The Current Longest Partisan Droughts in US Elections #1: States’ Electoral Votes for President (Democrats)
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Every election, most attention is paid to the elections for offices where there is a chance of a close election and/or one that could flip to a different party than the current officeholder’s party. And that makes sense: We naturally want to know where the greatest competition is.
But what about those offices were one party or the other just can’t make a breakthrough?
In many contests at the federal, state, and local levels of governments, there is an unfortunate lack of competition. No matter what happens, one party is practically guaranteed to win that office. Or it can be occasionally competitive, but one party just can’t quite break through. Even so, studying where the lack of electoral competition is, and how it came to be, can be just as interesting as where the most competition is.
As I started writing an article about the longest partisan win streaks in U.S. elections, it became apparent that my initial scope was far too large for a single article. Even if I simply divided it by the type of office (e.g. president, U.S. Senate), it’s a lot to take in. So, this series is going to be broken up into multiple but frequent entries, by type of office and by party, shown in the list below. Each office will first look at Democratic droughts and then Republican droughts.
- Parts 1 and 2: States’ Electoral Votes for President
- Parts 3 and 4: U.S. Senate Seats
- Parts 5 and 6: U.S. House Congressional Delegations by State
- Parts 7 and 8: Governors’ Races
- Parts 9 and 10: State House Majorities
- Parts 11 and 12: State Senate Majorities
Each of these posts examines the states with the top five longest droughts each for Democrats, and then Republicans, in each post’s respective type of office (unless a bunch more states are tied for a spot in the top 5). Included are the primary and supplemental sources for the data I used to compile the information, political contexts surrounding the elections, other nuances specific to these elections, and a brief description of what other data is shown for these offices.
This is the first part of the series and focuses on electoral votes by each state. Which states’ electoral votes has the Democratic Party struggled the longest to win in their bouts for the presidency?
Primary Source(s) for Data
The primary source for my data is the presidential election results archive from The American Presidency Project. The American Presidency Project is a phenomenal resource for data on American presidents and documents written/spoken by them.
I also use some supplemental info to establish context, such as U.S. Senate and state legislative partisanship, from various other resources. These sources are the following:
- Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, 3rd Edition
- The respective states’ Departments of Elections’ election results archives
- The Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives’ official vote counts for federal elections from 1920 to the present
- Party Affiliations in the State Legislatures: A Year By Year Summary, 1796–2006 by Michael J. Dubin
- Ballotpedia pages on state legislative chambers’ election results from 2007 to the present
Longest Democratic Droughts
Since a bunch of states tied for a spot in the top five longest droughts for both the Democratic and the Republican Parties, there are more states included in the list. The longest droughts for Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are shown side-by-side for comparison, but this article is only focusing on the Democratic side.
There are nine states tied for the longest time since they have been won by Democratic presidential candidates. Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming were last won by a Democratic presidential candidate in the 1964 election.
That year featured incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas facing off against Republican Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Vice President Johnson became the president in 1963 following John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Goldwater is most known for being one of if not the biggest popularizers of modern conservative ideology despite his unsuccessful bid for president.
While Johnson trounced Goldwater overall in the 1964 election with over 61% of the vote, were these nine states also routs?
Alaska
With Alaska being our 49th state — Hawaii being admitted as a state shortly after — it’s tied with Hawaii in having the fewest presidential elections to have counted toward the Electoral College for. (The 1960 election was those two states’ first times they had electoral votes up for grabs.) That is partly why Alaska has gone to a Democratic presidential candidate fewer than any other state, doing so just once. Even Hawaii, a heavily Democratic state today and historically, has gone to Republican presidential candidates more than that (twice).
But Johnson made the most of his win there in the 1964 campaign, taking all three electoral votes. There were 67,259 total votes cast in the election in Alaska.
- Johnson (D) took 44,329 votes (65.91%).
- Goldwater (R) took 22,930 votes (34.10%).
Idaho
Idaho is one of a handful of states today where Republican presidential candidates have had a tight grip on their most recent electoral votes, but had gone Democratic all throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The Republican presidential candidates of the 1920s dominated in an era of prosperity and voters rewarded the GOP, but the Great Depression led to a backlash from voters against them as they turned to rewarding the Democratic Party. (Note: I am not saying one party or the other was responsible for economic highs and lows, just that that was the perception by voters.)
But after the 1948 election, Republicans began to routinely win Idaho. In fact, Goldwater came close to winning it in 1964. Another percentage point toward Goldwater and Republicans could claim never losing Idaho in a presidential election since we became 50 states (since 1959). There were 292,477 total votes cast in the 1964 election in Idaho in one of the tightest contests for a state in that presidential election.
- Johnson (D) took 148,920 votes (50.92%).
- Goldwater (R) took 143,557 votes (49.08%).
Kansas
Kansas is arguably the state where the Republican Party is the most dominant at winning federal elections. As you’ll see in later installments in this series, Kansas is also the state where Democrats have the longest drought in winning a majority of the state’s U.S. House delegation or either of the state’s U.S. Senate seats.
It’s a similar case in presidential elections: Except for the 1964 election, Republican presidential candidates have won Kansas every election from 1940 to the present. Furthermore, Democratic presidential candidates have only won the state’s electoral votes in six out of 40 elections since Kansas became a state. Republicans have won it 33 of those 40 times. (In 1892, it was one of a handful of states won by Populist candidate James B. Weaver.)
It wasn’t a particularly close contest in Kansas, but it wasn’t a blowout, either. There were 857,901 total votes cast in the 1964 election in Kansas.
- Johnson (D) took 464,028 votes (54.09%).
- Goldwater (R) took 386,579 votes (45.06%).
Nebraska
Nebraska, along with Maine, have an unusual status in presidential elections: They are the only two states that are not winner-take-all systems. (However, neither state did this in the 1964 election.) That means that the presidential candidate who wins the most popular votes in either state does not necessarily receive all of their electoral votes. If a presidential candidate that loses the state wins the most popular votes in one of the congressional districts, they can still take the single electoral vote that represents that district. Democrats Barack Obama in 2008 and Joe Biden in 2020 managed to take one electoral vote from the state while still losing the overall state.
However, Democratic presidential candidates have struggled mightily to fully win Nebraska in election history. They’ve done so only seven out of 39 times that Nebraska has been a state. Johnson was one of those seven, winning it in a reasonably close race. There were 584,154 total votes cast in the 1964 election in Nebraska.
- Johnson (D) took 307,307 votes (52.61%).
- Goldwater (R) took 276,847 votes (47.39%).
North Dakota
North Dakota is one of the most Republican states overall historically. (North Dakota will also appear in this series in the installment on longest partisan droughts for governor.) Before 1964, a Democratic presidential candidate hadn’t won it since 1936, when Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for his second term. Overall, Democratic presidential candidates have only won North Dakota five out of the 33 elections since it became a state.
Despite this history, Johnson walloped Goldwater for the state’s electoral votes. There were 258,389 total votes cast in the 1964 election in North Dakota.
- Johnson (D) took 149,784 votes (57.97%).
- Goldwater (R) took 108,207 votes (41.88%).
Oklahoma
Similarly to Idaho, Oklahoma is now a very Republican state but went Democratic in presidential elections throughout the 1930s and 1940s. However, Oklahoma was a regularly Democratic state before then, too. Throughout its first roughly 60 years since it became a state in 1907, Democrats had an incredibly tight hold on Oklahoma’s state and federal politics. From 1907 to 1966, Democratic candidates did the following:
- Won 17 of 20 contests for the state’s U.S. Senate seats
- Won the majority of the state’s U.S. House delegation every time except for 1920
- Won every governor’s race except in 1962 and 1966
- Won majorities in both state legislative chambers every time except for the state house in 1920
And to top it all off, Democratic presidential candidates won Oklahoma in nine out of the first 11 presidential elections since it became a state. But a shift toward Republican politics began in the 1950s and 1960s, and that could first be seen in presidential elections. Except for Johnson winning the state against Goldwater in 1964, Republican presidential candidates have won the state every time from 1952 to the present.
There were 932,499 total votes cast in the 1964 election in Oklahoma.
- Johnson (D) took 519,834 votes (55.75%).
- Goldwater (R) took 412,665 votes (44.25%).
South Dakota
South Dakota has a similar voting history to the other Dakota in terms of which presidential candidates have won the state historically. Democratic presidential candidates have only won the state four out of the 33 presidential elections South Dakota has had since it became a state, while Republicans have won it 28 times. (The state went to Teddy Roosevelt in his attempt at a comeback through a third-party bid in the 1912 election.) Except for 1964, the last time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state was in 1936.
The voting percentage splits between Johnson and Goldwater in South Dakota were close to what they were in Oklahoma, albeit with far fewer total votes. There were 293,118 total votes cast in the 1964 election in South Dakota.
- Johnson (D) took 163,010 votes (55.61%).
- Goldwater (R) took 130,108 votes (44.39%).
Utah
Like Idaho and Oklahoma, Utah is now a very Republican state that voted Democratic for president throughout the 1930s and 1940s. It seems, however, that it wasn’t just the Great Depression that led to major success for Utah Democrats, as they were capable of winning several races for both the governor and U.S. Senate in the late 1910s and into the 1920s. They also nearly took majorities in both the Utah State House and State Senate in the 1928 election, the year before the Great Depression hit.
Republicans started to make major gains again in both the state and federal politics of Utah in the late 1940s and early 1950s. With the exception of 1964, Republican presidential candidates have won Utah every year from 1952 to the present.
There were 401,413 total votes cast in the 1964 election in Utah.
- Johnson (D) took 219,628 votes (54.71%).
- Goldwater (R) took 181,785 votes (45.29%).
Wyoming
Wyoming is a deep red state today that also often went blue for president during the 1930s and 1940s, though Republican Thomas E. Dewey did manage to take the state from Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1944 election by 2.47 percentage points. (Interestingly, however, Dewey then lost the state to Democrat Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s last vice president, in the 1948 election.) But since 1948, Democratic presidential candidates have rarely come even close to winning Wyoming’s electoral votes.
Nevertheless, Johnson won Wyoming handily against Goldwater, the only time a Democratic presidential candidate took the state since 1948. There were 142,716 total votes cast in the 1964 election in Wyoming.
- Johnson (D) took 80,718 votes (56.56%).
- Goldwater (R) took 61,998 votes (43.44%).
Could We See Any of These Partisan Streaks End in the Near Future?
It’s highly unlikely that any of these states decide to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate in the near future, at least in the 2024 election. As of June 15, 2024, major election forecasters see all nine of these states as shoo-ins for Donald Trump in 2024 (a slight exception being that CNalysis sees a very small chance that Biden could compete for Alaska).
In the 2020 election, these were the voting splits for Trump (R) and Biden (D) in their first matchup for those states. The closest one of these by far was Alaska, and it’s almost a certainty that Biden won’t be able to make up enough ground in that state either.
- Alaska: Trump with 52.83%, Biden with 42.77%
- Idaho: Trump with 63.84%, Biden with 33.07%
- Kansas: Trump with 56.21%, Biden with 41.56%
- Nebraska: Trump with 58.51%, Biden with 39.36%
- North Dakota: Trump with 65.11%, Biden with 31.76%
- Oklahoma: Trump with 65.37%, Biden with 32.29%
- South Dakota: Trump with 61.77%, Biden with 35.61%
- Utah: Trump with 58.13%, Biden with 37.65%
- Wyoming: Trump with 69.94%, Biden with 26.55%
The one caveat comes from Nebraska — which, as mentioned earlier, does not have a winner-take-all system for its electoral votes. Biden was able to win a single electoral vote from Nebraska in 2020 for taking the most popular votes in the 2nd congressional district, and most forecasters think there is a good chance that happens again.
But as for these Democratic droughts, however, the streaks are nearly certain to continue through the 2024 election.
The next installment of this series will also focus on electoral votes for the states, but it will be about Republican droughts instead.
