George McGovern VS Barry Goldwater

Barry Goldwater is generally considered to be the most right-wing Republican ever to be a presidential candidate and George McGovern is considered to be the most left-wing Democrat presidential candidate.

Both were electoral disasters for their parties (in 64 and 72 respectively).

But what if sometime in either the 60's or 70's they were both presidential candidates at the same time, facing off against each other?

Who would win?

Would an influential 3rd party candidate gain ground?
 
Barry Goldwater is generally considered to be the most right-wing Republican ever to be a presidential candidate and George McGovern is considered to be the most left-wing Democrat presidential candidate.

Both were electoral disasters for their parties (in 64 and 72 respectively).

But what if sometime in either the 60's or 70's they were both presidential candidates at the same time, facing off against each other?

Who would win?

Would an influential 3rd party candidate gain ground?
Actually both Goldwater and McGovern liked each other personally, and become good friends in later years.
For Goldwater to get the nomination later on it would need Nixon to win in 1960, and 1964. He then could get either the nomination in 1968 or in 1972.
To be fair both candidates postions where destroyed and hyped up by their opponents Johnson and Nixon, and in my opinion more decent than those two crooks!!!!
 
That's kinda a tough one.

Let's say Rockefeller beats Goldwater in '64 and promptly loses to LBJ.

This pisses off Republican activists and they go full throttle for Goldwater, preventing Nixon from mounting a challenge in '68. Goldwater attempts to get out of it, but the pressure is pretty intense and he is, after all, pissed at Rockefeller.

Meanwhile George McGovern accepts a draft as the anti-war candidate and replaces McCarthy in that role for 1968 (he considered it, OTL). Butterflies keep RFK out—or put him in and kill him again—and as McGovern is far more acceptable than McCarthy the convention goes down to the wire with McGovern beating out Humphrey as the nervous party reconsiders.

Wallace enters as he did IOTL but Goldwater puts pressure on his southern base (about the same as Nixon's Southern Strategy, I suppose, less racist but Goldwater was more appealing to the South than Nixon).



Thus, in 1968 Goldwater and McGovern face off with Wallace hanging around eating into Goldwater's Southern states and McGovern's industrial states.
 
As I understand it the key reason McGovern did not run in 1968 was that his Senate seat was coming up. Had he won the other South Dakota seat he might well have run.

I also understand that a factor in RFK's decision to run was that he could not respect or take seriously Eugene McCarthy- in a way that he could have for George McGovern.

If Goldwater had been denied the nomination in ways that seemed illegitimate in 1964 his folks might have tried harder in 1968. If Rockafella had been the 1964 Republican candidate I am pretty sure that many of the Souther votes that went to Goldwater in OTL would have gone to a Dixiecrat, I presume George Wallace but I do not know.

It occurs to me that the 'third party' candidate in the event of Goldwater and McGovern getting their respective party's nominations in 1968 might easily have beeen LBJ
 
It occurs to me that the 'third party' candidate in the event of Goldwater and McGovern getting their respective party's nominations in 1968 might easily have beeen LBJ

Well, I guess LBJ is probably not too happy that his successor is denied the nomiation, but it would completely undermine his "legacy" if he came back as a third party after having dropped out of the primaries. Plus, Johnson thought he might not live to see out another term. Strong reasons to stay out. LBJ then has the choice of whether to support the Party's nominee or by staying quiet, strengthen the appeal of Wallace. Given LBJ's love of party machines and his stance on civil rights, I think LBJ backs the Democratic candidate even if it is McGovern as an anti-war candidate.

The key issue for Goldwater is whether he can appear moderate on the Vietnam war. Nixon's promise of "a solution" is something Goldwater probably won't duplicate -- he's too honest and too confrontational. On the other hand, I can't really think of how he might argue he could fix things. He can of course stick to law and order tactics to keep the general election from becoming about the war. Indeed, law and order plus Goldwater's libertarianism might be a winning combination.
 
LBJ… snip.

The key issue for Goldwater is whether he can appear moderate on the Vietnam war. Nixon's promise of "a solution" is something Goldwater probably won't duplicate -- he's too honest and too confrontational. On the other hand, I can't really think of how he might argue he could fix things. He can of course stick to law and order tactics to keep the general election from becoming about the war. Indeed, law and order plus Goldwater's libertarianism might be a winning combination.

(Unlike McCarthy or RFK I think LBJ could live with McGovern, even if he was anti-war so I agree with you on that.)

As for Goldwater I think he argues the air war perspective. Step up the campaign, really take it to the North Vietnamese but at the same time draw down troops as seems reasonable. It's not the best plan, politically, but it's arguable: less troops dying and pressure to end the war on American terms.[1]

More or less Vietnamization on speed without Nixon's "secret plan to end the war" garbage.

It won't play as well to the American public, but on the other hand it's similar to RFK's plan (albeit with a lot more bombing of stuff) and can be presented as the moderate alternative to McGovern "withdraw the troops" and LBJ's "keep the troops".


Election wise it looks a lot like OTL. McGovern performs similar to Humphrey; Goldwater performs somewhat differently to Nixon, weaker up North but stronger in the South and West.

Whoever you feel like winning, wins.


[1] Depending on your preferences this alt-Vietnamization plan has a solid chance to save South Vietnam. Given that OTL it basically worked, with the Viet Cong crippled in Tet and finished off by the Phoenix program and with the South Vietnamese—backed by American guns, money, and air power but no ground troops—able to defeat conventional North Vietnamese invasions (this was, of course, changed due to Watergate) I figure the alt plan would be at least as successful.

My bias: I figure it was a stupid war to get involved in, but I do believe it was entirely winnable & the knock-on effects of a surviving South Vietnam—no boat people, no Poi Pot, no Sino-Vietnamese war, etc…— are better than OTL.
 
Election wise it looks a lot like OTL. McGovern performs similar to Humphrey; Goldwater performs somewhat differently to Nixon, weaker up North but stronger in the South and West.

Whoever you feel like winning, wins.


So in a fit of boredom, I've been playing around with excel and old election returns. Here's my best guess as to what happens: Goldwater by a nose. My simulated returns should be attached here as a JPEG; I can change the file type if necessary. I can't figure out how to post them in another way; I can PM the original excel file to anyone similarly bored.

Generally, I tried not to flip too many states. My first drafts actually kept showing a deadlocked Electoral College, but I think I underestimated Goldwater's strength in the South. The states Wallace wins here are hard to imagine him losing, given his margins, except for Louisiana, but there it hard to see either candidate picking up enough strength to beat him out.

I've let McGovern do a bit better, holding on to Minnesota and also taking South Dakota. He also takes Ohio and Missouri. The former seems logical; in hindsight, Missouri may swing more toward Goldwater, but New Jersey could also switch, going for McGovern rather than Goldwater.

Long story short, McGovern doing better in the North while Goldwater does better in the south (but not enough to dent Wallace's margins too much) is more likely to result in a deadlocked Electoral College than anything else. There are perhaps even more close states TTL than there were OTL. There were a couple scenarios were Goldwater only won with 270 votes so if a North Carolina elector is faithless, as happened in OTL, then the College is accidentally deadlocked!

If the election goes to the House, McGovern probably has an edge, assuming that the House elections are per OTL, but there may be some deadlocked states (Virginia, Illinois, and Oregon are kingmakers).

Also, I didn't take any native son effects of their potential VPs into account -- that could make or break the race.

ATL Election of 1968.JPG
 
Thanks for the very interesting replies.

Í'd forgotten about Wallace running in 68 (I'm not an expert by any means in US politics of this era).

Another interesting point, is if their is another centrist candidate running (not Wallace who certainly wasn't centrist), the important question is how it would affect the vote. In the FPTP system the US has it is almost impossible for them to win. Instead it becomes a question of who the 3rd party candidate 'steals' votes from. In a nutshell do centrist Democrats dislike McGovern more than centrist Republicans disliked Goldwater?

My guess is that McGovern would be liable to have more votes 'stolen' of him, than Goldwater, but I'd like to know what other people who know more about this think.
 
Another interesting point, is if their is another centrist candidate running (not Wallace who certainly wasn't centrist), the important question is how it would affect the vote. In the FPTP system the US has it is almost impossible for them to win. Instead it becomes a question of who the 3rd party candidate 'steals' votes from. In a nutshell do centrist Democrats dislike McGovern more than centrist Republicans disliked Goldwater?

My guess is that McGovern would be liable to have more votes 'stolen' of him, than Goldwater, but I'd like to know what other people who know more about this think.

Centrist candidates don't stay centrist. Anderson in 1980 tried (fiscal conservative, social liberal) but he only really picked up left-wing and protest votes. Also, centrist voters simply don't have the energy that candidates on the edges do: they don't get the votes.

Assuming you could get a third party centrist run (and I can only think of McCarthy for a left-wing third party run) than both would be hurt in similar proportion. Moderate "Rockefeller" Republicans would dislike both candidates pretty equally and probably would flip depending on their stance on the war. Moderate Democrats would be pretty similar, I imagine.
 
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