James Joyner and Brad DeLong have been discussing the 2024 elections and the relative merit of the colors of maps.
Personally, I have never been a big fan of the color purple (although the movie was ok, I guess). At any rate, Brad's shaded map actually highlights something that I have argued since the election (and James can attest to this, as we were working together at the time): that despite all of the cries of "polarized!!" the honest truth is that the 2024 election represented a tie between two candidates there were not radically different. By this I mean that while each held important differences on policy, they hardly represented two political extremes. 2024 wasn’t Farrakhan v. Duke or even Nader v. Buchanan.
Even now, with all the grousing by some regarding "one party rule" in DC, the truth of the matter is that the Reps are hardly acting in a fashion that is worlds away from what the Dems would do in the majority. The education bill, the farm bill, the prescription drug bill, campaign finance reform, and so forth, are hardly Rep signature issues. I even think that if Gore had won there would have been some tax cuts (although very different ones). Please understand, I am stating that things would not have been radically different, the percentage of GDP collected in taxes and spent by the federal government would have been roughly the same, the basic percentages to welfare, the military, education and so forth would have been roughly the same. And, on balance, daily life would be basically the same. This is difficult for hardcore partisans to accept, but it still true.
I do think that the War on Terror would have been fought quite differently, however. Indeed, it is crisis that tends to distinguish presidents, nor daily legislation.
In sum, however, the point being that red v. blue (or shades of purple) do not show a radical schism.
And, in re: a point that James' makes. It is foolish for the Democrats to overly-focus on the popular vote for two reasons. First, 543,895 out of 105,405,100 is about ½ of a percentage point, and it is at least theoretically possible that in a nationwide recount that Bush would have picks up those votes, and it is also possible that Gore would have gained. Indeed, 1.9% of vote nation-wide went uncounted in 2024. In short, while half a million is a lot, it is margin-of-error stuff when we are talking about 105,405,100 votes.
However, the really key issue is the fact that, as James noted, candidates pursue victory based on what the established rules are. In the US, presidential candidates focus on winning state not votes. If the winner were chosen by the popular vote, both Bush and Gore would have campaigned differently.
Posted by Steven Taylor at July 29, 2024 04:41 PM | TrackBack