Talk Elections

Would it be fair to say...

Democrats do best in presidential elections in their home state.

Republicans do best in presidential elections in Utah

I'd say the first would depend on the home state.  A Democrat from, say, North Carolina would probably do better in Vermont than North Carolina.

Only on how much local pride the candidate has.

Not according to Al Gore. :)

well yeah, I mean he is the exception.  But consider this: Clinton did best in 1992 in Arkansas.  Georgia was Carter's biggest state.  Mondale only won his home state.  Kerry did best in his home state. 
Bob Dole did best in Utah, as did George W. Bush.  I think Reagan also did, in at least one election.

not in the case of Al Gore....

It only depends on how popular they are there.

Gore had spent eight years as VP in which he didn’t make any noticable effort to retain his Tennesseeness.  I wouldn’t consider Tennessee his home state any more than I would consider New York to be Hillary’s home state.

Well, at least Gore had slept in something other than a hotel within the state before he ran for president.  But I see your point.  He really didn't even grow up there, but officially that was his home state (nobody is going to use DC).

My opinion is that the Lewinsky scandal, and Gore's over-the-top defense of Clinton with respect to that scandal, cost Gore the southern states like Tennessee and Arkansas that Clinton had won in 1996.  He lost his southern appeal by backing Clinton's adultery.  At least that's my theory on why those states flipped.

Gun Control and wedge-issues. Southerners commit adultery more often than thier Northern counterparts.

By 2000 most people had moved on.

Gore's home state was DC, and that was his best "state".  So, yes, it doesn seem like that's what usually happens. 

You may be right about that, but they still a lot less likely to vote for someone who does it, or supports it.  I believe that by 2000, enough southerners had not moved on from the Lewinsky thing to cost Gore the electoral votes of all the southern states that had voted for Clinton.  There was no other objective reason for those states to flip from 1996 to 2000.

And Clinton left the presidency with very low personal approval ratings.  That doesn't imply that people moved on; they simply compartmentalized to some degree personal conduct from performance in office.  Southerners were less likely to compartmentalize.

If Gore wasn't in touch with Tennessee, then how did he get elected to represent the state in the Senate?

If gun control and abortion cost Gore Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia, etc., then why didn't those issues cost Clinton those states in 1996?

And why should Lewinskygate have affected Gore?  The Republican fixation on it actually backfired in the 1998 elections.  And it was Clinton who received oral sex from Lewinsky, not Gore.

the GOP simply started the "we are the party of moral values" BS that they've continued until today.  Unfortunately, it works quite well for them. 

Perot played a factor.  

In reality, Clinton only had a shot at 4 Southern states.

LA, AR(he is from there), [WV, FL] <-- these states aren't "sufficiently" Southern either.

The key point to make is that Clinton was a Southerner. And a moderate. Now, a Southern Democrat who isn't a raging liberal will do well in the South, still (or at least would still by the mid-90s). Perot didn't do that well in the SOuth, so it isn't an effect of him so much either.

Gore was not a Southern candidate the way CLinton was. You can say what you want about Clinton, but he WAS Southern, he had it in his blood in a way Gore never did. That is most of it. Secondly, Bush is a Southerner in way that Dole or his father certainly wasn't. I think that if Giuliani would run against a real Southern Democrat in 2008 several Southern states could swing back.

Actually, you can see the anti-Democrat trend in the south as early as in Clinton's reelection. He lost Georgia which hasn't been close to going Democratic ever since. He also lost ground in Kentucky and Tennessee, despite increasing his nation-wide margin.