Victory by a Landslide

...It might also be argued that, despite past precedents, this year the Democrats could win without Florida and Virginia, and the Republicans could win without Illinois and Connecticut...

...Table I averages the figures for what would have been likely to happen in 1952 and 1956...

...of states % of popular vote 1916 Wilson 29 51.5 1920 Cox 29 51.7 1928 Smith 21 48.6 1932 Roosevelt 29 50.0 1936 Roosevelt 29 51.7 1940 Roosevelt 28 51.5 1944 Roosevelt 28 51.3 1952 Stevenson 24 50.4 1956 Stevenson 22 49.6 Republican strength was more effectively spread...

...The chances of the three electoral votes of Hawaii or the four of New Mexico just tipping the scales are very small indeed...

...Table III...

...Thus the ranking of states by their degree of "Democraticness" in each election reveals quite a number of significant points...

...See chart on page four...

...Such speculations, based on the assumption that all the breaks go one way, are irrelevant...

...Therefore, anyone who predicts such an event is saying that he can foretell the division of the popular vote far more accurately than the boldest pollster...

...See Table II on page five...

...Another excuse for hesitancy in predicting the outcome is, of course, the electoral college itself: "Even if Kennedy wins a comfortable popular majority, he may lose out in electoral votes...

...Statistics are avaUable for the state-bystate distribution of Catholics, so it is easy to calculate what effect such a switch would have, other things being equal, on the 1956 ranking of states from most Democratic to most Republican...

...This revised rank order shows that Kennedy would have to carry 22 states in order to win, and would need exactly 50 per cent of the popular vote...

...most states swing the same way by roughly the same amount between the parties...

...the Southern states, for example, normally have the highest percentage of Democratic voters and hence rank near the fop in order of "Democraticness...

...States can thus be divided into those which, according to recent precedent, are essential to victory and those which have swung on the borderline...

...Of course, it is easy to construct hypothetical examples showing how a minority candidate could swamp the electoral college, or to provide an alibi for a defeated party: "If only we had gotten 100,000 more here and here, 50,000 more here, and less than 20,000 more in each of Table 1. Party share of % of popular votes Party share of electoral votes Dem...

...The impact of A1 Smith's candidacy in Massachusetts and the rest of New England, as well as in New York, New Jersey and Illinois is very striking...

...They may be still more encouraged by the fact that the best Democratic year was apparently 1928, when the presence of a Catholic on the ticket made a radical difference in national voting patterns...

...A Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, since 1951, he is now in the U.S...

...The closest fights in this century were in 1916 and 1948, but even Woodrow Wilson got 3 per cent more of the popular vote than Charles Evans Hughes, while Harry Truman got 4 per cent more than Thomas E. Dewey...

...It would certainly be far safer to bet that the margin of victory will be crushing than to bet that a particular candidate will be victorious...

...In all but two of the last 10 elections, the winner has secured more than 55 per cent of the major party vote and led his rival by more than 10 per cent...

...But the pattern of the past will not be revolutionized...

...Although precedents are made to be broken and new patterns may always emerge, a look at past voting does enable us to set some limits to the probabilities in 1960...

...Obviously there can be no guarantee that the candidate who gets over 50.01 per cent of the popular vote will secure a majority in the electoral college, but the matter is much less chancy than many people suppose...

...victory States essential to Rep...

...Dem...

...If he knew that Nixon would win California, Montana and Michigan he could safely stake his all on Kennedy losing nationally...

...victory States States States usually essential to Dem...

...But only in 1932 would it have awarded victory to whoever got more than 50 per cent of the popular vote...

...1) 1916 1920 1928 1932 1936 1940 1944 1952 1956 19602 Alabama 7 6 6 7 6 4 3 2 4 4 Arizona 11 15 22 14 11 12 13 31 35 31 Arkansas 8 9 4 6 7 7 8 4 5 7 California 29 41 41 26 19 18 16 29 16 15 Colorado 10 25 40 32 26 42 43 35 34 36 Connecticut 36 27 13 43 38 27 26 25 41 29 Delaware 34 19 43 45 41 24 22 13 15 21 Florida 6 7 23 8 8 9 7 20 21 34 Georgia 4 4 5 4 5 5 4 1 2 2 Idaho 20 28 37 27 23 25 32 42 37 43 Illinois 44 40 21 33 34 37 31 19 30 22 Indiana 32 20 31 35 39 40 42 32 33 40 Iowa 45 42 33 29 42 43 40 41 28 33 Kansas 23 31 48 38 45 47 48 46 45 48 Kentucky 24 11 29 28 33 19 20 9 12 20 Louisiana 3 5 3 3 3 3 6 6 22 12 Maine 39 34 46 47 48 41 41 43 47 47 Maryland 21 18 20 21 25 17 30 23 31 32 Massachusetts 37 38 7 40 44 29 24 16 29 9 Michigan 43 44 47 39 35 39 36 24 18 16 Minnesota 31 46 24 23 22 34 25 21 9 10 Mississippi 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 3 1 1 Missouri 27 16 18 18 28 32 33 11 7 6 Montana 14 29 27 24 12 15 19 34 20 17 Nebraska 17 33 34 19 36 46 47 44 44 44 Nevada 15 24 19 13 10 14 21 39 23 25 New Hampshire 30 23 26 44 46 30 29 36 46 41 New Jersey 46 35 30 42 32 35 35 30 43 37 New Mexico 26 14 28 20 24 23 23 22 24 8 New York 41 36 9 34 31 36 28 26 38 26 N. Carolina 16 10 15 11 9 8 9 5 6 11 N. Dakota 28 47 16 10 15 45 44 47 39 39 Ohio 22 22 39 41 29 33 37 28 36 38 Oklahoma 13 13 35 9 21 20 17 17 13 28 Oregon 35 26 38 25 18 26 27 37 14 24 Pennsylvania 47 33 42 46 37 28 34 14 19 13 Rhode Island 40 30 8 36 40 22 14 12 25 5 S. Carolina 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 8 3 3 S. Dakota 38 43 32 17 43 48 46 45 26 27 Tennessee 18 12 17 15 16 11 11 10 8 14 Texas 5 3 10 5 4 6 5 15 17 18 Utah 12 21 11 31 14 13 12 33 42 45 Vermont 48 45 44 48 47 44 45 48 48 46 Virginia 9 8 12 12 13 10 10 27 27 42 Washington 25 39 45 22 17 16 15 18 I | 19 W. Virginia 33 17 25 37 30 21 18 7 10 23 Wisconsin 42 48 14 16 20 38 38 38 40 30 Wyoming 19 32 36 30 27 31 39 40 32 35 In order to win Democrats needed: Number of states 29 29 21 29 29 28 28 24 22 22 Per cent of vote 51.5 51.7 48.6 50.0 51.7 51.5 51.3 50.4 49.6 50.0 1. Hawaii and Alaska with three votes each are not considered here...

...A look at the past sets limits to the likelihood of a freakish result in the electoral college, to the hazard of the candidate with most popular votes...

...Indeed, to predict a close finish in the electoral college is almost like predicting that a tossed coin will land balanced on its edge...

...Since the opinion polls show that this is likely to happen again this year, Kennedy supporters may take comfort...

...So there is a tendency to excuse the hesitancy of any prophecies by saying: "Whoever wins, it will be a close race...

...victory Fluctuating States States usually essential to Rep...

...on a six-month stay as an associate member of the Graduate Research Center at the University of Illinois...

...This table shows that the electoral college system would in no case have led to the defeat of a candidate with more than 52 per cent of the major party vote, or to the victory of one with less than 48 per cent...

...He is ahnost sure to lose if Kennedy carries states that have consistently been among the 19 least Democratic...

...The candidates who were defeated by Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Eisenhower never received as much as 100 electoral votes...

...In terms of the electoral college the results have been still more overwhelming...

...It may be surmised, for example, that Arizona and Utah will be more Republican than is here suggested, and that Massachusetts and Michigan will be more Democratic...

...Statistics must not be pressed too far...

...If, for each election, we rank the states in order from the most Democratic to the most Republican, we can calculate how many states the Democrats would have needed to win in order to get a majority (266 votes) in the electoral college, and we can calculate what share of the popular vote (on the assumption of an evenly spread nation-wide swing) would have been needed for those states to have been carried...

...In all predictions, however, we have to argue from precedent...

...48 52 196 335 49 51 220 311 50 50 259 272 51 49 315 216 52 48 382 149 'DEMOCRATICNESS' OF STATES (Figures rank states according to percentage of people in a state voting Democratic in national elections...

...In addition to the instances shown here, it would certainly have done so in 1924 and 1948, years which, because of the complications arising from third party candidacies, have been omitted from these calculations...

...The way in which, in recent years, Arizona and Utah have moved toward the Republican end of the spectrum while Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Michigan have moved toward the Democrats also has a moral for this year's campaigning...

...But perhaps the main utility of such a study is in seeing where the most vital battles are likely to be fought...

...Butler has observed first-hand every American Presidential election since 1948 and has summarized many of his observations in The Study of Political Behavior, published in 1958...

...But if past example is worth anything, it is much more probable that, whoever wins, it will be a landslide...

...as gambling casino proprietors know, there are substantial regularities in the behavior of large numbers...

...Past elections suggest that no candidate would have secured an electoral college majority unless he won at least 20 states, and that no candidate who had won 29 states would have failed to secure an electoral college majority...

...Despite frequent assumptions of a close Presidential race, statistics indicate that usually the winner leads his rival by more than 10 per cent of the vote Victory by a Landslide By David Butler Though many people view the 1960 Presidential election as a toss-up, David Butler, one of Britain's best-known student of elections, indicates here that much can be told about this election on the basis of past statistics...

...The most recent precedents are usually the most valid...

...States essential to Dem...

...See Table III...

...But at the moment those who wish to offer sophisticated forecasts—and not merely optimistic assertions—are in difficulty...

...In the light of trends in the last 10 years and of the presence of a Catholic on the Democratic ticket, this listing should perhaps be modified a bit...

...This table indicates that only if the result fell within a 1 per cent margin would the outcome have been close...

...PREDICTING the result of the Presidential race has an irresistible fascination for anyone interested in politics...

...victory Alabama Arkansas Georgia Louisiana Mississippi N. Carolina S. Carolina Tennessee Texas Washington California Delaware Florida Kentucky Minnesota Missouri Montana Nevada Oklahoma Rhode Island Virginia W. Virginia Arizona Connecticut Maryland Massachusetts Michigan New Mexico Oregon Pennsylvania Utah Colorado Idaho Illinois Iowa New York N. Dakota S. Dakota Ohio Wisconsin Wyoming Indiana Kansas Maine Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey Vermont...

...2. The 1960 column is based on the 1956 order modified only for Catholic vote...

...The probabilities in a close race can readily be calculated...

...It is significant that in the two elections in which the bias in the system favored the Democrats, the Republicans made heavy inroads in the South...

...But in practice it does not seem that the electoral college system will favor—or disfavor—either candidate in 1960...

...For the United States and for the world much turns on the outcome of these elections—but they're less of a lottery than many people have suggested...

...The polls indicate that Catholic voters, after dividing evenly between the parties in 1956, now lean 3-1 in favor of the Democrats...

...We may therefore conclude that if Nixon wins states that in recent contests have consistently been among the 19 most Democratic states, he is almost sure to win nationally...

...The adjustment is made on the assumption that Catholics divided evenly in 1956 and that they will divide 3-1 in favor of the Democrats in I960...

...Required for Democratic Victory Year Candidate No...

...The country's political reactions are reasonably uniform...

...Since 1920, the winner has received over 380 of the 531 electoral votes every time except 1948...

...half a dozen smaller states—less perhaps than 1 per cent of the total vote —we'd have won...

...The polls show Senator John Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon to be neck-and-neck and professional observers are being very cautious in their judgments...

...A gambler who knew that Kennedy would win New York, Iowa and Pennsylvania could safely stake his all on Kennedy winning nationally...

...Other variables—unemployment, farm conditions, anti-Catholicism— will also modify the 1956 regional pattern of voting...

...This, it may be presumed, is largely because the Democrats used to "waste" votes in piling up huge majorities in the "solid South" while, from the point of view of carrying as many states as possible, Table II...

...Normally the system has favored the Republicans...

...Deviations from the national average tend to be self-cancelling and, on balance, do not favor one party over the other...