I am really wondering who will win the Republican nomination. Bush seems to be having a rough time, so my guess is Dole or Robertson. I feel like Ferraro will have a better shot against Robertson, as it would make her seem like the more moderate candidate in the election during a time when the US is not really looking to drastically shape up the status quo (I am basing this on Bush IRL landslide victory).
Trailblazing to Victory: The Ramifications of America's First Woman President
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Not saying who the nominee will be but if it's Robertson the GOP can, at the very least, say goodbye to Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware. All of these states have only voted GOP because of their continued support among social moderates and liberal Republicans, should they nominate the Christian conservative Robertson they have very little hope of holding these states. California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania would likely join that list as well but we'd have to see.
Sorry that this is not an actual update, I've been rather busy with school. Had intended to get these graphics out earlier but didn't have the time until now.
I intend to post updated versions of these after each primary update so you all can see how things are progressing. The final one of these will be a wikibox of each primary.
Also shout out to @Ghazghkull for inspiration for the designs of these primary map graphics.
I intend to post updated versions of these after each primary update so you all can see how things are progressing. The final one of these will be a wikibox of each primary.
Also shout out to @Ghazghkull for inspiration for the designs of these primary map graphics.
Thanks! Hopefully I'll be able to post another update when I have enough time and motivation to write it up.
Chapter 7: March Madness
Chapter 7: March Madness
“NBC News can now project that Geraldine Ferraro will be the victor in delegate-rich Florida by a little over four points after a close-fought race with Joe Biden in the state. This comes on the heels of her large, double-digit victory in Texas over both Sen. Biden and Gary Hart, a result that surprised many political observers who had predicted a much closer race in the Lone Star state. Meanwhile Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina still remain too close to the call and we’re waiting on results from the caucuses in the West. However, I think it is clear that Ferraro has held off her opponents tonight, dashing any hopes they had of halting her path to the nomination.
On the Republican side we can project that Pat Robertson will win the state of Mississippi and a plurality of its delegates. Despite this win, however, it is looking like a good night for Vice President Bush whose newly rejuvenated campaign has swept to victory in six states so far including Texas and Florida, the biggest prizes of the night. While it looked like Bush’s campaign was failing to catch fire it’s clear from tonight that he’s making a comeback that could vault him to a nomination that looked beyond his grasp just two short weeks ago. With several primaries still too close to call in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky the night is far from over at this point.” - Tom Brokaw, March 8, 1988
On the Republican side we can project that Pat Robertson will win the state of Mississippi and a plurality of its delegates. Despite this win, however, it is looking like a good night for Vice President Bush whose newly rejuvenated campaign has swept to victory in six states so far including Texas and Florida, the biggest prizes of the night. While it looked like Bush’s campaign was failing to catch fire it’s clear from tonight that he’s making a comeback that could vault him to a nomination that looked beyond his grasp just two short weeks ago. With several primaries still too close to call in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky the night is far from over at this point.” - Tom Brokaw, March 8, 1988
Super Tuesday would prove to be a tough night for the news media, with numerous close contests resulting in several incorrect projections that would later be redacted, proving nerve-wracking for many of the campaigns. This was no more true than for Kentucky on the Republican side, where the race was projected for Dole just after 6:45pm only to be redacted and projected later on for the correct winner, Pat Robertson, who only ended up winning the state by less than 700 votes. The same would be repeated on the Democratic side where ABC News declared Ferraro the victor in Arkansas shortly after 8:00pm only to be forced to change this projection when Biden vaulted into the lead and held on to a bare two point margin by the end of the night. Extremely close results such as these represented the bitterly fought nature of the battle for the South that ended with nail biters for both Republican and Democratic campaigns as votes were tabulated and reported by the networks over the course of the night. However, focusing on these sorts of races would mask the greater significance of Super Tuesday for both parties’ presidential primaries.
Ferraro proved to be the big winner on the Democratic side, winning eleven states and just over 600 delegates as she swept to victory in New England, the Upper South, and the West, only losing to Biden in Idaho by less than .10% of the vote. Adding on her 13 point victory in Texas and her 4 point victory in Florida and the night confirmed her status as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Her victories were bolstered by strong support among her usual coalition of suburban voters, women, and liberals, as well as blue collar voters in rural parts of Appalachia who helped her secure victories in Kentucky and Virginia and Latinos who boosted her in both Texas and Nevada. Her main rival of the night proved to be Joe Biden, who won his first primaries after having put a heavy focus on the South in the lead up to Super Tuesday. He swept six states, pulling off narrow victories in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina in addition to Idaho and a more decisive 11 point victory in Alabama. All told, he won 350 delegates on Super Tuesday, pushing him into second place in the delegate count and leaving him as Ferraro’s main rival for the nomination. For the Hart, Gephardt, and Babbitt camps this was a disappointing night as each only one a single state, Hart narrowly winning Oklahoma while Gephardt won his home state of Missouri in a 26 point landslide and Babbitt surprisingly won the state of Mississippi by nearly five points. This was especially painful for Gary Hart who came within 1,000 votes of victory in Georgia after having played hard for the state.
In the GOP race the big news of the night would be what the media hailed as the “Bush Resurgence” after his campaign struggled in the first two months of the Republican primary and the fall of Robertson, whose strong third place finish kept him in the race but dashed any notions that his campaign for the nomination would be unstoppable. While Bush's “Southern firewall” did not hold completely his strong organization in the region brought him to victory in 8 states, including a narrow win in Arkansas and more decisive victories in North Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Florida as well as a landslide victory in his adopted home state of Texas. In addition he pulled off a victory in Rhode Island, pulling moderate votes away from Dole after securing the support of Sen. John Chafee five days before the primary, and in Washington where he had established a strong organization and had earned the endorsement of Sen. Daniel Evans. By the end of the night he had amassed 342 delegates, vaulting him ahead of Robertson and into first place in the delegate count. However, Bob Dole closely trailed him after winning 270 delegates which brought his total to 360, only 42 delegates behind Bush. Having capitalized on support among moderate and liberal Republicans as well as a strong ground organization and appeals to more conservative voters, he came victorious in five states including Massachusetts, Maryland, Alabama, and Tennessee as well as a 1 point victory in Georgia where he essentially tied with Robertson and Bush. The big loser of the night would prove to be Pat Robertson who despite winning four states including his home state of Virginia only netted about 160 delegates and fell to third behind Bush and Dole.
Coming out of Super Tuesday it was clear that the broad contours of both races had failed to be shaken despite the successes experienced by several campaigns. While Ferraro was running away with the Democratic nomination the Republicans continued to be bitterly divided between Bush, Dole, and Robertson with no clear frontrunner emerging between the three of them. Despite Bush’s successes on Super Tuesday and his momentum going forward the race ahead remained perilous for his campaign as polls showed Dole ahead in Illinois while he also enjoyed strong leads in the remaining states in the Northeast where much of the fight for the next month and a half would take place. Many within the GOP were beginning to worry that none of the candidates would be able to win enough delegates to clinch the nomination outright and the party would be facing a contested convention in August, something party leadership desperately hoped to avoid. However, with no candidate being firmly in the lead and continued worries about Bush’s viability in the fall the party was paralyzed to intervene in the primary in order to prop up one candidate even as President Reagan privately began to push for the rest of the party to unite behind Bush while remaining publicly neutral in order to avoid wading into the vitriolic GOP primary and appearing to play favorites, potentially tarnishing his reputation among some of the GOP rank-and-file who had supported him since his run against Gerald Ford in 1976.
The next big primary for both parties was in Illinois, where Gary Hart and Dick Gephardt were making their last desperate stands on the Democratic side as their campaigns hemorrhaged support and funds following their failures to score big wins on Super Tuesday and Ferraro and Biden’s momentum coming out of the night. Hart’s campaign would be emboldened by strong showings in caucuses in both Alaska and South Carolina in the days leading up to the Illinois primary, where he scored second and tied Babbitt for third place respectively. While both proved to be Ferraro victories (although only by two points in South Carolina) his campaign was convinced that he could end up taking in enough support in Illinois in order to pass the 15% threshold for earning delegates. Gephardt’s campaign, meanwhile, grew increasingly disheartened as he failed to earn delegates and watched as Ferraro secured the support of the National Education Association while Biden scooped up the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, cutting further into his union support. Both barnstormed across the state and blanketed the airwaves with ads in the hope of letting their struggling campaigns live another day. When the results streamed in from Illinois on the night of March 15 and it was clear that Ferraro would win the state by double digits while Hart and Gephardt would fail to win any delegates, both suspended their campaigns within a few hours of each other as the Democratic field narrowed to just three candidates. Only Ferraro and Biden would continue to be considered by the media as serious contenders for the nomination while Babbitt’s campaign became a vehicle for his ideas rather than a winning bid for the party’s nomination.
On the Republican side the race in Illinois was more muted as Bush ceded the state to both Robertson and Dole after polls continued to show him trailing in third place. He instead focused on the primaries in his ancestral home of Connecticut and Wisconsin, a crucial Midwestern swing state that his campaign was angling to win to deprive Robertson of another potential victory by running up the score in the strongly conservative Milwaukee suburbs while Dole and Bush divided the vote in the rest of the state. Meanwhile Dole and Robertson went at it in Illinois, with Dole painting Robertson as too extreme and divisive to win the election in the fall while Robertson called Dole a “Washington elitist” who would fail to implement a true conservative agenda and continue the spirit of Reagan’s presidency for fear of backlash from “big government atheists” who still ran the show. This line brought heavy criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike, who attested to their colleagues’ belief in god. While Robertson would end up apologizing for the line, it cost him in Illinois as Dole won a larger-than-expected ten point victory and took all 92 of the state’s delegates - vaulting him into the delegate lead overall - as Bush put in a strong third place showing, coming only four points behind Robertson, and Donald Rumsfeld did much better than pundits had speculated, pulling in a solid 18% of the vote in his home state despite the dwindling resources of his campaign. Robertson and his surrogates spun it as having been an expected loss for the campaign considering the moderate character of Illinois Republicans but it was clear that he had botched his chances of pulling off an upset in the state and damaged himself in future contests.
The two weeks that followed provided good news for Vice President Bush, as he received the endorsement of Wisconsin Senator Bob Kasten, an outspoken conservative who had been swept to office in the Reagan Revolution in 1980 and held on in 1986 unlike many of his colleagues elected in that year, and won the Connecticut primary by 7 points over Bob Dole in a region Dole was otherwise running strong in. Such good news would not last forever, however, as Dole’s strong ground game brought him to victory in the Colorado caucuses on April 4 and he earned the support of New York Senator Al D’Amato, a powerful figure within the state party, who stated that Dole would “bring the willingness to work across the aisle when necessary that will prove crucial in dealing with the problems of rising crime and an exploding deficit.” With the New York primary nearly two weeks away and 136 delegates at stake this endorsement was a blow to Bush, whose chances of winning the state began to dwindle. However, Wisconsin was only a day away and looked much more promising for Bush, who had opened a lead over Robertson in the state as it seemed to slip right through Robertson’s fingers. Wisconsin’s more conservative electorate proved to be a tantalizing target for the Robertson campaign and while he had been playing hard for the state with his appeal to traditional conservative values and continued attacks on Bush over his conservative credentials this proved to be ineffective as Bush began to project a strength and confidence that had previously eluded him before his victories on Super Tuesday.
Coming off her victory in Illinois, Ferraro was riding high as it became clear that the nomination was hers to lose at that point and her campaign played up her ability to appeal to both the Democratic base and moderate voters in the general election. However, her nomination was far from inevitable. This was no less clear when she lost the Kansas caucuses to Biden by six points despite expectations of victory considering her performance in other caucus states and the momentum her campaign had coming off of big victories on Super Tuesday and in the Illinois primary. It became evident to many in the Ferraro campaign that her support in the Plains and Mountain states was not as strong as elsewhere as Biden made a strong play for farmers, promising to revitalize rural America in the wake of the farming crisis and pay attention to the needs of farmers who had been ignored by the Reagan administration and politicians in Washington. Despite his ability to connect with middle-class voters and his charismatic speaking style, Joe Biden would also prove to be a gift for the Ferraro campaign because of his frequent gaffes on the campaign trail. At a Democratic debate on March 22 in response to a question about how he would stand up for women as president he remarked that “all of these women are getting down and dirty for Gerry, I know they are, but they should at least give me a look because I may not be a woman but I’d do more for women that any other president has.” His remarks drew a rebuttal from Ferraro who said called his remarks insensitive and “degrading to women all across the country” saying that “women aren’t doing everything they can to support me just because I’m a woman, they’re doing so because they know I’ll be fighting for the issues they care about the most that have nothing to do with gender.” Biden apologized for these comments after facing fire from women’s organizations but they did him no favors, especially as Ferraro cruised to a 20 point victory in the Michigan caucuses just four days later and defeated him by 15 points in the Connecticut primary on March 29.
Biden was far from down and out, however, as he won the North Dakota caucuses in a landslide and was victorious in Colorado a week later, beating Ferraro by 15 points in a state that Hart had been previously leading in up to his withdrawal from the race. Nevertheless, signs were not looking good for him after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed Ferraro in the Wisconsin primary, citing her “deep commitment to addressing the issue of industrial decline in the Midwest” and her status “as a strong positive role model for every little girl in America.” With Ferraro pulling ahead in Wisconsin and having a guaranteed victory in New York two weeks later, Biden looked toward Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana for wins as he faced an uphill battle to cut into her delegate lead and, hopefully, overtake her as delegate leader as unlikely as that would be.
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Well, the Republican race is turning into a right mess it seems. Robertson may well be out, but I can imagine that either Dole or Bush will have to offer him and his followers a fig leaf at the convention in order to keep them on. Ferraro looks as if she might have the easier time of it, providing there aren't any major goofs along the way.
Seems Biden is the one with the goofs right now
Seems like the Republican primary is a toss up. Both Dole and Bush are neck and neck, with either one maybe being able to pull ahead. Dole looks poised to do that with New York locked up, but Bush can probably even up the delegate count if he beats Robertson in Wisconsin.
Cool. I’m really enjoying this. Make sure to check my timeline out at some point.
Yeah, Bush's weakness opened the doors for both Dole and Robertson although their stronger campaigns than OTL also helped too. The very negative campaign hasn't helped the GOP, though, and it makes any agreements before or at the RNC harder should nobody win an outright majority of delegates, which is still possible considering the fact that there are many winner-take-all states with a lot of delegates left to go. However, seeing as these are likely to be split between Bush and Dole it's not looking too good.
Thanks! Updates have been sporadic because of school but should get more regular soon hopefully.
Just caught up with the last update.
Exciting TL, and one I would see "trailblazing to victory" in the next Turtledoves if you keep it at such a high standard.
Exciting TL, and one I would see "trailblazing to victory" in the next Turtledoves if you keep it at such a high standard.
Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad you're enjoying the TL and I hope to see you continue following it as I go forward as there's going to be plenty of excitement ahead.
I look forward to see how Gerry and Maggie will get along, as we're going to have a world with two global powers, the USA and the UK, both led by a woman.
Yeah that's going to be interesting when we get to that point. At least I got a picture for their first meeting together.
Ummm, I guess they won't get on that well. Whilst yes they are both women Maggie is well kind of the right on the right (her government was very conservative) whilst Gerry is more Centre-Right (by British standards) and whilst they would agree on some things I do believe they would disagree on other things.
