Why Democrats should stop worrying and learn to love minor parties
If Democrats want to win the 2020 presidential election, they should forget about keeping anyone from paying attention to a minor party ticket and instead focus on winning while a minor party is a threat. Here’s why:
I looked at every presidential election since 1960, when the modern primary system was born. In elections in which minor party nominees failed to wrangle enough votes in any one state to be accused of affecting the outcome — which I term a split state — the Democratic Party went 2–3, winning in 2012 and 1964 and losing in 1972, 1984 and 1988. And that 2–3 figure is worse than it looks: Both of the Democrats’ wins came with the Democrat as the incumbent, whereas the three losses came with Republican incumbents.
But in elections in which minor party nominees did wrangle enough votes in any one state to be accused of affecting the outcome, the Democratic Party went 5–5. And for two of the five wins, the incumbent was a Republican.
The key for the Democratic Party is to win those split states. In every election in which the difference between the Democrat’s vote total and the Republican’s vote total was smaller than the number of people voting for minor party nominees, the Democrat either won more split state electoral votes than the Republican and won the election or won fewer electoral votes and lost the election. The math:
Now, not all split elections are created equal. Perot did pretty well in 1992 — he finished second in Utah (which despises the Clintons) and Maine — whereas 1960’s only split state, Illinois, came courtesy of the Socialist Labor Party’s nominee, Eric Hass. And you could argue here that this just shows that presidents get elected by winning narrowly in enough places.
But that’s not what’s happening here. The Democratic Party’s only two wins that came without minor parties influencing enough voters also came when the party was already in the White House. It’s not just about winning close states. It’s also about convincing voters to pay more attention to you than to the man behind the minor party curtain.
And another thing that comes in handy is the ability to win the same split state multiple times. Carter and Clinton both won Ohio in relatively close votes even with minor party nominees. Ohio has the most close wins for the winning presidential nominee since 1960, with five. States with four wins for the eventual president are:
Florida
Illinois
Kentucky
Nevada
North Carolina
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Wisconsin
North Carolina is an interesting one. It is the only state whose vote has been split each of the past two times any state’s vote was split, and it has gone to the winner both times. Illinois, meanwhile, is resting on the laurels of having been competitive decades ago; it was last split in 1992, and Kentucky isn’t much better, having last been competitive in 1996.
Some states are bad luck, though. Winning these split ones is a bad sign for your presidential aspirations:
Maine
Minnesota
Oklahoma
Texas
Virginia
Dating back to 1960, nobody has ever won Texas as a split state on the way to the White House. Three men have won it in a losing effort, though: Humphrey, Bush and Dole.
Meanwhile, some states just can’t avoid drama. In the ten elections with split states since 1960, these have been involved six times, with each having been won by the winner four times and won by the loser twice:
North Carolina
Oregon
Wisconsin
Finally, the only state that’s never been split?
Arkansas.