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How will future presidential campaigns be different?
I think that Joe Biden might have set three records in this presidential election:
- He won more votes than any presidential candidate in history.
- He won fewer counties (16.7%) than any presidential candidate in history.
- He did fewer campaign events, and spoke in front of fewer people, than any presidential candidate in history.
I’m pretty sure the first one is right. And that’s quite an accomplishment.
I read the second one online, and I’m unsure if it’s correct. It wasn’t sourced, so I’m not sure. But Walter Mondale lost 49 states (and won his home state by a margin of only 0.18%) – did he win more than 16.7% of the counties? I’m not sure. Can anybody out there enlighten me on this?
But still, Mr. Biden winning a record high number of votes is made even more remarkable by him winning only 16.7% of the counties. That really is amazing.
I don’t know if they keep stats on #3 – the campaign appearances. But it was incredible how rarely Mr. Biden was seen out and about. COVID complicates this, of course – there are reasons he limited his public events. But still, he really didn’t do much. Donald Trump flew all over the country and spoke to huge crowds. Joe Biden just stayed out of the public eye. And won.
I wonder if this extraordinary election will change how presidential campaigns are run in the future?
Will there be less emphasis on public appearances, figuring that maybe they don’t help as much as was previously thought?
Will more and more campaign resources be used in fewer and fewer counties?
I wonder what Democrats and Republicans will learn from this election, and how this will change their approaches in future elections?
Published in General
I suppose the most efficient use of resources is to focus only in MI, WI, and PA.
Those were the counties he utterly trounced in. No need to go anywhere else.
With the Democrats able to steal elections at will, what difference will it make?
My question is will there be any presidential campaigns or elections period. If, as it seems, the democrats can successfully stuff the ballot box at this level, what will be left? Pseudo-plebiscites and rubber stamps. If they change America, as Chuck U. Schumer said, what election or campaign will be of any consequence?
We should assume that if the GOP allows the DNC to get away with stealing, then GOP is complicit in the theft. That means that the GOP and DNC worked together to oust Trump (the MOST popular working class president ever). That means there is a war between the ruling class and the ruled class. It will get worse before it gets better.
General Washington made no campaign appearances, so Joe is, at best, runner up.
Maybe you heard about this civil war thing that’s been making the rounds? And the more I look the more I see the sides lining up by counties, not states. There is a terrible yet wonderful computer game in there, somewhere.
I’m pretty sure the third statement is debatable. William McKinley never left his home for his first campaign. The campaign, however, came to him.
William Hanna, the king-maker of Ohio politics, had already put McKinley into the governor’s mansion, and in 1896 was aiming for the White House. Bill stayed home and the campaign brought 700,000 of his fellow Americans to his home in Canton, Ohio at a very great expense. His opponent, William Jennings Bryan, gave over 600 speeches across the country.
The good people of Canton, proud of their history, eventually bulldozed the President’s home. After his assassination, a woman named Rosa Klorer purchased the home and gifted it to the Catholic Dioceses of Cleveland for the soul purpose of creating a hospital to be run and staffed by the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine. They ran an 18-bed facility there from 1908 to 1911 when they abandoned the site for a larger building. The house sat empty and it was eventually torn down during the Great Depression.
I think the only record Biden broke was winning with the most duplicate ballots from dead people.
In the past, takeover by totalitarians has not gone smoothly and has not ended orderly nor promptly and without violence. I’m sure there is something equivalent to the stages of grief toward the end of totalitarian rule. We haven’t even reached acknowledgement before denial stage. I figure we are approaching the part where Stalin started destroying the kulacks in favour of the state, prior to passing out the remaining goodies. But first kulacks had to go. Two popular, sole proprietor restaurants – The Blue Moon Evolution in Exeter and the BarleyHouse in North Hampton – have closed. So much for the working middle class in NH. So many workers without jobs for no reason.
I call BS on #1. There is no way in Hell Slow Joe Biden got 80 million votes, over 15 million more than Obama or Hillary, while doing worse in most demographics across the country.
Change my mind.
Ha, can your mind be changed? Should I explain how fractions work? How you can have a larger nominator in one fraction than another but it can still be a smaller fraction because the denominator is also larger? What is so hard to understand stand about that. More people voted in 2020 than did in 2008. Quick look at the number you had about 130 million vote in 2008 and about 155 vote in 2020. Biden got 51% of a larger number of voters. Obama got 53% of a smaller number.
Biden might have lost more counties than Hillary but by smaller margins in the crucial swing states. Hence he won the election.
But since Trumpers are irrationally butthurt that the human piece of trash they support lost I doubt you will accept simple math.
Here’s the 1984 county-by-county map of Reagan-Mondale, vs. the results as of now for Trump-Biden — note the blue/red color swap over the 36 year period, thanks to Tim Russert and NBC News 20 years ago. IIRC, there are 3,151 counties in the United States, so 16.7 percent of that would be 526 counties. Doesn’t look like Mondale beat Biden there, even if you subtract the questionable votes in some locales….
I know what you mean. We gad a lacklaster candidate who couldn’t say anything without a gaff, a colorless (except for skin) Veep who dropped out before the first primary, and a small number of counties voting for this pair to (seemly) put them over the top.
I was going to say “something doesn’t add up,” but then I realized something does – manufactured votes in those select counties . . .
NeverTrumpers are irrationally exuberant and clearly naive. They are focused on the short term and happy to have President Trump leave the WH and ignore the long term negative impact on their ability to ever win again. The gOp has abandoned the entire down ticket
It is laughable to argue the fraud was “surgically precise”. Well, guess what, it will be surgically precise when Trump is not on the ballet in the future. Idiots. And I hope that Biden hits these NeverTrumpers good and hard. And I know that this doesn’t apply to @valiuth which is why you are so irrational about American politics.
Never-Trumpers keep saying they don’t like Trump’s behavior. Do they not realize Biden is no saint when it comes to personal behavior? He is on multiple videos berating voters for one reason or another. Remember when he called one young woman “a lying dog-faced pony soldier” for asking a simple but valid question?
Well, now they will have a President with Trump’s behavior but with Obama’s policies. Their “rescue” of the Republican party is akin to throwing a drowning man an anchor . . .
FIFY
Where Biden outperformed Hillary Clinton most was in the suburban counties.
In Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania, Biden didn’t do as well as Hillary Clinton did in terms of net vote margin. But Biden did much better than Hillary Clinton in the suburban counties outside Philadelphia.
But in most cities, Biden did outperform Hillary Clinton. Examples are Austin (Texas), Denver (Colorado), Nashville (Tennessee), Louisville (Kentucky), Dallas (Texas).
Biden’s margin in Austin, Texas was 272,155 whereas Hillary’s was 181,051. That’s just one example among many.
If nearly all big cities, Biden racked up a larger vote margin than Hillary. The exceptions to this were Chicago (Illinois), Cleveland (Ohio), El Paso (Texas), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), Miami (Florida).
Is this really from twitter? I thought twitter was fine with being a place for emotional postings, snark, self-aggrandizing, and completely unreliable and often personal views on life the universe and everything. Not to mention threatening and doxxing. Now it wants only to show “reliable” info.? Now that’s a tall order. That’s like getting the population of Singapore to stop spitting.
I accept that statistic, though it should be noted that Trump won the second most votes in that same history.
But there is a bit of hyperbole in making this as big of a deal than it is, since we’re talking raw numbers.
The population of the United States has tripled in the last 100 years. It doubled from sometime between the 1950 and 1960 census and today.
We’ve had high turnout elections before. Give me percentages of the population, not raw numbers, before talking about how unprecedented this is.
I’ve wondered about the public appearance factor for some time. The personal touch is still a valuable thing, but with a national election like this, the ground game is in door to door by campaign workers not the candidate. It was particularly effective in Texas.
As for county by county campaigning, it depends on the population of the county. Demographically, cities are more important.
But even more significantly, if the electoral college dies in its present form, whole states will be ignored. Campaigns will concentrate on the coasts, ignoring most of fly over country.
I understand the hate for Biden on a number of fronts but “Maybe the way to win is to do nothing” and “the voters like me more the less they see of me” are, for a politician, elementaly conservative insights.
Let’s hope that if basement campaigns become the norm, that results in a humbler presidency.
I think someone created it.
I appreciate your sentiment here, but if this election stands, no election will ever mean anything again. The comparisons to Venezuela have been stated on Ricochet, but this is uncannily identical. A Venezuelan company rigged elections for Hugo Chavez, and the country never had a fair election again, and Chavez and (upon Chavez’s death) Maduro have reigned for twenty years with no end in sight. And Venezuela has descended into a hungry, unhealthy, disarmed population living in poverty and chaos.
The very same company rigged US elections, and if it stands, I’m afraid the result will be identical. We will never have a fair election again, Biden and (upon his disability) Harris will reign for another twenty years with no end in sight. And America will descend into a hungry, unhealthy, disarmed population living in poverty and chaos.
66.8% of registered voters.
During the 2016 campaign it seemed like for both Clinton and Trump, the less people saw of them the more popular they were. If nobody had really heard much from Hillary in a week or two her numbers would creep up as some people forgot why they hated her. Then she’d make some speeches and people would remember that they can’t stand her. While Trump’s fans love those rallies, a lot of people in the middle found the constant bragging and put-downs to be a turn-off.
Maybe Joe Biden learned something from 2016 and reckoned that it’s better to not be seen and not be heard.
I think the second point is your misunderstanding in the wording. Mondale lost. Remember
The data point is that Biden ‘won’ with the fewest counties in history. Thousands of small party candidates have lost 100 percent of all counties, since the country began.
I am not sure you are correct that Biden won fewer counties than any candidate in history.
McGovern? Mondale?
So, I would want some verification of your claim.