Has there ever been a more crowded field of contenders?

The list of presidential hopefuls who have thrown their hat into the ring is ridiculously long, and we’re still 16 months away from Election Day. Has this ever happened before?

NYTimes has a nice piece with graphics on this, which shows that the most crowded primary field since 1972 was the Democratic primary in 1972 (peaked at 16 candidates).

There are currently 14 Republicans who’ve announced, and Kasich and Walker are expected to announce. So 2016 will be tied with 1972. Prior to 1972, I don’t know.

Back in the days before delegates were selected by voters, politicians who controlled blocs of delegates would have their names put in nomination, to gain bargaining power.

In the deadlocked 1924 Democratic convention there were 20 candidates who received more than one vote by delegates as late as the 15th ballot.

It depends on how you define major candidates. Why is Donald Trump considered a major candidate? Or Carly Fiorinna? Or Ben Carson? Or Rick Santorum? Or George Pataki? Or Mike Huckabee?

So they announced. So what? Lincoln Chafee has announced for the Dems. Should anyone care?

There’s an interesting question about why in the world they should bother other than getting their names in the media, increasing their higher speaking fees, or setting themselves up for higher-profile positions.

But the field is not any larger this year than in most years. There are always hundreds of candidates and there are again this year. The rules have changed regarding PACs and SuperPACs and other financiallly-based campaign accessories so people have to make official announcements rather than just campaigning. Whatever. You never have more than a half dozen real candidates, announcements or no.

That’s often true, but the distinction here is the absence of clear front-runners or, if you prefer, the presence of an unusually large number of them with very small polling margins between them. The impression that there’s a large number of them comes from the relatively large number of undistinguished – and indistinguishable – candidates that are clambering all over each other like clowns in a circus sideshow. And the impression is correct.

I think it’s just another aspect of the longer campaign cycles. It used to be candidates announced their intentions closer to the election.

The 1972 election was mentioned. Edmund Muskie was considered the Democratic front runner in that campaign but he didn’t officially enter the race until January 4, 1972. Hubert Humphrey announced his candidacy on January 10, 1972. Shirley Chisholm announced on January 25, 1972. George Wallace announced on January 13, 1972. Eugene McCarthy announced on October 26, 1971. John Lindsay on December 28, 1971. Sam Yorty on November 16, 1971. Scoop Jackson on November 19, 1971. The New Hampshire Primary was on March 7, 1972 and the start of the primaries began knocking candidates out of the running. So you can see a lot of candidates had campaigns that only lasted two or three months.

In the 2016 campaign, we currently have fourteen major Republican candidates who have announced and we still have six months to go in 2015. Ted Cruz announced back in March - eleven months before the New Hampshire primary.

So I think it seems like we have more major candidates because in the long stretch between when they announce and the first primary votes are cast, everyone’s a major candidate. Who can say who’ll do good when the votes start getting counted? In the old days, you had an explosion of candidates for a couple of months and then the primaries quickly whittled the field down to a few contenders.

Beaten to the punch! I was going to say the Democrats had a mighty crowded field in 1972. Humphrey, Scoop Jackson, McGovern, John Lindsay, Sam Yorty, Shirley Chisholm, Wallace, Ed Muskie, Vance Hartke… those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

And there were a bunch of candidates everyone expected to run but didn’t (Ted Kennedy, most notably).

BTW in that 1972 year, with a lot of democratic candidates, Nixon was the incumbent. At the same time the democrats tore each other apart Nixon easily beat his few other republican opponents early on in the primaries.

I have to remark on what I mentioned in a different thread, the high number of Republican candidates may not show despair on the whole party, but this is IMHO likely to affect negatively the eventual Republican candidate for the presidency. I do think that back then all the ones tossing their hats into the ring did think that all the other Democrats had no good chance to win the eventual presidential contest, but that they alone were going to be the exception. They only ended up chewing each other so much that the pre chewed Democratic candidate was no longer appealing.

Looks like Deja vu all over again* but with the parties switched.

  • Thanks Yogi. :slight_smile:

Nobody runs for President anymore, it’s too crowded. :wink:

We’ve had large quantities of candidates before, but never so many who had a chance to win the nomination.

Too soon after Chappaquiddick.

The 1988 election had fairly fields on both sides, unlike this year, where the numbers are mostly in one party.
Granted this Democratic gallery includes some absolute fringe candidates in the row after Lyndon LaRouche (was he ever really a factor?) On the Republican side, I remember everyone through Pierre “Pete” DuPont (mainly from SNL’s skewering of his effort to pass as Pete rather than Pierre). I don’t remember Rummy running…

I recall the debates seemed fairly crowded at first, on both sides.

What surprises me is that there aren’t more candidates. With Obama ineligible to run again, there’s no reason why there aren’t as many Democrats contending for the nomination as there are Republicans. But there are only five Democrats running.

In 2008, the last time there was no incumbent running, we had ten Democrats and twelve Republicans in the race.

There are some good people out there but not many and they thought Clinton was unbeatable so never laid the groundwork. Beshear should be in this race. O’Malley should be taken seriously but somehow isn’t. Biden should be here. Booker is probably best off waiting, although we’ll definitely be hearing from him. Mark Warner should be in this race too, but then again, we should have seen him in 2008 and he begged off. I think Warner would like to be President but would rather not do the long campaign. Probably hoping to be VP and then be the strongest guy when the next election comes. Tim Kaine is another Virginian who should be there but won’t be. Jerry Brown would also make a fine President but is staying out and this is almost certainly his last opportunity. And finally, there’s Liz Warren, who I don’t like at all, but Democrats do, and she also probably won’t get another chance given her age. But I bet she’d have been in if Clinton had declined to run.