The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

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Edna for a girl and Archibald for a boy.

Who would have guessed that, of all users, Hillgoose would guess the royal baby's name correctly. 😆
But nevertheless: Congrats and kudos! 👍🏻👏🏻🙌🏻

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How often has it occurred that a presidential candidate has won each of the four census regions or even every single division of the United States?

My dataset only goes as far back as 1868, but since then, this has happened 7 times:

1928: Hoover's worst was West South Central, which he won by 2.6%
1932: Roosevelt's worst was New England, which he won by 0.8%
1936: Roosevelt's worst was New England, which he won by 7.4%
1972: Nixon's worst was New England, which he won by 5.8%
1980: Reagan's worst was East South Central, which he won by 1.0%
1984: Reagan's worst was Midatlantic, which he won by 9.4%
1988: Bush's worst was New England, which he won by 0.2%

Near misses:

1872: Grant lost West South Central by 0.3%
1940: Roosevelt lost West North Central by 3.3%
1956: Eisenhower lost East South Central by 2.5%
1992: Clinton lost West South Central by 0.8%, East South Central by 1.0% and Mountain by 1.8%
1996: Clinton lost West South Central by 0.05%, East South Central by 1.6% and Mountain by 3.8%

I also manually checked 1852, because it was the only plausible candidate between 1868 and the consolidation of the lower 48: Pierce lost East South Central by 4.9%.

It is interesting to see which landslides managed this and which didn't - it shows how different regions have become more or less politically polarized over time (acknowledging that these regions are subpar for political analysis):

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Could we have some temporal context here?

In the 1980s:

A. AIDS was completely untreatable and was a death sentence within two years, often quicker.

B. It was a disease with an INTENSE taboo attached, and people could lose their families, housing, support networks, churches, communities, etc. when diagnosed.

Marianne Williamson started up a charity which gave out millions of meals to AIDS patients and provided caring, compassionate care to people at a time when there was no effective medical solution available. She helped people, when faced with a guaranteed death sentence, ways to face their condition with compassion, dignity, and courage.

Marianne Williamson isn't going to tell non-exposed people to stop using PREP or to tell HIV patients to stop taking their antivirals to lower their viral load or whatever today. We are lucky enough that medication that can address this issue. People 30 years ago did NOT have that, and at a time of great moral panic and taboo about that disease, Marianne Williamson met people with compassion and open arms.

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To be fair, this is an easy-to-see instance of voters protesting when protesting was cheap, i.e. everyone knew Holcomb was winning. A Republican State House Representative even endorsed Rainwater (he's since been kicked out of caucus).

There's an all things Hoosier megathread where myself and a few others discuss this race as it progressed. But pretty much state Democrats could not get anyone to run for a long time. The professional political journalists through 2019 were commenting no major party had ever gone this long without a declared candidate. Up came Myers as a kind of C-list candidate. You had a few State Senators for the Democrats pretend they were running but never file (one of them plus another undeclared candidate are now running for State Party Chair). Myers could never raise money. He blames Covid but he was unable to raise money before lockdowns either. The smart more left money in the state put their funds with Weinzapfel for Attorney General instead of with Myers.

Race progressing. Then sometime in August or whenever, Change Research publishes a poll saying Holcomb 36, Myers 30, Rainwater 24. For a governor's race that had seen little to no attention, it was a bit of an earthquake. The poll safe to say was an incredible outlier, but it did give Rainwater a ton of attention and money to fund his campaign that he otherwise did not get. Holcomb ignored this threat somewhat but he did raise the "opening stage" from Stage 4.5 to Stage 5 before the election, and now that we're after the election in the face of rising numbers, he hatcheted back down.

I've hitched my horse to the Libertarian Party to grow it long-term, but I can tell you a lot of died in the wool Republicans that told me they voted for him. The places Myers finished 3rd is mostly rural counties where the Democratic Party in those places is just dead. My county Myers finished 3rd and county Democrats didn't run a single candidate for county office. Their state legislature nominees around 20%. Percentage numbers for my county are Holcomb 66, Rainwater 18, Myers 16. Remove straight ticket votes (which is incredibly damning for Myers considering he had that in-built advantage over Rainwater) and the numbers are Holcomb 55, Rainwater 29, Myers 16.

I'm doing a county-by-county breakdown of votes ex-straight ticket votes since Governor was not the top of the ballot race. This requires looking at every county's election results.

At the moment with incomplete numbers (Marion and Lake are already included), this is what I have:

Total votes: Holcomb 55.1, Myers 34.3, Rainwater 10.6
Ex-straight ticket total votes: Holcomb 55.2, Myers 26.4, Rainwater 18.3

When I finish I'll try to make a map of where Rainwater finished ahead of Myers both with and without straight ticket voting.

I'm going to make the case at the 2021 Libertarian State Convention of how to capitalize on this. Per Indiana Code, the major political parties in each political subdivision is based on the top two performing parties in the Secretary of State race, which is next up in 2022. (This is also the race Indiana bases ballot access for 4 years on, you have to get 2% or more.) But if the Libertarian Secretary of State nominee could continue Rainwater's performance and finish 2nd in some of these counties, per currently existing Indiana state law they should replace the Democratic Party for appointment to county election boards. It'd be more difficult than this governor's race due to the large number of votes Rainwater received from people upset with Holcomb which you would think would not transfer to Secretary of State but the incredibly low levels of support Democrats have in a bunch of counties is not changing anytime either. I've been told there's a lot of interest in creating new county chapters for the Indiana Libertarian Party.