of China when it was founded in 1912 was contentious at best, with a strong independence movement that repeatedly flared up during the so-called ‘protectorate period’ from 1912, when it became a protectorate of the Republic in part to stymie potential expansion of the British Empire into the country from India, until 1946, when after the independence of Mongolia was achieved following the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship in 1945 and the 1945 independence referendum, the Chinese military reoccupied Tibet (having previously done so from 1919-21) and implemented the so-called Seventeen Point Agreement, replacing the Tibet Area with the modern Tibet Province (though it is still generally referred to as simply Tibet).

In the following years, some of the few significant protests against Chiang’s authoritarian rule were from Tibetans who wished to be independent from China, though the Chinese government repeatedly used economic and military sanctions to repress them, as well as giving preferential treatment to the 8% of inhabitants who were Han Chinese compared to almost 90% who were Tibetan.

Perhaps predictably, this did not endear Tibetans to the Kuomintang once democratization began, although due to voting rights in Tibet being granted only to Han citizens this never showed before parties were legalized and the franchise was expanded following the Tiananmen Square Revolution. Since then, Tibet has been one of the worst provinces for the Kuomintang, never voting for their Presidential nominee and never in any democratic election- President, National Congress or provincial election- giving their candidates more than 40% of the popular vote. (Perhaps as a consequence, the party's branch in Tibet is one of the most pro-authoritarian in the country, being opposed to both independence and affirmative action for Tibetans.)

Despite this, unlike neighbouring Qinghai where the Progressives are even more dominant over the Kuomintang, in Tibet there is still a two-party system of sorts. The undercurrent of support for independence led to the formation prior to the first provincial election in 1991 (one of the last provinces to get its own provincial assembly elected, incidentally) of the Tibetan Party, which started life as a pro-independence party in contrast to the pro-affirmative action Progressives.

The latter easily won every three-yearly provincial election in Tibet until 2006, when the Great Recession was starting to hit home; in this election, the Tibetan Party allied together with all the other parties besides the Progressives and Kuomintang, establishing itself as a ‘big tent’ party of sorts and making numerous reforms which actually helped the province somewhat with rebounding from the recession, enabling it to get elected in 2009, 2012 and 2015. One of its provincial legislature members even managed to win Tibet’s 2nd district as an independent in the 2013 National Congress election, and in the 2015 presidential election 21.1% of Tibet’s voters voted for its nominee, Premier Lobsang Sangay*, over the two major party candidates; enough to push Progressive nominee Cho Jung-tai below 50% of the vote and almost enough to push President Wang to third in the province.

Going into the 2018 election, however, the ‘Tibetan coalition’ of Sangay was generally considered to be getting long in the tooth, and Dolma Gyari’s Progressives were several points ahead in the polls, energised by the general surge in support and membership of the party under Jiang Jielan. However, it was generally seen as unlikely that the Progressives could win the 75 seats needed for an overall majority given Tibet uses one national constituency in a ‘full PR’ system similar to those of Israel and the Netherlands for its provincial elections, leading to significant questions as to what alliances the parties would countenance.

A majorly controversial and rather unexpected turn came when the Kuomintang elected their first-ever Tibetan leader, Raidi, who despite outcry from the two major parties of being a ‘government bootlicker’ attracted significant support from Tibetan conservatives and prised them away from Sangay’s coalition, effectively providing an obstacle to both parties since the vast majority of moderate and left-leaning Tibetans strongly oppose the Kuomintang ever entering Tibet’s government again. Not surprisingly, when that party took an unusually high 15% of the vote- enough for 23 seats in the Provincial Congress- protests and even riots broke out in Lhasa.

As for the two major parties, the Progressives did indeed come out on top, but only by about six points over the Tibetan Party. The arithmetic effectively made the only two viable options a Progressive-Communist coalition, which would still be five seats short of a majority, or a Progressive-Tibetan grand coalition, which would put the Kuomintang in opposition. Consequently, the Progressives not only ended up holding talks with both those parties, but held three-way talks where it is suspected the responsibility of trying to purposely block the Kuomintang from the opposition to lessen racial tensions was discussed (though there is no concrete proof of this).

Ultimately, a measure which effectively put all three parties in positions of governance was agreed- Gyari became Premier of Tibet with the Communists in coalition, support from the Greens, and support on confidence issues from the Tibetan Party despite both of them being on the opposition benches. Some figures, especially conservatives, have been outraged at the disproportionate consensus between government and opposition seen in the Provincial Congress since the 2018 election, and the fact that the main conservative party is effectively stifled by a big tent party, but the alliance agreed upon has not only kept the government together, but stifled the racial tensions the Kuomintang surge caused.

In effect, it also seems to have somewhat quashed the anti-Progressive vote badly. The Tibetan Party have collapsed in the polls while the Kuomintang have also been badly hurt by the controversy over their 2018 performance, while the Progressive-Communist government alliance is looked upon fairly positively. With parliamentary opposition in disarray, the odds for Gyari’s government being re-elected in 2021 are seen as practically certain.

*both Sangay and Gyari were born in Tibet in TTL
Now this is something original... with KMT being so popular, is there more Han Chinese in the country?
 
Now this is something original... with KMT being so popular, is there more Han Chinese in the country?

Thank you! Yeah, the proportion of Tibet's population that's Han Chinese is a bit higher by 2018 in TTL due to economic incentives at the federal level for Han business startups and the like in Tibet, which in turn leads to strong loyalty to the KMT from the small minority of Tibetan residents who are Han.
 
The 1934 Oregon Gubernatorial Election took place on November 6, 1934. Independent candidate Peter C. Zimmerman beat Democrat Charles Martin and Republican Joe E. Dunne. Zimmerman was a former Republican who narrowly lost the party's primary to Dunne. Due to Dunn being extremely unpopular with Oregon's farmers, who were a key part of the Oregon Republican Party's base, Zimmerman ran as a third party candidate. Winning the heavily populated Willamette Valley, Zimmerman eked out a victory running on populist rhetoric. The election was notable for being the second time in a row that an independent won the Oregon governorship, with Julius Meier winning in 1930.

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Here is a set of maps I had off of a President Dukakis scenario.

(Colours on maps are inverted)

President Dukakis

1989-1993: Gov. Michael Dukakis MA / Sen. Lloyd Bentsen TX
Def 1988: VP. George H. W. Bush TX /Sen. Dan Quayle IN

1993-2001: Fmr VP. George H. W. Bush TX / Sen. Bob Dole KS
Def 1992: Pres. Michael Dukakis MA / VP. Lloyd Bentsen TX
Def 1996: Sen. Al Gore TN / Fmr Gov. Jerry Brown CA

2001-2009: Fmr Gov. Bill Clinton AR / Sen. Jay Rockefeller WV
Def 2000: Sen. John McCain AZ / Gov. Tom Ridge PA
Def 2004: Fmr Gov. George W. Bush TX / Sen. Bill Frist TN

2009-2013: Fmr Gov. Mitt Romney MA / Sen. John Thune SD
Def 2008: Sen. John Kerry MA / Sen. Evan Bayh IN

2013-2017: Sen. Barack Obama IL / Sen. Joe Biden DE
Def 2012: Pres. Mitt Romney MA / VP. John Thune SD

2017-Present: Pres. Barack Obama IL / Gov. Hillary Clinton NY
Def 2016: VP John Thune SD / Sen. Lindsey Graham SC

1988
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1992
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1996
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2000

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2004

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2008
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2012
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2016
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Here is another scenario I made up with Ronald Reagan as president in 1968

(Colours inverted on map)

Part 1

1969-1977: Gov. Ronald Reagan CA / Sen. John Tower TX
Def: 1968: VP. Hubert Humphrey MN / Sen. Edmund Munskie ME , Gov. George Wallace AL / Gen. Curtis LeMay CA
Def: 1972: Sen. George McGovern SD / Fmr Amb. Sargent Shriver MD

1977-1981: Minority Leader. Gerald Ford MI / Sen. Bob Dole KS
Def: 1976: Gov. Jerry Brown CA / Sen. Robert Byrd WV

1981-1984: Fmr Gov. Jimmy Carter GA / Sen. Frank Church ID
Def 1980: Pres. Gerald Ford MI / VP. Bob Dole KS

1984-1985: Pres. Jimmy Carter GA / Vacent

1985-1989: Pres. Jimmy Carter / Sen. Lloyd Bentsen TX

Def 1984: Fmr VP. Bob Dole KS / Gov. James R. Thompson IL

1989-1997: VP. Lloyd Bentsen TX / Gov. Michael Dukakis MA
Def 1988: Rep. Jack Kemp NY / Fmr Sen. Paul Laxalt NV
Def 1992: Mr Pat Buchanan VA / Fmr Rep. Jack Kemp NY

1997-2005: Sen. John McCain AZ / Fmr Gov. Lamar Alexander TN
Def 1996: VP. Michael Dukakis MA / Sen. Bob Graham FL
Def 2000: Sen. Al Gore TN / Sen. Evan Bayh IN

2005-2009: VP. Lamar Alexander TN / Rep. John Kasich OH
Def 2004: Gen. Wesley Clark AR / Sen. Dianne Feinstein CA

2009-2017: Sen. Barack Obama IL / Sen. Joe Biden DE
Def 2008: Pres. Lamar Alexander TN / VP. John Kasich OH
Def 2012: Fmr VP. John Kasich OH / Sen. Olympia Snowe ME

2017-Present: VP. Joe Biden DE / Fmr Rep. Gabby Giffords AZ
Def 2016: Mr. Donald Trump NY / Gov. Chris Christie NJ

1968
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1972
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1976
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1980

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1984
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1988
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1992
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1996
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CalBear

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Here is another scenario I made up with Ronald Reagan as president in 1968

(Colours inverted on map)

Part 1

SNIP

Reagan 1968 Part 2

SNIP

Please note that:

1. There is a three image per day limit.

2. Current politics, which includes 2016 and any discussion that will require touching on current politics, is prohibited outside of Chat.

Please take not of both of these requirements.

Thank you.
 
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The Republic of Shoshone has long been one of the American Federation's most colorful and divided member states politically. Originally founded after the Republic of Oregon split into three in 1863, Shoshone started out as a mix of Native American reservations (hence the name) and mining areas, with the capital at Lewiston soon being eclipsed in terms of population by the boom towns of Boise, Missoula and Silver City.

From its early days, Shoshone developed a reputation for a diverse population, with white settlers, Chinese immigrants, Mormons from neighboring Deseret and of course Native Americans all making up significant chunks of the population. Unfortunately, this also led to racial conflict, with a particularly infamous conflict seeing race riots in Boise exacerbated by the police. The positive of this was that, due to pressure from neighbouring states, particularly from Oregon's Prime Minister George Henry Williams, the Shoshone government was forced to provide voting rights and (albeit limited) civil rights protections to all Shoshonians, regardless of race or religion.

Until the Great Depression, political conflict was heavily racial, with the Idahoan Party (a popular name the white settlers favored for the region), the Chinese Party, the Mormon Party and the Indigenous Party all being significant forces; the former two died out thanks to the Depression, while the latter two have generally been minor parties since then. Practically the only parties to draw multi-ethnic support were the Social Liberal Party, a centrist to center-left party which proved fairly progressive during the 1920s due to the leadership of William Borah, who served as Prime Minister for most of the decade, and the Agrarian Party, a centrist to center-right party which drew its votes from rural voters.

However, the 1935 election, held at the height of the Great Depression, changed everything. Borah stood down as PM due to faltering health and his failure to combat the depression, and a new party, Glen Taylor's Farmer-Labor Party, formed a government with the Social Liberals' begrudging support. Under Taylor, the monopolies of the faltering mining companies of Shoshone were broken up, the minimum wage was tripled, welfare state provisions were established and a Civil Rights Act, one of the most progressive of its time, was passed which banned discrimination in social spaces and the workplace.

As one might expect, this faced a significant backlash from white and conservative Shoshonians, but Taylor managed to hold onto power with the support of various parties by catering to their legislators (Agrarians with grants to farmers, Indigenous with civil rights, Social Liberals with monopoly-busting to potentially offer a freer market, etc.). It was not until 1950, when business interests pumped money into a new right-wing party, the Party of the Democratic Right (PDR), which swept Taylor's government away in a landslide.

The Farmer-Labor party would never recover, its voters drifting back to the Agrarians and to a new party founded by its supporters, the Socialist Alliance. Despite the name, the SA was generally more right-wing than the Farmer-Labor party, though still very much a left-wing party. It managed, in the 1960 election, to beat the ardent right-winger Herman Wellker under its popular and charismatic leader Frank Church. Like Taylor before him, Church faced aggressive efforts by his opponents and businesses to torpedo his government, but was able to paint himself as an enemy of big business through this, and won re-election in 1965 and 1970. In 1975, the faltering economy saw him lose out to the Social Liberals of John Evans, but Evans would last only one term before the ardently right-wing Steve Symms took power in 1980.

Symms' government undertook significant deregulation of Shoshone's economy and a zero-tolerance policy on crime, the consequences of which allowed Evans' successor Cecil Andrus to beat him in 1985. After two terms, Andrus resigned in 1993 and in an unexpected move invited Indigenous leader Larry Echo Hawk, whose party had steadfastly supported his government's conservation projects, to be the first Native American Prime Minister of Shoshone.

However, this was effectively a last hurrah for the Shoshone left; the Agrarians of Phil Batt took power in part due to the anger of conservatives at Echo Hawk getting a 'coronation', and though Batt proved fairly moderate during his single term, continuing conservation projects forwarded by Andrus, when the Agrarians lost significant ground to the PDR in 2000, Mike Crapo became PM, and oversaw a sharp veer to the right for Shoshone.

Unsurprisingly, when Crapo oversaw massive public spending and tax cuts, considerable reversals of conservation efforts, further loosened the country’s already fairly libertarian gun laws and restricted abortion access, he made himself a divisive figure; his opponents took to calling his policies ‘a load of Crapo’, and humorous images of a bull next to a picture of the PM started to circulate the internet.

Crapo had become so negatively perceived outside of the state that by the 2005 election he was seen as a liability by those within it, to the point that every major party besides his own PDR pledged not to support him. When the other parties made the popular SA leader Larry Grant the new PM, however, he faced considerable obstacles to his agenda, and for the 2010 election a new party known as the Conservative Reform Force (CRF) had sprung up to reintroduce many of Crapo’s policies and reverse Grant’s conservation efforts and healthcare funding.

Despite that party’s surge, it did not do well enough in 2010 to get into power, and the Social Liberals, now led by the moderate Walt Minnick, took the lead in government from the SA. Minnick established austerity measures that made him unpopular with the left, but since he also opposed bringing back restrictions on abortion and was pressured by a coalition of groups (including former PM Batt, unexpectedly) to establish protections against LGBTQ individuals in the Shoshone constitution, he was generally seen as the lesser of two evils.

Effectively the only thing that kept him in power in the 2015 election was the continued conflict between the PDR, now led by Mike Simpson, and the CRF, now led by Butch Otter. The two parties had acquired a reputation in the Shoshone press for being compared to Tweedledum and Tweedledee (or occasionally Fine Gael and Fianna Fail by those who wanted to sound more professional) due to frequently squabbling over the few issues they disagreed on, like conservation (where the PDR is more moderate than the CRF) and healthcare (on which the CRF is more moderate than the PDR), rather than presenting a united conservative front.

It was in no small part due to this infighting that Minnick’s party just edged out the CRF in terms of votes (though not seats) in 2015, although it helped that the minor right-wing parties- the pro-life Child’s Rights Party, the evangelical Mormon Party, and the pro-death penalty Retribution Party- shaved off more votes and seats from and were less hostile to the right-wing parties than the Greens and the pro-LGBTQ Rainbow Party did from the left-wing ones. Minnick’s second government was thus formed by an alliance of the Social Liberals, SA, Agrarians, Indigenous and Green parties with tacit support from the Pirate and Rainbow parties, mostly on a platform of not being the other guys.

This arrangement finally collapsed in January of 2017 when the Agrarian leader, Edgar Malepeai, resigned and was replaced by the much more conservative Brad Little, one of whom’s main positions was that if he won the leadership he would withdraw the Agrarians from the coalition and ally with the conservatives. This he did, and he made Butch Otter the new PM on the basis of the CRF getting more votes and seats 2 years prior (and consequently meaning in the last 25 years, Shoshone has had PMs from 6 different parties).

Otter’s government has been just as contentious as Crapo’s before him. Its unelected status and hard-right policy agenda has been controversial, but the efforts from supporters of the CRF, PDR, right-wing Agrarians (though that party is on the verge of splitting- commentators have remarked that at this point the only thing its members really have in common these days is all being white people from rural Shoshone) and the smaller right-wing parties to establish tactical voting plans made it look like he would have no trouble being re-elected come 2020.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic. The cuts to healthcare the Otter government has overseen started to take damaging effect, and combined with the lack of furloughing for workers and effort being spent on measures like restricting the legal rights of transgender people instead of tackling the pandemic, Shoshonians are losing patience with Otter failing to tackle the issue. Not helping is the fact the election has been pushed back from the traditional May of every fifth year to May 2021, meaning the right-wing parties’ war chests have wasted large amounts of money preparing for an election that was abandoned. Whatever happens, next year’s election in Shoshone, the first held more than five years after the last in its history, will be interesting to say the least.
 
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