If Ron Paul's Voters Buck The GOP, Will It Sink The Republican Party's Chances In November?

by Noah Rothman

On Feb 21, 2012

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Are Ron Paul’s devoted supporters within the Republican party integral to the GOP’s chances of winning in November? Does the Party of Lincoln need to accommodate this bloc of energetic voters if Paul does not receive the nomination in order to keep them in the big tent? If they do not, are the Republican party’s electoral fortunes doomed? Actually, the answers to these questions are mixed: yes, some of Paul’s supporters may be the true swing voters that are the deciding factor in modern presidential elections. No, they are not a new force in politics and the GOP’s popular vote totals in November are subject to more systemic and longer-lasting forces than Paul’s supporters would have you believe.

Since 1988, the electoral math on the national level has been largely stable and fairly predictable. While there have been some pretty substantial regional changes (the South has become gradually more solidly pro-Republican even on the local level while the industrial Midwest and the Northeast have grown more liberal), the share each party receives of the popular vote has, for the most part, remained static.

Since the 1980s, the parties have played between the 40-yard lines. In 1988, George H.W. Bush swept 40 states to Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis’ 10 – but Bush only received just under 54 percent of the popular vote to Dukakis’ 46 percent. In that year, as a matter of reference, Ron Paul was on the national ballot as the Libertarian candidate. He received just under 0.5 percent of the popular vote.

1988 was the last year any national electoral victory could be considered a blowout. Since ’88, the process of polarization in American presidential politics has only accelerated and the political party’s heterogeneous regional coalitions hardened into homogeneous ideological coalitions.

President Bill Clinton was never able to secure a majority of the popular vote, but he won a plurality in 1992 and 1996. H. Ross Perot’s campaigns in both 1992 and 1996 drew the support of “leaners” and true independents in both years giving a clearer picture of partisan voters and the electoral landscape for the parties.

Clinton won the 1992 election with 43 percent of the vote to President George H.W. Bush’s 37.5 percent (Perot won 19 percent of the national popular vote). Clinton won by 5.5 points, but his margin was outdone in 1996 when Clinton won a 49 percent plurality of the vote to Sen. Bob Dole’s 40 percent. Perot won 8.5 percent of the popular vote in 1996. While Clinton’s margin of victory was stronger in his bid for reelection, nearly 10 million voters failed to participate in 1996 that had been moved to vote in 1992.

In 2000, the popular vote went to Vice President Al Gore who won 48.4 percent to George W. Bush’s 47.9 – Green, Reform and Libertarian party candidates all syphoned off more than 3.5 percent of the popular vote and still the Republican and Democrat never broke below 47 percent of the popular vote. This rough electoral parity is where both parties have remained since 2000.

In 2004, President Bush became the first president to win a majority of the popular vote since his father in 1988. He won 50.7 percent of the vote to Sen. John Kerry’s 48.3 percent (a series of independent candidates carried less than 1 percent of the popular vote in 2004).

In 2008, an extraordinarily depressed year for Republicans nationally, President Obama managed 53 percent of the popular vote to Sen. John McCain’s 46 percent. Again, this popular vote margin nearly mirrors the results of the 1988 election and approximately represents the floor and ceiling of American presidential election margins.   

The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost provides a graphic to illustrate the evenly matched American electorate:

To the extent that Ron Paul’s supporters are young and energized (they are), they are prototypical swing voters. They may not be reliable voters, but a candidate like Paul or Barack Obama circa-2008 can and does move these voters to the polls in November where they nearly always swing an election.

However, the “true independent” swing vote is not one that is moved by policy particulars as many of Paul’s supporters appear to be – those voters are non-ideological and are often moved by pocketbook or even apolitical concerns.

Given that Ron Paul’s voters are so often vocal about very specific policy preferences that align more closely with those of the Republican rather than Democratic parties (personal liberty, fiscal restraint and the elimination of client subsidization via Congressional earmarks), many if not most of Paul’s voters are probably more soft-partisan Republicans than true swing voters. If this is the case, they are not the electoral arbiters that many perceive themselves to be.

The partisan, internecine divisions that tear parties apart in primary election seasons are healed by the time the general election rolls around. The GOP has the added benefit of facing an incumbent Democratic president in November which will make up for the lack of enthusiasm that the Republican base may share for its eventual nominee.

Too often, Paul’s supporters make the mistake of considering themselves an entirely novel force in American politics. Their candidate is capturing an elusive bloc of voters and has a devoted base that turns out at the polls. Often, they soothe the wounds suffered after losing elections by damming the GOP and claiming that should the party not nominate Ron Paul, they are doomed in November when his supporters buck the party. This is contradicted by electoral history – the two dominant political parties in the U.S. have enjoyed rough parity in the popular vote for going on 30 years (and ideological party for nearly a century).

Paul voters in this cycle (and, to a far lesser extent, 2008) consider themselves something new in American politics. They are not, but they will not be convinced until November 7, 2012. Maybe not even then…

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