In 1992 and 1996, Bill Clinton did very well in the South. In both elections he carried Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, and his home state of Arkansas. In 1992 he won Georgia, and in 1996 he won Florida. But in 2000, Gore did not carry a single state in the former Confederacy - not even his home state of Tennessee. One might think that Gore, as a Southerner, would have at least carried his home state in the midst of a good economy and relative peace on the world stage. So why did Clinton do so much better in the South than Gore?
Why Did Clinton Do Better in the South than Gore?
- Thread starter Amadeus
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Because the South was shifting even farther to the right during the Clinton years, I'd imagine, and the nomination of George W. probably accelerated the trend, as the first Southern born-again Republican nominee. Actually, he was the first Republican President from a state in the old Confederacy, wasn't he? Big shift if that's the case.
Gore was anti-oil. Major industry in Louisiana, and you don't have to be Arthur Laffer to understand that what's bad for your industry is bad for you.
Can't speak to the dynamics of every state, but Clinton carried Louisiana both times so it was only four years between then and Bush.
Can't speak to the dynamics of every state, but Clinton carried Louisiana both times so it was only four years between then and Bush.
Bill Clinton's southern drawl and mannerisms were more pleasing to voters than Al Gore's flat stiff monotone.
True, but he was always seen as a Northerner by the time he was running for President.
marathag
Banned
Bubba was just a better politician. He had real charisma.
Al, well, he didn't have much of that. He was a policy wonk, through and through
True, and Clinton went out of his way to play up his Southern roots while Gore did not.
In I think the '88 presidential debate, GHW Bush was asked(maybe prompted by an issue with his tax returns) if he was a Texan or a New Englander, and he replied "Well, I'm a Texan". Which got a lot of applause from the audience.
And of course in the same campaign he also attacked Dukakis' Harvard education by saying "When I wanted to learn about life, I didn't go to Harvard. I went to Texas".
Leaving aside the question of whether working in Texas teaches you any more about "life" that what everybody else knows, I think it's fairly plausible that a lot of the people who voted for him in '88 regarded him as a true Texan.
Ugh, it baffles me that Dukakis did not respond by pointing out that before Bush went down to Texas to start a business using connections from his millionaire father he attended Yale University. The utter naked hypocrisy of Bush's attacks on Dukakis as an Ivy League elitist should have backfired badly. Instead Dukakis let Bush shamelessly walk all over him like a doormat.
marathag
Banned
Which is why he lost. Any of the other Ds in the Primary would have done better against 'Poppy', and that includes the bow-tied Paul Simon
An obvious answer is that Gore in 2000 did worse than Clinton in 1996 (relative to the Republican candidate) nationally--in the North as well as the South. 1996 United States presidential election - Wikipedia 2000 United States presidential election - Wikipedia
Clinton won IL in 1996 by 17.60 points; Gore won it by 12.01.
Clinton won PA in 1996 by 9.21 points: Gore won it by 4.17.
Clinton won MI in 1996 by 13.21 points; Gore won it by 5.13 points.
Clinton won MN in 1996 by 16.14 points; Gore won it by 2.41 points.
Clinton won NY in 1996 by 28.86 points; Gore won it by 25.0 points
Clinton won WI in 1996 by 10.33 points; Gore won it by 0.22 points.
Clinton won OH in 1996 by 6.36 points; Gore lost it 3.51 points.
Clinton lost IN in 1996 by 5.63 points; Gore lost it by 15.64 points.
Clinton won CT in 1996 by 18.14 points; Gore won it by 17.47 points--only a slight decline, granted, but this was with Lieberman on the ticket...
Why should one expect the South to be an exception to a nationwide trend?
(BTW, TN already showed it was moving rightward in 1994--with the two Senate races 1994 United States Senate elections - Wikipedia and the governor's race 1994 Tennessee gubernatorial election - Wikipedia and confirmed that in 1996 when Clinton-Gore only carried the state by 2.41 points compared to the 4.65 points in 1992. 1992 United States presidential election - Wikipedia So it was not really such a shock that Gore would lose it in 2000.)
Clinton won IL in 1996 by 17.60 points; Gore won it by 12.01.
Clinton won PA in 1996 by 9.21 points: Gore won it by 4.17.
Clinton won MI in 1996 by 13.21 points; Gore won it by 5.13 points.
Clinton won MN in 1996 by 16.14 points; Gore won it by 2.41 points.
Clinton won NY in 1996 by 28.86 points; Gore won it by 25.0 points
Clinton won WI in 1996 by 10.33 points; Gore won it by 0.22 points.
Clinton won OH in 1996 by 6.36 points; Gore lost it 3.51 points.
Clinton lost IN in 1996 by 5.63 points; Gore lost it by 15.64 points.
Clinton won CT in 1996 by 18.14 points; Gore won it by 17.47 points--only a slight decline, granted, but this was with Lieberman on the ticket...
Why should one expect the South to be an exception to a nationwide trend?
(BTW, TN already showed it was moving rightward in 1994--with the two Senate races 1994 United States Senate elections - Wikipedia and the governor's race 1994 Tennessee gubernatorial election - Wikipedia and confirmed that in 1996 when Clinton-Gore only carried the state by 2.41 points compared to the 4.65 points in 1992. 1992 United States presidential election - Wikipedia So it was not really such a shock that Gore would lose it in 2000.)
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We should also remember that there has never been an occasion in modern America where a party did not do worse after eight years in power than it had done four years earlier. Nixon of course did far worse in 1960 than Ike had done in 1956; Humphrey did far worse in 1968 than LBJ had done in 1964; GHW Bush while winning in 1988 did considerably worse than Reagan had done in 1984; McCain did much worse in 2008 than GW Bush had done in 2004; and Hillary Clinton did considerably worse in 2016 than Obama had done in 2012. Gore--win-or lose--doing worse in 2000 than Clinton had done in 1996 fits into this pattern.
This is true, but it does not explain why Gore lost every Southern while holding on to traditional Democratic strongholds in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Of course, had he performed even .5% better nationally he would have carried Florida. But in other states such as Louisiana, he won only 44.88% of the vote compared to Clinton's 52.01% in 1996. As you point out, it should have been expected that Gore performed worse than Clinton. But what explains why he performed that much worse not only in individual states but in the entire region? I am inclined to believe that, as others have mentioned, the 1990s saw a shift to the GOP at the state level before George W. Bush was able to build upon this to win the Presidency in 2000.
W also won Florida by only 537 votes, thanks in part to the infamous butterfly ballot, which resulted in thousands of "Jews for Buchanan".
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Somewhat, but not as much as you might think. Democrats won the gubernatorial elections in Alabama and South Carolina in 1998 and Mississippi in 1999. The GOP didn't even field a serious opponent for Senator Breaux in Louisiana in '98.
But mainly I think through fraudulent disfranchisement by a process to identify alleged former felons, ineligible to vote by Florida law, who were in fact not felons in many cases. We know that the private firm Jeb Bush hired to do the list-making objected to orders from the state government to broaden their slanderous accusations because they feared legal liability (and a corporate bad reputation for unreliability) by the criteria Secretary of State Harris retroactively imposed on them, which they knew and explained would create egregiously high numbers of false positives. They demanded, and got, orders in writing to proceed with what they knew were indefensible methods.
This alone more than accounts for the alleged Bush victory margin, by at least an order of magnitude.
Florida was stolen, pure and simple. And without it, Bush could not win.
Mind, I for one had Florida written off before the election showed otherwise as a Bush slam dunk just knowing they'd elected Jeb Bush governor two years before. Florida by that kind of reasoning should have been a solid and indisputable majority for Bush--the fact that it was jittering right on the red line of indeterminacy is a damning enough indictment of the alleged popularity of the Republicans in the period, at least in potentially volatile Florida itself.
The Republican habit of leaning on various layered forms of voter suppression should always be factored in to any claims of legitimacy on their part, and we need not look after 2000 for other examples. It was something they were found guilty of again and again in courts of law.
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None of which invalidates the evident fact of a genuine shift toward supporting Republicans and abandoning Democrats across the nation, only raises some questions as to the magnitude. Indeed the Republicans had momentum and as noted above a big part of it was that it was "their turn." Fatigue in supporting the party that has had control of the White House for some considerable time is a major fact of American politics; no party should ever count on winning three terms in a row, and definitely not four. I'd explain that as a mix of several factors--one being that there are political problems that can be solved fairly easily without upsetting powerful opposition too much but that a faction that came in on certain premises has a hard time addressing, while others are harder to solve and require a fresh political mandate to overcome deeper entrenched opposition. A new administration of one party can tackle some of the latter and have easy wins tackling some of the former too, then they have exhausted the easy ones and accumulate problems the opposition has more credibility in addressing.
But I do think a certain old boy (nowadays more and more also old girl) network mentality about the nature of the American system held by ruling elites is that the system works by a revolving door in the Presidency, and thus opposition to a rival party winning tends to weaken after one has held power for two terms or more, while various more or less cynical actors such as corporations tend to suppose it is the other party's turn now. Bush Jr had an inherent advantage, one his father suffered from being on the opposite side of, and 2000 was his to lose. The fact he squeaked by with barely enough EV and a crucial part of them egregiously stolen with a whole series of acts of criminal mendacity was pretty telling in that context.
In retrospect we can see that Bush Jr needed everything that did favor him and it was not sufficient to win honestly even so. All factors mentioned--Gore's poorer charisma than Clinton's, his more elitist self-presentation (perhaps these are one and the same thing? but one can be a charismatic elitist or an uncharismatic populist, so no not really I think), clearly a factor. General shift of the public rightward overall, and especially so in the South, another. Partisan fatigue based on the Clinton administration playing out its hand of easy wins and accumulating baggage that looked amenable to a Republican solution, combined with it simply being the Republicans' turn in elite perceptions--all of these aided Bush, and yet he could not win either a popular vote plurality nationwide nor Florida's crucial EV without a criminal thumb on the scales there.
I do think the Gorebot should have taken a tack in the Florida dispute publicizing the degree to which Jeb Bush's voter purge blocked honest citizens from voting and the Democrats should have backed a class action suit by purged non-felons for slander (or libel, whichever legal category applies better) in conjunction with deprivation of civil rights, and that a case of criminal conspiracy to disfranchise based on racial bias alone (the courts don't much care about partisan bias, but racial discrimination is more legally and politically radioactive) and used plain legal grounds to reject Florida's allegedly legitimate EV.
Of course had SCOTUS not given Jeb legal cover to assert the official claim of a narrow victory, the state legislature, Republican dominated, could claim that the legal method of choosing electors having failed due to an indeterminate PV outcome in Florida, it fell to them to appoint electors, which would push Bush over the top--but highlighting the criminal shenanigans that manufactured an indeterminacy where none would exist with an honest process.
Instead he took the position that legal processes had been followed, rejected an appeal from members of House and Senate to dispute the Florida claim, and thus obscured the general issue of dubious practices in American elections that haunt us to this day--properly so, as abuses continue. Unresolved.
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It remains a fact Gore performed less well than Clinton, and if we say "but his popular vote percentage was higher!" surely that has a lot to do with Ross Perot challenging strongly in both '92 and '96 but giving up by 2000. Then Nader took it up instead but never came close to Perot's numbers even in '96. We've covered a constellation of different reasons, and on one hand, had electoral propriety held in all states, we can be confident Gore would win and by a less narrow margin of EV than Bush claimed as the outcome of crime. So just as Bush Sr rode on Reagan's coattails to a third Republican term, Gore would win in an honest process--but of course more marginally than Bush Sr did in '88, and very likely have failed of reelection in 2004. On the other, criminality limited to a marginal degree that had plausible deniability in our mainstream media culture was sufficient for Bush to win, because Gore was indeed weaker than Clinton.
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It should be pointed out that Gore wasn't facing the stiff George H.W. Bush, whose strong performance in the South was largely based on his advocacy of Reaganism & opposition to Dukakis, or the slightly senile-sounding Bob Dole of Kansas. He was facing George Bush, the epitome of Southern Republicans -- a born-again Christian, supporter of "family values" and conservative positions, and who spoke with a Texan drawl (as the movie W puts it, GWB was determined to never be "out-Texaned" after his 1978 Congressional defeat). Bush won on the cultural issue ten times over, and indeed his soft-spokenness reminded people of Reagan (who had won every Southern state with 60+% of the vote in 1984). Gore was also hampered by the fact that he couldn't appeal to "Southern values" the way Bush or Clinton could: both were Governors who had been "on the ground," and could position themselves as outsiders & thus run on a form of populism, which greatly improved their performance in the region. In contrast, Gore was a two-term Vice President, and before that spent 16 years in Congress; he seemed to many to be a "Washington insider," after all that time. The Gore of 2000 had a much harder time distinguishing himself in the South than, say, the Gore of 1988 (who practically ran as the Southern candidate for the nomination) did.
It should also be mentioned, nonetheless, that Gore didn't do badly -- at least not compared to Democrats today. He lost KY by 15 points, but the state gives 60+% of its vote to Republicans nowadays. He also lost WV by 5 points, whereas Clinton lost it by 42 points in 2016. The only Southern state he lost by 20+ points was Texas, and that was Bush's home state. He is also the last Democrat to win a single county in Oklahoma.
I know political scientists often dispute how much a campaign really matters, but I think in close races it often makes the difference. 2000 was one such race in my opinion.
It should also be mentioned, nonetheless, that Gore didn't do badly -- at least not compared to Democrats today. He lost KY by 15 points, but the state gives 60+% of its vote to Republicans nowadays. He also lost WV by 5 points, whereas Clinton lost it by 42 points in 2016. The only Southern state he lost by 20+ points was Texas, and that was Bush's home state. He is also the last Democrat to win a single county in Oklahoma.
I know political scientists often dispute how much a campaign really matters, but I think in close races it often makes the difference. 2000 was one such race in my opinion.
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One factor but really Clinton was just 100x more charismatic than Gore in every way. I believe Obama did much better in the south than Gore did for similar reasons.