PRE-ELECTION ISSUE! The Rhodes Cook Letter Early November 2000 The Rhodes Cook Letter EARLY NOVEMBER 2000 / VOL. 1, NO. 4 Contents Pre-Election Special How Election Night Unfolds. 3 What’s at stake when. Chart: How the evening will unfold, hour by hour . 5 Presidential Elections Since 1824 . 7 We’ve had a few close ones, but most are not so close. Chart: Margins of Victory in the Popular Vote . 8 The Fight For California . 9 Clues from the March vote. The Battle For The House. 11 It hinges on prime battlegrounds, misfits and fickles. Charts: The prime battlegrounds . 14 The misfits and fickles . 15 Congress Senate Races . 16 Who in the famous Class of 1994 is vulnerable? House Races to Watch: Marginal and Open Seats . 18 Ongoing Results What’s Up in 2000 . 21 2000 Senate & Gubernatorial Nominations . 22 The Other Primaries: A Few Incumbents Under Fire. 23 Subscription Page . 25 The Rhodes Cook Letter is published periodically by Rhodes Cook. Web: rhodescook.com. E-mail: An individual subscription for six issues is $99; [email protected]. All contents are copy- for an institution, $249. Make checks payable right ©2000 Rhodes Cook. Use of the material to “The Rhodes Cook Letter” and send them, is welcome with attribution, though the author along with your e-mail address, to P.O. Box 574, retains full copyright over the material con- Annandale, VA, 22003. tained herein. Design by Landslide Design, Rockville, MD. Web: landslidedesign.com. 2 The Rhodes Cook Letter • Early November 2000 How Election Night Unfolds What’s at Stake When By Rhodes Cook or anyone who likes elections, this one should be a delight. Control of both ends of FPennsylvania Avenue is literally up for grabs Nov. 7, with any number of permutations possible, from one-party Democratic or Republican control to various combinations of divided government. Nothing may be settled before the Pacific Coast states report, but there will be clues to the eventual outcome throughout the evening. One of the best harbingers may come right at the beginning. Polls close in much of Kentucky at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), as they do across the Ohio River in much of Indiana. Kentucky has been a bellwether in recent presidential elections, voting with the winner nine straight times. At the congressional level, the two states feature a quintet of Republican-held House seats that are being hotly contested. If Demo- crats can pick off POLL CLOSING TIMES one or two all times are Eastern Standard Time of these, they could be on their way to a House majority. At 7 p.m., the first of the big battleground states, Florida, begins to report its vote, as does Virginia, site of one of the nation’s hottest Senate races between embattled Democrat- ic incumbent Charles S. Robb and former Republi- can Gov. George Allen. If Democrats lose this one, their chances of retaking the Senate may have evaporated. 3 The Rhodes Cook Letter • Early November 2000 A half hour later, polls close in the first of the big industrial states, Ohio. It not only went with the winner in 23 of 25 presidential elections in the 20th century, but Ohio was often within a percentage point or two of the candidates’ national totals. At 8 p.m. comes the deluge. A flood of votes pour in from 16 more states and the District of Columbia. Polls close at 8 in virtually all the remaining battleground states of the Frost Belt – New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois – as well as the home states of the two presidential candidates, Al Gore’s Tennessee and George W. Bush’s Texas, and the only two states that have voted with the winner in every presidential election since 1960, Delaware and Missouri. At 8:30 EST, polls close in Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, as they do a half hour later in his wife’s adopted home state of New York, site of the nation’s most publicized Senate race. The scope of Ralph Nader’s Green Party threat should also come into sharp focus at 9 p.m., as the vote begins to roll in from Minnesota and Wisconsin. Polls will have closed in 40 states by 9 p.m. But among the 10 left to report are the trio of Pacific Coast battlegrounds – California, Oregon and Washington. They have a potentially critical pool of 72 electoral votes and a passel of House and Senate races that could decide the presidency as well as control of both chambers of Congress. Could Turnout Provide a Clue? ltimately, who wins depends on who votes. Not long ago, the rule of thumb was that the Ularger the turnout, the better for the Democrats. But that was in an era when Democrats were the majority party. Now, the electorate is almost evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans and independents, and higher turnout is more apt to mean a change in the White House. Take a look at presidential elections since World War II. Harry Truman’s come from behind victory in 1948 was a status quo election, and turnout was only 51% of the voting-age population. Four years later, though, there was a strong mood for change that elected Dwight D. Eisenhower and a Republican Congress. Turnout was up to 62%. Voter participation slumped a bit for Ike’s re-election in 1956, but spiked upward to a postwar record in 1960, as 63% of the voting-age population turned out to give Democrat John F. Kennedy a narrow victory. To be sure, this line of argument is not flawless. Turnout for the watershed election of 1968, which launched the recent Republican presidential era, had the lowest rate of voter participation of any presidential election in the 1960s. And turnout in 1980, when both Ronald Reagan and a Republican Senate were elected, was just 53%, the lowest since Truman’s election. But in the 1990s, it was again the “change” elections that drew the highest turnouts. In 1992, when Democrat Bill Clinton ousted George W. Bush’s father from the White House, participation hit 55%, the highest mark in 20 years. And in 1994, when the Republican tidal wave swept the GOP into control of both sides of Capitol Hill for the first time in four decades, the turnout was the highest for a midterm election in a dozen years. So, if you hear reports during the day Nov. 7 of either a high or a low turnout, make a mental note. It could be an early clue as to which party will do well that evening. 4 The Rhodes Cook Letter • Early November 2000 How Election Night Unfolds: WHAT’S AT STAKE WHEN Note: An asterisk (*) indicates that polls close at different times around the state, either because the state falls into two time zones or because of local variations. The closing time indicated is when returns can begin to be reported. In Oregon, all balloting is by mail. Poll Closing President House Seats Time (EST) State Vote ‘96 Winner and Margin D R I Senators Governors 6 P.M.* Indiana 12 Dole by 6% 4 6 Richard G. Lugar (R) Frank O’Bannon (D) 6 P.M.* Kentucky 8 Clinton by 1% 1 5 7 P.M.* Alabama 9 Dole by 7% 2 5 7 P.M.* Florida 25 Clinton by 6% 8 15 Connie Mack (R)† 7 P.M. Georgia 13 Dole by 1% 3 8 Zell Miller (D) 7 P.M.* New Hampshire 4 Clinton by 10% 2 Jeanne Shaheen (D) 7 P.M. South Carolina 8 Dole by 6% 2 4 7 P.M. Vermont 3 Clinton by 22% 1 James M. Jeffords (R) Howard B. Dean (D) 7 P.M. Virginia 13 Dole by 2% 5 4 1 Charles S. Robb (D) 7:30 P.M. North Carolina 14 Dole by 5% 5 7 James B. Hunt (D)† 7:30 P.M. Ohio 21 Clinton by 6% 8 11 Mike DeWine (R) 7:30 P.M. West Virginia 5 Clinton by 15% 3 Robert C. Byrd (D) Cecil H. Underwood (R) 8 P.M. Connecticut 8 Clinton by 18% 4 2 Joseph I. Lieberman (D) 8 P.M. Delaware 3 Clinton by 15% 1 William V. Roth (R) Thomas R. Carper (D)† 8 P.M. District of Columbia 3 Clinton by 76% 8 P.M. Illinois 22 Clinton by 18% 10 10 8 P.M.* Kansas 6 Dole by 18% 1 3 8 P.M. Maine 4 Clinton by 21% 2 Olympia J. Snowe (R) 8 P.M. Maryland 10 Clinton by 16% 4 4 Paul S. Sarbanes (D) 8 P.M. Massachusetts 12 Clinton by 33% 10 Edward M. Kennedy (D) 8 P.M.* Michigan 18 Clinton by 13% 10 6 Spencer Abraham (R) 8 P.M. Mississippi 7 Dole by 5% 3 2 Trent Lott (R) 8 P.M. Missouri 11 Clinton by 6% 5 4 John Ashcroft (R) Mel Carnahan (D)† 8 P.M. New Jersey 15 Clinton by 18% 7 6 Frank R. Lautenberg (D)† 8 P.M.* North Dakota 3 Dole by 7% 1 Kent Conrad (D) Edward T. Schafer (R)† The Rhodes Cook Letter • Early November 2000 5 8 P.M. Oklahoma 8 Dole by 8% 6 8 P.M. Pennsylvania 23 Clinton by 9% 11 10 Rick Santorum (R) 8 P.M. Tennessee 11 Clinton by 2% 4 5 Bill Frist (R) 8 P.M.* Texas 32 Dole by 5% 17 13 Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) 8:30 P.M. Arkansas 6 Clinton by 17% 2 2 9 P.M.