Analysis: Trump is leading Republicans to an unwanted record
Yet, partially through a little bit of bad luck and two electoral college-popular vote splits, the Republican Party looks like it could be on the way to an unpleasant distinction.
If President Donald Trump, in fact, loses the popular vote in 2020, it will be the first time since the founding of the Democratic Party in 1828 that either the Democratic or Republican Party has lost the popular vote this many times in a span of eight elections.
Obviously, we don’t know what the November result will be. There’s still a little over two months to go and things can change.
A loss by Trump this year would mean the Republicans have lost the popular vote 7 out of the last 8 elections since 1992.
Of course, winning a few elections by a point here or a point there can merely be luck. That’s why it’s also important to look at the vote share each party is receiving. Let’s say Biden beats Trump by 8 points nationally, and Trump receives exactly 46.0% of the vote.
Now, part of the reason the long term average is low for the Republicans is the third party candidacies of Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996.
However, even if you were to look at the margin between the Democratic and Republican nominees, this eight-election stretch is the worst for the Republicans in the popular vote outside aforementioned periods of 1932 to 1960 and 1936 to 1964.
What’s the cause of the Republicans’ struggles in the popular vote? It could be a lot of things.
The optimistic view for the party is simply that the popular vote is the wrong metric for understanding Republicans’ strength. The purpose is to win elections and Republicans are doing so on the presidential level. After all, they have won three of the last seven presidential elections. And if Trump wins again in November, it will be four of eight.
And besides, most stretches of dominance for one party usually abates after a period of time. If that’s the case, then the Republicans, by winning the electoral college three times since 1992, have weathered the storm of doing poorly in the popular vote pretty well.
It could be that the recent Republican electoral college wins mask a deeper weakness. And because Republicans don’t realize their problems, they’ll do nothing to address them.
Still, we’re probably getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. An election still needs to be fought. Right now, though, history looks to be in the offing for Republicans. The bad type of history.
