Yet, in part through a bit of bad luck and two by-elections for the collective ballot box, the Republican Party seems like it could be on the road to an unpleasant distinction.
If President Donald Trump, in fact, loses the popular vote in 2020, it will be the first time since the founding of the Democratic Party in 1828 that the Democratic and Republican parties have lost this popular vote many times in a span. of eight elections.
Of course, we do not know what the result of November will be. It still needs to go a little over two months and things can change.
A loss by Trump this year would mean that Republicans have lost the popular vote 7 of the last 8 elections since 1992.
Of course, winning a few elections by a point here or a point there can just be luck. Therefore, it is also important to look at the voting share that each party gets. Let’s say Biden beats 8 points nationwide, and Trump gets just 46.0% of the vote.
Now, part of the reason the long-term average for the Republicans is low is Ross Perot’s third party candidates in 1992 and 1996.
However, even if you were to look at the margin between the Democratic and Republican nominees, this stretch of eight elections is the worst for the Republicans in the popular vote outside the aforementioned periods of 1932 to 1960 and 1936 to 1964.
What is the cause of the Republicans’ struggle in the popular vote? It could be a lot of things.
The optimistic view for the party is simply that the popular vote is the wrong metric for understanding the strength of Republicans. The goal is to win elections and Republicans do that at the presidential level. After all, they have won three of the last seven presidential elections. And if Trump wins again in November, it will be four out of eight.
And moreover, most areas of dominance for one party normally decrease after a period. If that is the case, then Republicans, by winning the Electoral College three times since 1992, are doing the storm of bad in the popular vote pretty well.
It could be that the recent Republican election university masks a deeper weakness. And because Republicans do not realize their problems, they will do nothing to address them.
Yet we probably get a little ahead of ourselves. An election has yet to fight. At the moment, however, history seems to be for Republicans. The bad kind of history.
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