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Clinton's Argument - General Election
Research into the Clinton's argument that her primary wins are more important to the Democrats chances in the General Election:
http://ccpsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/testing-clintons-argument-does-winning.html
That means that since 1992, a Democratic nominee has won 75% of the states that he lost during the nomination campaign.
Kerry lost 8 states he carried during the primaries (IA, AZ, MO, TN, VA, UT, GA, OH), Gore lost 4 (NH, GA, MO, OH), and Clinton lost 7 (ID, SC, FL, MS, OK, TX, KS).
But, don't be suprised if she starts arguing that her loses mean she is more electable...
In fact, the Democratic nominees since 1992 have fared better in states that they lost during the nomination campaign (winning 75% of those states in the general election) than they have in states that they won (winning 62% of those states).
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Comments (3)
That's a long (and highly statistical) way of stating a fairly obvious conclusion - since Democrats tend to nominate candidates who are more centrist than the party base, insurgents tend to fare best in the most heavily liberal states, and establishment candidates tend to do best in redder states. Of course, only one cycle in the post is worth considering - in 1992, Clinton lost 9 states. (In 2000, Gore won across the board, and in '04, Kerry only lost to favorite sons.) The post to which you link would be more interesting if it examined margins, instead of wins and losses. I suspect it would exhibit something like the pattern detailed above.
None of this, of course, has the slightest relevance for our very unusual contest this year. Obama does well in certain kinds of heavily-Democratic states, and Hillary in others. For the first time in a long time, we've got a pair of contenders who would assemble very different coalitions. It's less a question of who's better positioned to turn out the base and expand it to 270 electoral votes, and more a matter of which coalition is more likely to be sufficient. There are different sets of swing-states in play depending on who wins the nomination. And that makes the debate over who's more electable much more interesting.
March 25, 2008 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nice to have such a notable TPM blogger comment, thanks Fly.
I am hopeful the increased level of turnout in the Democratic primaries and caucuses hopefully indicates that all of the usual swing-states (WA, OR, NV, CO, NM, MN, IA, MO, WI, MI, OH, PA, NJ, NH, FL) will be in play for either candidate. But, I do think this represent a thirst for change which is what the insurgent candidate represents. Obama's success (not just where he won) is representative of this.
I believe Obama's lead forced Hillary to take on a campaign strategy that will makes it much more difficult for her to play the insurgent against McCain. She will still represent change, but I fear it would not be enough to energize the youth vote and centrist independents.
March 25, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Democrat State Primaries are not winner take all elections. The General election will be. Hillary is trying to apply General Election rules to the State Primaries.
Hillary sure likes to try and change the rules that she agreed, to after the fact.
Ignore her nonsense.
March 25, 2008 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
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