Currently the Democrats and Republicans use a series of primary elections to choose their nominee for the presidency. However, I know that in the past they simply selected thier nominee at their convention (I also know that technically the nominee is still formally determined at the convention, but as a practical matter, it’s now settled well beforehand) So my questions is-when was the last time that one of the major party’s presidential candidates was determined at the convention?
The Republicans picked Dewey on the third ballot in 1948 (which wasn’t because there weren’t primaries, but because no candidate had gotten enough support in the primaries to get the nomination). I don’t know the last Democratic convention to be brokered.
It depends on exactly how we spin the question. The last Republican convention to go more than one vote was 1948, when Dewey was nominated on the third ballot. In 1976, Ford beat out Reagan on the first ballot, but it was fairly close (1187-1070, I think, although I won’t go bail for those numbers) and I don’t believe that the result was foreordained in terms of pledged delegates. The last Democrat convention to go more than one vote was 1952, when Stevenson won on the third ballot.
The rubber-stamping by the conventions of pre-determined results is probably not due only to the selection of pledged delegates in primaries, but also due to the rise of television as a campaigning tool and the centralization of politics in Wasington.
What exactly do you mean by “determined” at the convention? There have been primaries since the early 20th century, although there were only a few at first.
I believe Hubert Humphrey would have been the last candidate from a major party to win the nomination without winning any primaries. I think Humphrey sat out the primaries after Johnson dropped out while McCarthy and Kennedy fought those out. Humphrey won nearly all of the states that chose their delegates through caucuses. When it came time for the convention in Chicago, Humphrey won on the first ballot.
I don’t think either major party has needed more than one ballot since 1952. But I am just going by memory here. Sorry.
The “high” watermark for brokered conventions was in 1924, when the Democracts nominated John Davis on the 103rd ballot.
Davis received a propostously low percentage of the regular election vote, not reaching double digits in several Northern states, but he was the last loser of either party to carry all eleven Southern states.
I believe that convention was what prompted the Will Rogers line, “I’m not a member of an organised political party, I’m a Democrat.”
Does anyone else remember the 1980 Democratic Convention? Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy were running very close in the number of delegates during the primaries, with Carter getting a lead towards the end. Then Kennedy tried a couple of maneuvers during the convention, namely to “open” the convention, so that delegates could vote for anyone regardless of who they were originally committed to. The maneuvers lost, and Kennedy ceded the nomination to Carter. It was the last time I remember any sort of excitement during a convention.
Last multi-ballot conventions:
Republican, presidential: 1948 (Dewey)
Democratic, presidential: 1952 (Stevenson)
Democratic, vice-presidential: 1956 (Kefauver)
Last time more than one name was placed in nomination prior to presidential balloting:
Republican, 1976 (Ford and Reagan)
Democratic: 1992 (Clinton and Jerry Brown)
Last time a convention convened with serious, legitimate doubt as to whom the presidential nominee would be: More subjective, but I choose the following:
Republican, 1968 (Nixon)
Democratic, 1972 (McGovern)
There were later, token convention challenges in each party, (from Reagan, Kennedy, and Gary Hart, among others) but the outcome in each case was a foregone conclusion, as the leader (Ford, Carter, and Mondale respectively) had enough publicly pledged delegates by the beginning of the convention to win.