jimrtex
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« on: July 02, 2004, 09:45:07 PM » |
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The discussion about which states had gone with the winner the most times, led me to check out which were the leading states over time. To be counted as right, the plurality winner of a state's electors must support the candidate who took office. If the electors are split, the state gets a pass - neither hit or miss.
1789-1792, 10 states participated in the first election (NC and RI had not ratified the Constitution, and NY managed not to choose its electors), all of course went for George Washington.
1796: In the first contested election, 6 states (CT, DE, MD, MA, NH, NJ) ran their streak to 3 by voting for the winner John Adams.
1800-08: A reversal of the 1796 national result eliminated most of the early frontrunners. New York was the swing state that switched sides, tipping the election to Thomas Jefferson. Had NY participated in 1789 they would have been 4 for 4, instead they were at 3. MD gets a pass on this election with a 5:5 split in the EV. Both MD and NY run their count to 5 in the '04 and '08 landslides.
1812-1820: NY goes with favorite son DeWitt Clinton, while in MD James Madison pulls out a narrow 6:5 EV win. Maryland goes with the winner twice more to run their streak to 8.
1824: Maryland votes for the EV leader Andrew Jackson, but John Quincy Adams is elected by the House of Representatives. Vermont becomes the new leader at 6, helped out by being the only New England state to support James Madison in '08 and '12.
1828-1852: Vermont sticks with Adams, and the lead is taken over by New York who have 4 correct since their miss in 1812. New York goes with the winner in both Adams-Jackson races, and sides with the winner in the next 6 races to make it 10 in a row.
1856: New York votes for the Republican candidate John C Fremont, and are supplanted by the duo of Louisiana and Pennsylvania who had voted correctly 8 times (the two states had voted the same way for 12 elections, ever since Louisiana entered the Union, but had gone with Jackson in 1824).
1860-1880: Pennsylvania goes with Abraham Lincoln, while Louisiana goes with John Breckinridge, leaving PA alone at 9 correct. Sticking with the Republican winner 5 more times, PA runs its streak to 14, a record until 1956.
1884: Cleveland is elected as the first post Civil War Democrat. PA remains with the GOP, so the new leaders are CT, NY, and IN, the 3 states that switched from the GOP to the Democrats between 1880 and 1884 (two other states CA and NV made the opposite switch). Since CT, IN, and NY had voted for Tilden in 1876, they held the lead with only 2 in a row.
1888-1912: Indiana and New York switched back to the GOP, providing the EV victory for Benjamin Harrison. CT stuck with Cleveland, leaving IN and NY alone at 3 in a row. The two switch again to bring Cleveland back in office, then go with the Republican turn of the century trend. In 1912, the Teddy Roosevelt-Howard Taft split lets them vote for Woodrow Wilson, to bring their streaks to 9.
1916-1928: Indiana and New York go against Wilson's re-election. The new leaders are NH, ND. and OH, 3 essentially GOP states, that went for Wilson in 1916. The 3 states had voted correctly since 1892 for a streak of 6. Reverting to their GOP allegiance, they run their streak to 9 in the next 3 elections.
1932-1936: New Hampshire doesn't support FDR, while ND and OH do, giving them their 10th and 11th marks.
1940: ND says no to a 3rd FDR term, leaving Ohio alone at 12.
1944-1952: Ohio votes against a 4th FDR term. The new leaders are Missouri, Idaho, and Montana with 11 in a row since supporting Bryan in 1900. The trio had backed Democrats Wilson and FDR and would go on to back Harry Truman in 1948, before supporting Dwright Eisenhower in 1952 to run their streak to 13.
1956: Missouri narrowly switches to Adlai Stevenson, leaving Idaho and Montana alone at 14 (tieing the all time record at that point).
1960-1972: By supporting Richard Nixon, ID and MT go by the wayside. The new leaders were Nevada and New Mexico whose support of John Kennedy brought their total to 13, beginning in 1912, New Mexico's inaugural election. They would pick up 3 more, before supporting Gerald Ford in 1976, ending their streaks at an all time best of 16.
1976-1996: The new leader was Delaware who had run off 7 in a row since supporting Thomas Dewey in 1948.
Delaware would go on to pick 5 more winners to bring their total to 12.
2000: Delaware's support for Albert Gore in 2000 snapped their streak, bringing back a familiar face -Missouri who had put together another streak of 11 since their miss in 1956. Without that election when they had supported Adlai Stevenson by 0.2%, they would have had 25 in a row, with no misses in the 20th Century.
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