How would Frank Church have performed in Idaho in 1976?

[beesley]

If he had won the nomination, how well would Church have performed in Idaho in 1976? It voted 59.7% for Ford.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Looking at Church's history of Senate elections, he did about 6 points worse by margin in '74 than in '68 despite the post-Watergate environment massively favoring Dems. Goldwater had kicked Mormon realignment into a much higher gear in '64, followed by the strong performances of Wallace '68 and Schmitz '72. Carter, as is frequently noted, was a very weak candidate for the West and lacked authority on Western issues (hence my assertion that, while Mondale's an alright guy, he should've ran with Mo Udall), and naturally Church would be seen as in touch with his own state and the West more broadly, but even for the same candidate presidential and senatorial partisanship are very different animals. I'm sure many of Church's more conservative supporters who liked him as the guy keeping a check on the Nixon and Ford administrations would've had a much more skeptical view of him running a government in his own right, and would've bolted to Ford, while at the same time the very working-class panhandle would've been much friendlier to a more standard Dem who understood their turf than a more classically liberal (in the old sense, not the American sense) outsider like Carter. Church came very close to winning re-election in 1980, but with the state and the broader region going for Reagan in a landslide at the same time, surely most of those crossover voters expected a check on Reagan rather than a government controlled by Frank Churches.

Between demographic realignment, differences in presidential vs congressional partisanship, and the beginnings of economic recovery late in Ford's term, I still think that Ford would've carried the state, but with a much stronger showing from Church than Carter in the panhandle, ski country (note how Pitkin County, Colorado, flipped McGovern -> Ford by a margin greater than its vote for McCarthy), and possibly the state's more urban areas. As Ford won the state by 22 points two years after Church won by 14, let's split the difference and say that Ford wins by high single digits to low double digits, probably around 54-45 or so.

[Podgy the Bear]

I believe a 54-45 Ford win sounds reasonable.    The Democrats on the national level were quite unpopular in ID in 1976--only to get worse.

But on the statewide level, Church continued to remain quite popular.  As you note, his performance in the 1980 Senate race was actually remarkable.  While Jimmy Carter was losing the state by over 40 points, Church came within 1 point of getting re-elected.  It's quite possible that Church was a casualty of Carter's very early concession that night--in which a reasonable number of voters didn't bother to turn out.

[Sumner 1868]

He would have carried the state on a native son bump. People looking at PVI are missing that a small state like Idaho would have stronger native son swings than elsewhere and that's especially true back in the 1970s.

[beesley]

Looking at Church's history of Senate elections, he did about 6 points worse by margin in '74 than in '68 despite the post-Watergate environment massively favoring Dems. Goldwater had kicked Mormon realignment into a much higher gear in '64, followed by the strong performances of Wallace '68 and Schmitz '72. Carter, as is frequently noted, was a very weak candidate for the West and lacked authority on Western issues (hence my assertion that, while Mondale's an alright guy, he should've ran with Mo Udall), and naturally Church would be seen as in touch with his own state and the West more broadly, but even for the same candidate presidential and senatorial partisanship are very different animals. I'm sure many of Church's more conservative supporters who liked him as the guy keeping a check on the Nixon and Ford administrations would've had a much more skeptical view of him running a government in his own right, and would've bolted to Ford, while at the same time the very working-class panhandle would've been much friendlier to a more standard Dem who understood their turf than a more classically liberal (in the old sense, not the American sense) outsider like Carter. Church came very close to winning re-election in 1980, but with the state and the broader region going for Reagan in a landslide at the same time, surely most of those crossover voters expected a check on Reagan rather than a government controlled by Frank Churches.

Between demographic realignment, differences in presidential vs congressional partisanship, and the beginnings of economic recovery late in Ford's term, I still think that Ford would've carried the state, but with a much stronger showing from Church than Carter in the panhandle, ski country (note how Pitkin County, Colorado, flipped McGovern -> Ford by a margin greater than its vote for McCarthy), and possibly the state's more urban areas. As Ford won the state by 22 points two years after Church won by 14, let's split the difference and say that Ford wins by high single digits to low double digits, probably around 54-45 or so.

Thanks for such a detailed and well thought-out response.

[Epaminondas]

How might he have fared in 1986, if he'd survived the Reagan wave?

EDIT: Oh, he died of cancer in 1984.