In my Sunday Washington Examiner column I wrote that candidates’ performances at the Thursday Fox News/Google debate “gave primary voters and cacusgoers at least one good reason to reject every candidate on the stage.” Today I had the further thought that none of these candidates has shown great strength at the polls in his or her home state. They have tended to underperform rather than overperform the base Republican vote in seriously contested races. The numbers:
Rick Perry has been elected governor of Texas three times, beating Democrat Tony Sanchez 58%-40% in 2002, winning a four-way race against Democrat Chris Bell and Independents Carole Keeton Strayhorn (who had been elected to statewide office as a Republican) and Kinky Friedman by a 39%-30%-18%-12% in 2007 and beating Democrat Bill White 55%-42% in 2010. That 55% is the same as John McCain’s percentage in Texas in 2008 and Senator John Cornyn’s percentages in 2002 and 2008. It is lower than the 61% to 67% Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison won in four elections from 1993 to 2006 and below the 59% to 64% that Republicans facing Democrats for other statewide offices won in 2010. It should be added that, although Texas is a strongly Republican state, Perry has had significant opposition in all three gubernatorial races. Tony Sanchez outspent him enormously in 2002, he had (as noted) three significant opponents in 2006 and in 2010 Bill White, who had left office as mayor of Houston with a very high job rating, was about as strong a candidate as Democrats could have had.
In Massachusetts Mitt Romney lost to Senator Edward Kennedy by a 58%-41% margin in 1994. His 41% was lower than the 45% George H. W. Bush won in the state in 1988, but significantly higher than the 28% to 37% Republican presidential nominees in the state have won ever since. Romney won the 2002 govenor race by a 50%-45% margin—one instance where one of this year’s presidential candidates pretty clearly outperformed the Republican base—which was roughly comparable to the 51%-47% margin of Republican Governor Paul Cellucci in 1998.
Ron Paul has beaten Democrats in Texas’s 14th congressional district by 76%-24% in 2010, 60%-40% in 2006 and 2000, 55%-44% in 1998 and 51%-48% in 1996. He had no Democratic opponents in 2002, 2004 and 2008. This district as presently configured voted 66%-33% for John McCain in 2008 and 67%-33% for George W. Bush in 2004. Under the boundaries prevailing in the elections from 1992 to 20008, it voted 65%-35% for George W. Bush in 2000 and 50%-42% for Bob Dole (with 8% for Ross Perot) in 1996. So during Paul’s service in these two decades (and leaving aside his performance in the 1970s and 1980s) he has outperformed the Republican base only once, in 2010.
Michele Bachmann has been elected in Minnesota’s 6th congressional district over Democratic opponents by 53%-40% in 2010, 46%-43% in 2008 and 50%-42% in 2006. The 6th district voted 53%-45% for John McCain in 2008 and 57%-42% for George W. Bush in 2004; in both elections it was the most Republican of Minnesota’s eight congressional districts. Bachmann did win her first two elections in tough years for Republicans, but she has failed to outperform McCain and has underperformed Bush even in the very Republican year of 2010.
Newt Gingrich was first elected to the House in 1978 and was reelected ten times. His first election, coming after two consecutive close defeats, was a considerable achievement; in 1978, 1980 and 1982 and again in 1988 and 1990 he was the only Republican elected to the House from Georgia. He was reelected 58%-42% in 1992 and 64%-36% in 1994 in a district that voted twice for George H. W. Bush, 75%-25% in 1988 and 55%-29% (with 15% for Ross Perot) in 1992. The district lines were redrawn in mid-decade, and he was reelected 58%-42% in 1996 and 71%-29% in 1998 in a district that voted 55%-30% for George H. W. Bush in 1992 and 61%-33% for Bob Dole in 1996. Gingrich thus arguably outperformed the generic Republican vote in 1994 and 1998, but arguably not in 1992 or 1996.
Herman Cain has not been elected to public office, but he did run for U.S. senator in 2004 and lost the Republican primary to Johnny Isakson (Gingrich’s successor in the House) by a 53%-26% margin, with Congressman Mac Collins in third place with 21%.
Rick Santorum has outperformed the generic Republican in the past, but not recently. He was elected to the House in 1990 by beating a Democratic incumbent 51%-49% in a district that voted 53%-46% for George H. W. Bush in 1988. The district lines were redrawn drastically for the 1992 election, but Santorum won 61%-38% in a district that had voted 58%-42% for Michael Dukakis over Bush in 1998 and was voting 52%-30% for Bill Clinton over Bush in 1992. In 1994 Santorum beat incumbent Senator Harris Wofford by a 49%-47% margin and he was relected in 2000 by a 52%-46% in a state that voted Democratic for president by 45%-36% in 1992, 49%-40% in 1996 and 51%-46% in 2000. These were tough races and he did outperform the Republican presidential candidates of the time. It was a different story in 2006. Santorum lost to Bob Casey Jr. by a 59%-41% margin in a state that voted Democratic for president by 51%-48% in 2004 and 54%-44% in 2008. Thus after 12 years in the Senate he underperformed not only George W. Bush but John McCain.
Jon Huntsman was elected governor of Utah by a 58%-41% margin in 2004 and reelected by a 78%-20% margin in 2008. Utah of course is one of the most Republican states, with Republican presidential candidates winning 63%-34% in 2008, 72%-26% in 2004 and 67%-26% in 2000. Going back a little further, Bill Clinton finished third there in 1992, and no Democratic presidential candidate has won more than 34% of its votes since 1968. Huntsman underperformed the generic Republican vote in 2004, running against the son of a popular three-term Democratic governor, and overperformed the generic Republican vote in 2008 after four years in office.
Gary Johnson was elected governor of New Mexico by a 50%-40% margin in 1994 and reelected by a 55%-45% margin in 1998. New Mexico has been a bellwether state: it has only voted for two losing presidential candidates since it was admitted to the union in 1912, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Al Gore in 2000 (and Gore did win the national popular vote narrowly; he won it by 366 votes in New Mexico). It voted within a few points of the national percentages in presidential races between 1984 and 2004, 46%-37% in 1992 and 49%-42% in 1996 for Bill Clinton, a virtual tie in 2000 and 50%-49% for George W. Bush in 2004. Thus Johnson can be said to have overperformed the generic Republican base in 1998.
Generally speaking, our two parties have wanted to nominate candidates who have shown special strength among the voters who know them best. None of the nine candidates who participated in the Fox News/Google debate in Orlando has really done that. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have won elections by margins comparable to those of John Cornyn and Paul Cellucci, competent officeholders but not on anyone’s list of presidential candidates. Ron Paul ran well ahead of his party base in 2010 against weak opposition; Michele Bachmann has not done so in three races against vigorous opponents. Newt Gingrich’s record of running ahead of party is spotty; Herman Cain’s is nonexistent.
Rick Santorum outperformed the Republican base in 1992 and 1994, but woefully underperformed it in 2006. Jon Huntsman and Gary Johnson won solid majorities for reelection against weak opposition.
None of them has performed, at least recently, as Chris Christie did when he was defeated an incumbent governor by a 48%-45% margin in New Jersey in 2009, a year after it had voted 57%-42% for Barack Obama, or Mitch Daniels, who was reelected over a former member of Congress by a 58%-40% margin in Indiana on the same day the state voted 50%-49% for Barack Obama, or Paul Ryan, who has been reelected with between 63% and 68% of the vote between 2000 and 2010 in a district which voted Democratic for president by 49%-47% in 2000, 54%-46% in 2004 and 51%-47% in 2008. These are Republicans who have shown the capacity to overperform the party’s generic base.
