McCain versus the eight-year electoral jinx
PRESIDENT BUSH has left presumptive GOP nominee John McCain with a lot of problems, but the biggest may be the weak 50.7 percent of the vote that Bush received when running for reelection. That's a problematic number because American political parties almost always lose support when trying to secure a third term in the White House. The last time that a party improved its vote percentage after two terms was in 1928, when Republican Herbert Hoover soundly beat Democrat Al Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated to the presidency.
Maybe Barack Obama's status as another "first" will bring about another exception to the rule. Then again, Smith wasn't on the ballot during an unpopular war and a scary economy.
Since 1928, there have been six elections in which one of the major parties was seeking a third consecutive term in the White House - three for each major party. Only two attempts were successful. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt won a third term in 1940, and Republican George H. W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1988; in both cases, the vote was much closer than it had been in the previous election. Not so lucky were Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, and Al Gore in 2000.
In 24 states, the party seeking a third term lost ground in all six elections. These include Michigan, which the McCain campaign is targeting as its best chance to pick up a state won by John Kerry in 2004, and also the states of Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia, which the GOP is struggling to keep in its column this year.
The accompanying map focuses on 1988 and 2000, the last time each party tried for a third term. Most of the states west of the Mississippi swung against both the Republicans in 1988 and the Democrats in 2000 to a greater degree than the United States as a whole. It may appear that the counties at the other end of the scale - where the swing against the ruling party was smaller than the national average both times - are not as significant. But they include many highly populated areas. They are also concentrated in some of the most affluent parts of America, including the Northeast Corridor (and New Jersey in particular), metropolitan Chicago, Southern California, and central Florida.
Perhaps because wealthier areas feel less of a need for change, these sections of the country have a long history of leaning toward the incumbent party. So even though they lean Democratic overall, they were greatly responsible for the landslide reelections of Republicans Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan, and for George W. Bush's popular-vote victory in 2004.
They also crushed the hopes of Michael Dukakis in 1988 (who actually did considerably better than Walter Mondale in the rural West and Midwest but made little headway in suburbia), and nearly kept Jimmy Carter out of the White House in 1976. The biggest exception to this rule came in 1960, when John F. Kennedy, the first successful Catholic nominee, greatly increased the Democratic share of the vote in large metropolitan areas.
In contrast, poorer and more rural areas - particularly in the West - have been more inclined to vote against incumbent parties. That rule of thumb didn't help Dukakis much in the Electoral College, since Reagan had won Western states by so much in 1984 that even a big drop in support kept them Republican four years later. But George W. Bush's margins in 2004 were less impressive (52 percent in Colorado versus Reagan's 63 percent, 50 percent in Nevada versus Reagan's 66 percent), which means that even a slight drop in the Republican vote this year would be enough to switch electoral votes.
That, in turn, puts pressure on McCain to compensate for any Western losses by tapping into the "don't change horses" feeling that often shows up in places like Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Then again, that last state isn't a great bellwether: Pennsylvania happens to be the biggest state carried by Herbert Hoover in his spectacularly unsuccessful bid for reelection in the Great Depression year of 1932.
Robert David Sullivan, a guest columnist, is the managing editor of CommonWealth magazine and primary writer for the blog Beyond Red & Blue. 