I've got a trivia question for all of you about presidential election history

[bluestateguy]

Name one time that the party of an outgoing/retiring president who was unpopular was able to HOLD the White House in the November election.

[slackmaster]

1. Good one - Certainly no election after World War II

Tagged for interest.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Reagan wasn't particularly popular by '88. nt

[bluestateguy]

3. He averaged 55% in 1988

http://abcnews.go.com/images/pdf/PollingMemoReaganRetrospective.pdf

[Smarmie Doofus]

4. Then I'll have to go with Hoover after Coolidge/Harding. nt

[bluestateguy]

5. By all accounts Coolidge left office popular

We'll never know for sure, as there were no scientific polls, but it seems that the main reason he bowed out in 1928 was the fact that he just did not like being president.

[Smarmie Doofus]

Then you'd have to go back to the 1800s, seems to me.

There was a long string of Republicans broken up by.... if memory serves... Grover Cleveland.

I'll take a wild guess: whomever succeeded the wildly unpopular US Grant.

[tabasco]

13. I think it is incorrect to characterize Grant as wildly unpopular.

That's not what I've read. He was re-elected without campaigning. His second term was marred by scandal but people did not think he was personally corrupt, just a bad judge of character.

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. Then you'd have to go back to the 1800s, seems to me.

There was a long string of Republicans broken up by.... if memory serves... Grover Cleveland.

I'll take a wild guess: whomever succeeded the wildly unpopular US Grant.

[Alexander]

7. 1876. Grant left office mired in scandal, Hayes succeeded him.

Both were Republicans.

Although Hayes' win was based mostly on electoral fraud and backroom deals.

[bluestateguy]

8. OK, we may have a winner here

But look at what it took: Tilden, not Hayes won the popular vote; and much of the Democratic opposition in the South was still under the force of arms; the commission that arbitrated the election was stacked in favor of Republicans too.

[terrell9584]

11. Compromise of 1876

Was necessary because the presence of federal troops in the three states that were declared to Hayes was unacceptable to the local population, and during that decade, every single time that Democratic control returned a Southern state, it returned at the barrel of a gun. There are many similarities between the Reconstruction in the South and Reconstruction in Iraq, many glaring similarities.

But, if the compromise of 1876 had not occurred, Democratic rule would have been restored in those states by a gunbarrel as well, and federal troops would have been caught in the crossfire. People in this country have no longer been taught about just how bad Reconstruction was, the level of corruption, the abuses of power, I guarantee that no schoolchildren learn about the edict that Ben Butler issued upon taking control of New Orleans. They don't learn about the gamemanship of the adventurers who came down and they certainly don't learn that carpetbaggers bankrupted every single government in the region, and are solely responsible for the economic degregation and Jim Crow that followed its failure.

[terrell9584]

9. Humphrey would have if Wallace hadn't run

But he did, so that is immaterial.

The Election of 1876 comes to mind, and that is counted as a Republican win. The same for the election of 1880. I would say the election of 1860 if the Democratic Party hadn't split, Lincoln should have lost that election in the way Fremont had lost four years earlier.

[bluestateguy]

10. I say Nixon still wins

Wallace won southern states that had voted for Goldwater in 1964. I suspect they would have voted for Nixon. Wallace may have hurt HHH in Michigan and Pennslyvania, but he won those states anyway.

[terrell9584]

12. Look at Wallace's in states that Johnson won

And look at his votes compared to Carter.

Wallace won in Democratic counties, usually because in these Democratic counties, local organizations went out and taught voters how to split their ticket. The areas that Nixon won in 1968, save in South Carolina, were areas where people actually were Republicans. Nixon won Republican counties, and Humphrey and Wallace split the Democratic counties.

Florida probably would have went for Nixon anyway, they had 8 years before, however, the Texas Democratic machine helped Humphrey hold in '68, and I suspect that most of Wallaces votes would have went the way of the machine, because in Texas in '68, there was no revolt, that was Johnson's machinery. Arkansas would have definitely went for Humphrey, it almost still did. Tennessee could have at least been competitive, but for Wallace siphoning off the vote. Georgia went for Truman, it could have been carried by Humphrey. Johnson got 42% in Louisiana in 1964, Humphrey could have won it. Wallace's votes were Democratic votes in Democratic areas, and more would have gone to Humphrey than Nixon. Humphrey did make a strategic mistake in not picking a Southerner for the ticket, but still he would have held the South, and if you look at where Wallace's votes came in the North, we know those were Democratic voters, primarily from union people

Wallace's margin in Cook County, IL was higher than Nixon's margin of victory in the state. I think that if Wallace had not run, Humphrey wins IL. The same for Ohio, and based on the fact that Missouri had been carried by Stevenson in '56, you can probably ad Missouri to that list, because Wallace did well there, more than Nixon's margin. I'll say the same for New Jersey. Wallace's support in the north was primarily blue collar and labor in origin, ethnics, people who had voted for LBJ and Kennedy.