From: king@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Jonathan King)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Which South will rise again? (was Re: A guess at the [E][V]s...)
Summary: what does Clinton have in common with McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis?
Keywords: electoral college, electoral votes, poll, polls, states
Date: 15 Sep 92 00:04:22 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

fusco@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Andrew Fusco) writes:
>king@cogsci.ucsd.EDU (Jonathan King) writes:
>>I do see your point, but it's not that Democrats never win or come
>>close in TN.  [stuff deleted about Dems in TN back to 1940...jking]

>[...jking] regarding a state going Democrat or Republican, I don't think 
>we can really go back before 1968. The historical shift of the South from
>the Democrats which took place in the 1960's has changed the South
>forever. 

I agree things have changed, but it isn't just the South that was
changing, as I'll mention below.

>In 1968, most of the South voted for Wallace, and from then on,
>it's been Republican and "law-and-order" all the way. Except for the
>Carter anomaly in 1976, due to Watergate, the South has never strayed.

Was the "Carter anomaly" due more to Watergate or to the presence of a
more moderate candidate on the ticket?  For that matter, Carter didn't
do badly in the South in 1980, even with a strong third party
candidate.  He won Georgia, and he lost AR and TN by 5K votes each, SC
by 11K votes, MS by 12K votes, AL by 18K votes, KY by 19K votes, and
NC by 40K votes; many of these margins were less than Anderson's
totals in those states.  He did get beat in LA and MO and *stomped* in
FL, and TX, but it wasn't as bad a showing as the electoral vote
showed.

Clearly, Carter was the least liberal of a bunch that has included
Humphrey, McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis since 1964.  As far as Clinton
goes, I perceive him as being less liberal than McGovern and Mondale
for certain, and probably less liberal than all of the above except
Carter.  (Let's be serious here:  Clinton *is* a guy who has signed
death penalty orders, a parental consent bill, and kept AR as a
right-to-work state; that is his record whether one cares for it or
not.)

>Nowhere is distrust of the Democrats stronger than in the South, and
>they'll only vote for one if he is perceived to be "one of their own."
>I don't believe Clinton garners this kind of support at all, unlike
>Carter.

So far, the polls would seem to dispute you on this since Clinton is
still apparently leading throughout the region, although I agree this
may not be the way it will end up.  Basically, if you could have
grafted Kerrey's (or even Quayle's) war record onto Clinton's body, we
probably wouldn't even be having this discussion.  (We'd be talking
about Clinton's appeal to Mormons or something :-))

But when it comes time to vote in November, it might well be possible
that some of those who were opposed to Clinton on the draft issue will
find themselves unable to vote for George Bush.  Some might even pull
the other lever.

Right now, things are looking very grim for Bush in AR (of course) and 
TN (not a shock) and not good in KY, NC, and LA, at a minimum, judging
from scattered polls and other things I've read.

Meanwhile, as far as polls go, we've got hearsay from Florida:

The Sunday LA Times suggested that Clinton was doing better than
expected in Northern Florida, and much better than expected among
Cuban expatriots in Southern Florida.  Both of these results were
pretty surprising, but the second one has to be a complete let-down
for George Bush, who is running in part as the guy in the Oval Office
when The Wall came tumbling down.  One of the Cuban expatriots
explained that many of them thought that while Bush was good as a Cold
War president, that maybe a change was needed.

On the face of this data, I have to say I just don't believe it.  Does
anybody else have better information on this?

jking