The Current Longest Partisan Droughts in US Elections #2: States’ Electoral Votes for President (Republicans)
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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.
Today’s post is part 2, continuing the focus on electoral votes for president by each state from part 1. This time, however, we look at the Republican Party.
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 Republican Droughts
With the exception of Minnesota since the 1972 election, the longest Republican droughts in winning electoral votes are in six states since the 1984 election: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.
The 1972 Election
The 1972 presidential election pitted incumbent Republican Richard Nixon against Democrat George McGovern. Although Nixon is most synonymous with the Watergate Scandal and his subsequent resignation, he had been a quite popular president before his connection to the Watergate break-in came to the public light. The 1972 election results reflect this popularity. McGovern was a U.S. Senator for South Dakota, a longtime public figure before the election who would continue a career in politics long afterward as well.
Nixon won the 1968 election with a fairly comfortable electoral vote margin against U.S. Senator Humbert Humphrey of Minnesota, but the popular vote was quite close. In 1972, however, Nixon left McGovern in the dust by 503 electoral votes and nearly 18,000,000 popular votes. Nixon even won McGovern’s home state.
Minnesota
And it was in the 1972 election that Republicans last won Minnesota for president, Humphrey’s home state and neighboring state to McGovern’s South Dakota. In Minnesota’s earliest days, it was very Republican. Following statehood in 1858, it voted for Republican presidential candidates in its first 13, and 17 of its first 18, presidential elections. Minnesota didn’t even vote for a Democratic presidential candidate until Franklin Roosevelt’s first win in 1932 (it had gone third-party in the 1912 election).
Roosevelt’s election, however, didn’t lead to a Democratic surge across the state right away. Yet one of the most successful third parties in US history, which had already been winning some elections, was gaining even greater steam. The Farmer-Labor Party won four of six U.S. Senate elections from 1922 to 1936 and four straight gubernatorial elections from 1930 to 1936. From 1922 to 1942, Farmer-Labor candidates won at least one U.S. House race each year, even winning five of the nine seats in both 1932 and 1936.
It wasn’t until 1944 that the Democratic Party and the Farmer-Labor Party merged to become the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) of Minnesota. That, alongside Roosevelt winning the state in all four of his presidential campaigns, finally turned the Democrats in the state into a consistently potent force. Prior to Nixon’s reelection in 1972, Democrats had won the state’s governorship five of the previous seven times and U.S. Senate seats six straight times. (They also won the U.S. Senate seat being elected in 1972.)
From 1960 to the present, the only time Minnesota voted Republican for president was for Nixon in 1972. This is somewhat surprising considering the strength of Democrats overall in Minnesota elections at the time. (Nixon also didn’t even win it when he became president in 1968, losing by over 12 percentage points to Humphrey.) There were 1,741,652 total votes cast in the 1972 election in Minnesota.
- Nixon (R) took 898,269 votes (51.58%).
- McGovern (D) took 802,346 votes (46.07%).
The 1984 Election
The 1984 election was another reelection campaign for a Republican incumbent and it, too, led to a blowout win for said incumbent. Republican Ronald Reagan was a former California governor and movie actor. A conservative Republican icon then and today, Reagan was once a liberal Democrat who voted for Franklin Roosevelt in all four of his presidential runs. In the 1980 election, he defeated then-incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter in a landslide to win his first term.
Reagan’s 1984 general election opponent, Walter Mondale, was a U.S. Senator from Minnesota who became Carter’s vice president in the latter’s only term as president — and like Carter, would face an electoral drubbing. Reagan’s margin of victory over Mondale in 1984 was even larger than it was over Carter in 1980 in both electoral and popular votes, winning every state except the aforementioned Minnesota.
Nobody dominated the electoral or popular vote like in the 1984 election in the years since then. It was also the last time that these six states were won by a Republican presidential candidate: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.
Hawaii
Arguably no state has been more thoroughly dominated by Democrats than the 50th state of the Union. Reagan’s victory in Hawaii was an aberration: The only other time the state voted for a Republican presidential candidate was in the previously noted 1972 election (Hawaii has only counted toward the Electoral College starting with the 1960 election.)
Moreover, Democrats had had the following successes in the state by the time of the 1984 election (and ones after 1984 in parentheses).
- A Democrat had won the governor’s race the previous six times (and would do so another four straight times after the 1984 presidential race).
- U.S. Senate seats were won by Democrats seven out of the first 10 times before the 1984 election (and Republicans haven’t won one of those in Hawaii since then).
- U.S. House seats for Hawaii were won by Democrats every time before 1984 (and except for 1986 and 1988 where a Republican took one of the two seats, Democrats have won every U.S. House race in Hawaii since then).
- Democrats took a majority of the state house in every state legislative election, winning at least 33 of the 51 seats in that chamber every time (and have won at least 32 of the 51 seats in every state house election since 1984).
- The Democratic Party won a majority of the state senate in every state legislative election except for 1959 (and have done so in every election since 1984 as well, becoming even more dominant in that chamber).
Despite all that, Reagan won Hawaii by a fairly comfortable margin in his reelection campaign. There were 335,846 total votes cast in the 1984 election in Hawaii.
- Reagan (R) took 185,050 votes (55.10%).
- Mondale (D) took 147,154 votes (43.82%).
Massachusetts
In the early days of the Democrat vs. Republican rivalry — the Republican Party has only been around since the 1850s — Massachusetts was actually quite a Republican state. In fact, the Republican Party won the state the first 14 times it fielded presidential candidates, starting in 1856. They also had very strong control of the Massachusetts state government in that time frame, almost always voting Republican for governor and for Republican majorities in both the state house and state senate.
But Massachusetts started regularly voting Democratic for president beginning in the 1928 election, when Republican Herbert Hoover won the presidency but closely lost that state. Massachusetts voted Democratic in 11 of the 13 presidential contests prior to Reagan’s run in 1980. Yet Reagan managed to win the state in 1980, winning it by only about 4,000 votes.
Massachusetts was another close contest for president in Reagan’s reelection, but less so than in 1980. There were 2,559,453 total votes cast in the 1984 election in Massachusetts.
- Reagan (R) took 1,310,936 votes (51.22%).
- Mondale (D) took 1,239,606 votes (48.43%).
New York
New York is one of the more Democratic states today, but around the time of Reagan’s reelection that wasn’t as much the case. The Democratic trend of the state can be seen as far back as the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it started to regularly take state house majorities and a majority of the state’s U.S. House delegation, but Republicans still competed in many cases. They even held one of New York’s U.S. Senate seats, and a state senate majority since the 1960s, by the time of the 1984 election.
In presidential elections, New York’s partisan history was more mixed back then. In 12 of the first 19 elections since Democrats and Republicans started competing with each other in presidential elections (the 1856 election being the first), Republicans won the state. Then it voted for Franklin Roosevelt, a former governor of the state, all four times from 1932 to 1944. But when Reagan won it for reelection, it had already been regularly Republican again, voting that way for president three out of the four elections from 1968 to 1980 (including Reagan’s first presidential victory).
But after Reagan’s reelection, the state became a stalwart supporter of Democratic presidential candidates, and hasn’t chosen a Republican since then. There were 6,806,810 total votes cast in the 1984 election in New York.
- Reagan (R) took 3,664,763 votes (53.84%).
- Mondale (D) took 3,119,609 votes (45.83%).
Oregon
At the time of Reagan’s reelection, it was quite a regular occurrence for Oregon to vote for Republicans in statewide (i.e., voted on by all of a state’s voters) elections. Republicans had won the governor’s race in six of the seven previous races for that office and the previous six contests for U.S. Senate seats in that state. They also won the concurrent U.S. Senate election in Oregon in 1984. And prior to the 1984 election, Republican presidential candidates had won the state four straight times and eight of the previous nine times.
But the number and strength of Oregon Democrats was increasing. Republicans have not won the Oregon Governor’s office since the state voted Reagan for president the second time (Oregon’s governor’s race is held in midterm election years, however). They did manage to win the next four U.S. Senate races, but since then it’s been almost always a Democratic winner. And, most pertinent to this post, Democratic presidential candidates have now won the state seven straight times.
There were 1,226,527 total votes cast in the 1984 election in Oregon.
- Reagan (R) took 685,700 votes (55.91%).
- Mondale (D) took 536,479 votes (43.74%).
Rhode Island
The state so small you can easily nap through it (because that’s what happened to me one time) was already a solidly Democratic state in 1984. Democrats already thoroughly dominated the state government: They had had supermajorities in both the state house and state senate for almost two decades by that point and won the governor’s race the previous eight times (Rhode Island’s governor had two-year terms at that time). They also won 16 of the previous 18 U.S. Senate race, and then won the U.S. Senate seat being elected in 1984.
Thus, Reagan’s victory in Rhode Island in 1984 was an aberration for Republicans in the state. In fact, he lost the state by over 10 percentage points when he won the presidency in 1980, one of Carter’s few Electoral College wins in that election. Republicans did manage to win six of the next eight governor elections after they did it in 1984, as well as three of the next five U.S. Senate races, but other than those cases Rhode Island has been considerably Democratic in how it votes.
There were 410,492 total votes cast in the 1984 election in Rhode Island.
- Reagan (R) took 212,080 votes (51.66%).
- Mondale (D) took 197,106 votes (48.02%).
Washington
Washington bears a couple notable partisan similarities to its Pacific Northwest neighbor, Oregon, both now and then. From 1952 to 1984, the only time they differed in who they voted on for president was in 1968 — Oregon went Republican while Washington went Democratic. The partisan vote splits in 1984 between Reagan and Mondale are also very close to the same — less than a 0.1 percentage point difference in how they voted for Reagan and less than a 0.9 percentage point difference in how they voted for Mondale.
The two states also typically went Republican for their respective governors in elections prior to 1984: In Washington’s case, Republicans won four of the previous five times. (Unlike in Oregon, though, Washington holds gubernatorial elections in presidential election years.) But Democrats won the governorship in 1984 and, like in Oregon, have not lost it since then. With that has been a streak of victories in the state for Democratic presidential candidates that is ongoing.
There were 1,883,910 total votes cast in the 1984 election in Washington.
- Reagan (R) took 1,051,670 votes (55.82%).
- Mondale (D) took 807,352 votes (42.86%).
Could We See Any of These Partisan Streaks End in the Near Future?
Don’t count on more than one of these states flipping to Republicans any time soon, at least not in the 2024 election. Major election forecasters predict six of these seven states to be sealed already for Democrats.
The one exception is Minnesota, the level of competitiveness of which is somewhat disagreed upon. Yet even Minnesota will be difficult for Republicans to take, though: They have lost the last four races for governor and the last six U.S. Senate races, which are statewide races like for president. (However, the elections for that governor and some of the U.S. Senate races are in midterms, not presidential elections. Presidential and midterm elections are not 1:1 comparisons given their much different levels of voter turnout.)
Looking back at the previous matchup of Trump vs. Biden, back in 2020, it’s difficult to see how Trump and the Republican Party can flip these states enough to take them. Here’s how those seven states voted for them in the 2020 election.
- Minnesota: Biden with 52.40%, Trump with 45.28%
- Hawaii: Biden with 63.73%, Trump with 34.27%
- Massachusetts: Biden with 65.60%, Trump with 32.14%
- New York: Biden with 60.86%, Trump with 37.75%
- Oregon: Biden with 56.45%, Trump with 40.37%
- Rhode Island: Biden with 59.39%, Trump with 38.61%
- Washington: Biden with 57.97%, Trump with 38.77%
Minnesota was the closest contest of this group of state by far. Yet Biden won it by a larger margin than Hillary Clinton did in the 2016 election. It’s possible the state flips, but it’s a much safer bet to think otherwise.
Still, there’s always room for major surprises — and perhaps Minnesota will provide one in the 2024 election.
The next installment of this series, part 3, will shift to partisan droughts for U.S. Senate seats for Democrats, followed by those for Republicans.
