The Campaign Trail Game Has Returned.

An even better result than my last playthrough as the Hillary/Bernie Connection. In most victories, I only ever flip Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin from OTL, but here I managed to get Ohio too.


Conversely, here’s an example of a better-than-OTL Trump victory, picking up Minnesota and Nevada and even having a popular vote victory.

 
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Here’s my best Hillary victory so far in the updated scenario. Almost recreated the Obama 2012 map, except I traded Iowa for North Carolina.

 
Won with Hillary Clinton on Impossible: 279-259. It is a grind.
- Chose Bernie Sanders as my running mate.
- Moved to the left and struck up a populist tone vs. making it about Trump (although there's a balance).
- The last third of the run is a blitz of fainting spell, debate, "P-Word" tape followed by Comey, DNC leak, and more. I'm still trying to find the right combination of responses.

https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/campaign-trail/game/1532017

https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/campaign-trail/game/1532828
 
The creator of the game has added an FAQ page - https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/frequently-asked-questions/

It seems that they are working on a 2020 scenario as a top priority. After that, 2004, 1992, 1980, 1936, 1892, 1884, 1876, 1856, 1836 and 1800 are mentioned as scenarios that they desire to create eventually. It is mentioned that, for some of the less close ones, alternative history what-ifs may be added to shake things up.
2004 would be the next closest one that comes to mind. That could be presented as-is; it would give a significant GOP advantage, but not an insurmountable one for a skilled Kerry player.

1992 would be fun because of a viable third party. You could play Perot and not drop out to see where that goes. The only thing is Bush would not stand much of a chance in that election, and may be the least interesting of the three.

1980 would require something like the opportunity for Carter to rescue the Iran hostages to make work. I don't see how it's competitive otherwise. 1936 is completely unrealistic to imagine an alternate result, FDR is going to win and Landon ran the best campaign he could IMO. Huey Long would be fun but IMO not change that.

1884 could be another good one, though with it and 1876 there definitely is the case that neither election was handled fairly by the Republicans and they might have rigged it had they lost by more. 1856 would be a great one, 1836 would just be bizarre, and 1800 would be very unique but fun.
 
I’m mainly surprised that 1912 wasn’t listed on there. That could be a scenario to play around with, whether with OTL with Teddy running as a Bull Moose and you could possibly win the election as his third party run, or with an ATL scenario where he wrested the Republican nomination from Taft. That election was the one I had long thought had the most potential for the game among those not already made, along with 1992 and 2004.
 
Minor points on both 1980 and 1992. Both elections were closer than people remembered.

The polls showed a close race between Carter and Reagan right up to the debate, and the final weeks. It was really the debate that put Reagan over the top. Reagan's popular vote percentage margin was something around 10%, which was not insurmountable, people remember the election as more of a landslide than it was.

The 1992 result was presented by the media as a landslide, but in fact Clinton's popular vote percentage margin was under 5%, and while he took a lead in the polls after August, the race really tightened in the final weeks and he needed the indictments of former Reagan officials to put him over the top.

Also incumbent presidents always have a good chance of re-election, with the possible exceptions of Hoover, Taft (after Roosevelt continued running as an independent), and Buchanan (who didn't bother running).
 
Carter/ Church running against Ford in 1976:


This was not strictly a self-sabotage, but I ran Carter as a conservative on everything except foreign policy, where is was decidedly dovish, and even had him support the general's anti-zionist remarks. The one concession I made to getting Carter elected was support for the ERA, since the game for reasons I don't understand (because the amendment completely flopped historically) really hits you hard if you go against the ERA, even Ford.

As usual with the Cold War era scenarios, the map overstates Ford's actual support. He wins with a national popular vote margin of less than 2% and gets a nationwide popular vote plurality, not majority, but you wouldn't know this from looking at the map.
 
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