The Democrats' Road from 1877

The presidential election of 2000 was not only one of the most closely contested in American history, but it was also an election that displayed significant regional differences in voting patterns. The Democrats won the popular vote by 0.5 per cent of the total, lost in the Electoral College (EC) by five votes, and yet won 79 per cent of the EC votes in (what might be called) the “Old North” and 66 per cent of those votes in the “West”. The Democratic defeat resulted from their winning a mere 29 per cent of EC votes in the Border states and not a single vote in the South. Not the least of the remarkable features of this pattern of voting is that it is almost a mirror image of the result in 1880. That earlier election produced an even closer contest for the popular vote with the Republican plurality being a mere .0002 per cent of the total, although they won the EC by 59 votes. In 1880, however, the Democrats won only 5 per cent of the EC votes in the Old North and 20 per cent in the West, while at the same time they won every EC vote in both the Border states and the South.

Nor is this regional difference between the two eras merely a manifestation of the peculiarities of the EC system itself; similar, though rather less pronounced, differences are evident when looking at congressional elections in the two years.