Food for thought: A Northeast liberal hasn't been elected President since 1960

[Barack Oganja]

That President, of course, was JFK. Since then, Democratic Presidents have normally come from the South, as was the case with LBJ, Clinton, and Carter. Obama is the only other northern liberal in that timeframe, but he called the Midwest home, not the northeast. There have been 3 NE liberals to lose since 1960, Dukakis in 88, Kerry in 04, and Hillary in 16. Funny enough, Republicans in that timeframe have elected the same number of presidents from the northeast, one Donald J. Trump. Now we know that the Republicans will brand every Democratic nominee as out of touch, coastal elite, etc. But from a perception standpoint, sometimes it seems to help to come from the Midwest or South, even if the policies are the same. Is the northeast stigma a real thing, or is this trend mostly by chance? Is the California stigma any better or worse?

[Barack Oganja]

Now this is the kind of analysis I was looking for

This question got me interested in how the different regions have done. Turns out the South has been dominant. Since 1945:

South: 7 victories (LBJ, Carter, Bush I, B. Clinton 2x, Bush II 2x), 3 losses (Carter, Bush, Gore)
West: 4 victories (Nixon 2x, Reagan 2x), 3 losses (Nixon, Goldwater, McCain)
Midwest: 5 victories (Truman, Eisenhower 2x, Obama 2x), 7 losses (Stevenson 2x, Humphrey, McGovern, Ford, Mondale, Dole)
Northeast: 2 victories (JFK and Trump), 5 losses (H. Clinton, Romney, Kerry, Dukakis, Dewey)

Moral of the story is, don't nominate someone from the Northeast, especially not from MA (I'm mostly joking, but it is interesting how poorly candidates from that state have done since JFK).

In fact, there hasn't been a nominee from PA since the last President to come from there, James Buchanan in 1856! (DDE considered Abilene, Kansas his hometown but they had the farm in Gettysburg.)

Winfield Scott Hancock (1880 Democratic nominee) was from PA, but I agree that the lack of Pennsylvania presidential candidates is odd.