There seems to be a feeling in many places that a large chunk of the Republican Party not supporting Trump for President is somehow unique. But is this really true? What’s the history? Was there this problem with Barry Goldwater or George McGovern or other candidates…?
Back in the 1912 election, a large part of the Republican Party, including former president Roosevelt, did not support President Taft as a candidate. (And Roosevelt stood for election, splitting the GOP vote, and allowing Woodrow Wilson to be elected.)
Teddy Roosevelt in fact earned more popular votes – and, by dint of winning more states, more electoral votes – that year than Taft did.
- Read the Wiki on the '64 election. Goldwater vs Johnson. Many similar outrageous statements by Goldwater. Many Repubs wouldn’t support. A* Repubs for Johnson *organization.
Johnson got about 61% vs Goldwater’s % 39. A 22 point difference. Goldwater won 6 states. Five slaves states angry because Johnson pushed legislation allowing African-Americans to vote plus his own state, Arizona. John had 486 vs 52 Electoral Votes.
Read the wiki. It very much reads like this election, the comments and the Republican reaction.
1948 may have been the most extreme example with Strom Thurmond breaking from the Dems to run as a States’ Rights (anti civil rights) candidate.
The Dem vote actually split three ways that year, with Wallace running as a Progressive candidate and taking some of the more liberal New Dealers with him.
But between them the two ex-Dem parties barely topped 5% of the vote (though because Thurmond’s votes were concentrated in a few Southern states, he managed to win 40ish electoral votes). So the actual scale of the defection wasn’t that large.
The Democrats in fact split three ways, with former VP running under the Progressive Party banner. Thurmond won four Southern states. Wallace took almost as much of the popular vote, but failed to win any electoral votes. Amazingly, despite this Truman took almost half the popular vote.
If you want to back even father, the 1860 election saw the Democratic Party split three ways, the Northern part supporting Stephen Douglas, the Southern Democrats splitting and ran John C. Breckinridge, and a third party (Constitutional Union, who just wanted the whole problem to go away somehow) ran John Bell. Lincoln won, but with only about 40% of the popular vote.
In 1968 George Wallace split from the Democrats and took a lot of votes (and several Southern states). The Democrats never really got the South back, either.
Republicans didn’t exactly renounce George Bush in 1992, but the hard-core conservatives didn’t forgive him for backing out of his “no new taxes” pledge. The conventional wisdom is that Ross Perot got support from both parties, but the numbers tell us that Bush lost 9 million votes from his 1988 total, while Clinton got 3 million more votes than Dukakis did in 1988.
They have 20,000 followers on Facebook. And the more who leave, the easier it gets for the others.
I well recall the 1964 election. While many people (including me) thought that Goldwater was dangerous because he might have used the bomb, there is a degree of nuttiness to Trump that was lacking in Goldwater. I guess he had a certain gravitas that is utterly lacking in Trump. Except for southerners angry over civil rights, Goldwater might have won just one state (AZ). It looks like Trump will win most of the deep south and the entire flyover country.