Dukakis’ Strategy Must Overcome Party’s Handicaps : Economic, Voting Trends Aid GOP

Draw a jagged line across the political map. Anchor it in New England. Zig through the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states. Make a hopeful zag in the direction of Texas. Bump up over the Rockies and finish on the West Coast.

To get to the White House next November, this is approximately the road Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis will have to travel.

The likely Democratic battle plan seeks to draw on traditional Democratic strength in the Frost Belt, exploit currents of economic discontent in the Rust Belt and Farm Belt and capitalize on the inherent restiveness of the Pacific Rim. All that, plus the possibility that similar disaffections might turn Texas Democratic.

Yet it is a far tougher road to follow than to sketch on a political map.

Despite the semi-euphoria among delegates here, their determination to unite and avoid the blunders and unpopular positions of the past, and even Dukakis’ lead in recent polls, the reality is that any Democratic presidential candidate starts off with serious structural and demographic handicaps.

Conversely, voting patterns, population shifts, economic trends and a bundle of other factors add up to a significant pre-race advantage for any Republican ticket these days.

“If the presidential election were being held now,” says California pollster Mervin Field, even though Dukakis leads in the popular vote, “the electoral college division of votes between the likely major party nominees would be as close as it has ever been in modern times.”

In the abstract, Dukakis starts the campaign with a clean slate. If voter dissatisfaction is great enough with what one Democratic strategist calls “the overripe melon” of the Reagan Administration, if they never warm up to presumed GOP nominee George Bush and find Dukakis a safe alternative, then past voting patterns may mean nothing.

The tide of political history, however, has been running in favor of the Republicans--at least when it comes to presidential elections. Simply because he is a Democrat, Dukakis faces extra problems--and must plan his campaign accordingly.

The Democratic Party has had only one winner in the last five presidential contests--Jimmy Carter in 1976. In the five elections since 1968, 23 states with 202 electoral votes went Republican every time; by contrast, the Democrats carried only the District of Columbia every time.

Going back further, of the last nine presidential elections--since 1952--Republicans have won all but three. And during that period the Republicans have gotten an average of at least 55% of the vote from no fewer than 27 states. Those states now have 208 electoral votes--out of 270 needed for an electoral college majority.

By contrast, the Democrats have averaged 50% or better in just six states and the District of Columbia--with a combined total of only 52 electoral votes.

‘Party Without a Base’

In effect, says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who advised Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr. on his presidential bid: “We are a party without a base in presidential elections.”

Moreover, the long pattern of Republican successes appears to reflect fundamental demographic changes in the country--shifts of population to the suburbs from the cities, shifts to the South and West from the North and East, shifts in the work force from manufacturing and unions to service industries and white-collar positions. All have worked to erode traditional sources of Democratic strength.

The Republicans enjoy a structural advantage over the Democrats, too. Republican strength is fairly evenly dispersed around the country, while the Democrats are concentrated in a few large states.

This means that, other things being equal, the Republicans will win more states with the same number of popular votes in any given election than the Democrats will because the electoral college formula has a mild bias in favor of small states. Consequently, the Republicans have more ways to reach the 270 electoral votes needed for a majority than the Democrats do.

And Republicans usually win a disproportionate share of the electoral vote total. For example, in the last five presidential elections the Republicans won 53% of the cumulative popular vote, but got a much larger share--77%--of the cumulative electoral vote.

Polls Reflect Anomaly

The same sort of anomaly is reflected in current public opinion polls. In most nationwide surveys, Dukakis enjoys a comfortable lead of 10 points or so. Nevertheless, a recent analysis of state poll results by the Field Institute, headed by pollster Field, shows Dukakis with only a narrow edge in the electoral college--227 to 214--with Bush ahead in 27 states while Dukakis leads in only 17.

“Dukakis is swimming upstream,” says Robert Brischetto, executive director of the Southwest Voter Research Institute, which monitors Latino voting patterns. “It’s going to be hard for him to win without some kind of crisis or major scandal.”

Brischetto points out that in a sense the Dukakis candidacy in 1988 must start where the candidacy of 1984 Democratic nominee Walter F. Mondale ended--and that was nearly 19 percentage points behind the Republicans.

If so, Dukakis must make a net gain of more than nine points over 1984 to recapture the White House and the record of past elections suggests that a gap of such dimensions is very difficult to close, except in times of of domestic and international upheaval.

But the nation is at peace abroad and enjoying relative prosperity at home. There are scattered pockets of distress and anxiety--in the parched states of the Farm Belt, in industrial areas hard hit by foreign competition, for example--but to hit such selective targets, Dukakis will have to aim a rifle, not a shotgun.

If he is to overcome the weight of all these problems, party professionals are almost unanimous on what the key element of his strategy must be:

It is absolutely vital, they say, for Dukakis to establish clear priorities for expending time, money and other resources in the forthcoming competition against Vice President George Bush--which they anticipate will be desperately close.

Yet on this critical question--whether the Democratic standard-bearer should concentrate his efforts on selected target states--Dukakis himself takes a very different view from other party leaders, to hear his aides tell it. He wants to campaign everywhere, or so they say.

“Dukakis is completely committed to 50 states,” says Jack Corrigan, the campaign’s operations director, who says his boss is “extremely stubborn” about not conceding any chunk of the country to the Republican opposition.

Other politicians, however, view such statements as intended mainly to keep the Republicans off balance. “It’s important to have a good misdirection plan to keep the Republicans tied down,” says William Carrick, who managed Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt’s unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination.

And even Corrigan concedes that once both the Democratic and Republican conventions are over and other preliminaries are concluded, the campaign will begin to focus on the most likely targets.

Swing Voters Critical

The critical targets for him, as for Bush, are swing voters--the 20% or so of the electorate with no binding party loyalty, voters who each election make up their minds anew which party they will support.

And there are three key cohorts of swing voters, each of which Dukakis advisers are confident they can reach in this election:

--Affluent young suburbanites or Yuppies;

--Northern white ethnics;

--Southern whites.

The suburbanites should be the easiest, Dukakis aides believe, because of the governor’s own background in Brookline, Mass., along with his claims of bringing managerial efficiency to government.

Ethnic voters, they contend, will be drawn by Dukakis’ background as the son of immigrants.

As for Southern whites, the master plan calls for running mate Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas to help Dukakis at least get a hearing so he can win over this conservative group with his promises to promote economic growth without raising taxes.

Whatever the merits of these arguments, past election results and current poll data suggest that Dukakis is still likely to meet stiff resistance to his sales pitch below the Mason-Dixon Line and in the Rocky Mountain states. The Field Institute compilation of state poll results shows that not a single one of the 17 states now apparently in the Democratic column are from these regions.

For his part, Bush is leading in 11 Southern states, including Texas, and eight Western states, in addition to eight others.

Given these likely realities, a Northeast-Midwest-Pacific strategy appears to offer Dukakis his best hope--with Texas the tantalizing but hard-to-grasp grand prize.

In the Northeast, if current poll findings hold, Dukakis could carry Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and the District of Columbia for a total of 90 electoral votes.

He would carry Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri in the Midwest for 63 more, and California, Oregon, Hawaii, Washington in the West for an additional 68--bringing his grand total to 221.

That would leave the Democratic standard-bearer only 49 electoral votes short of a majority. Three big states--Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania--with a total of 69 electoral votes would remain as potential keys to a Dukakis majority; all three are rated tossups now.

While the course of any campaign is hard to forecast this far away from Election Day, it does seem safe to assume that both candidates will make major efforts in the six largest states, which have a combined total of 184 electoral votes, just 84 fewer than a majority.

Here is a brief look at past performance and present prospects in each of the Big Six, including their electoral vote totals.

--California, 47. The Republicans claim the Democrats cannot win unless they carry the nation’s largest states, something they had not done since 1964.

Dukakis leads in recent polls and benefits from his reputation for managerial skill. Republican Gov. George Deukmejian was once thought to be a strong possibility as a Bush vice presidential choice, but now speculation has shifted to others, notably New York Rep. Jack Kemp.

--New York, 36. In modern political history the Democrats have never won the Presidency without carrying New York, except in 1948. Dukakis is ahead there now and the Republicans will have trouble catching up. Even picking Kemp for running mate probably would not help Bush significantly.

One possible cloud on the Democratic horizon is the decision to give a former Jesse Jackson campaign staffer a top role in running the campaign, which could cause friction with New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and revive tensions of the bitter Democratic primary campaign last April.

--Texas, 29. Before Dukakis selected Bentsen, many Democrats wondered whether it would be worth making much of an effort in the state Bush calls home. Now they have no choice but to go all out and hope that Bentsen can help in neighboring oil patch states such as Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas too.

But Republicans claim that Democrats will be wasting their time and money, despite Bentsen’s powerful machine here, arguing that Texans would rather back one of their own for the top job than for understudy. Says native Texan and former Lyndon B. Johnson aide Horace Busby: “Lyndon Johnson always maintained to his dying day that people don’t vote for vice president and I agree with him.”

--Pennsylvania, 25. This state once considered a Democratic bulwark--it went for Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968 and Jimmy Carter in 1976--is now rated a tossup by Field Institute, which may be a worrisome sign for Dukakis.

One reason for the problem, Democrats say, is the estrangement of white ethnic voters in Philadelphia from the party as a result of their resentment of the city’s black mayor, W. Wilson Goode. Democrats also complain that their new governor, Robert P. Casey, is not adroit enough to mend political fences for Dukakis.

--Illinois, 24. Another tossup state with problems similar to Pennsylvania for Democrats as a result of defection of remnants of old Richard J. Daley machine in Chicago because of the late black Mayor Harold Washington. Moreover, Washington’s replacement, another black, Eugene Sawyer, is nowhere near as gifted as Washington in rallying black support that Dukakis will need.

Finished Dismal Third

Jesse Jackson now makes his home in Chicago, but mixed feelings toward him there could hinder his effectiveness in getting out the Democratic vote. And Dukakis himself ran an uninspiring race in the Illinois primary last March, finishing a dismal third.

--Ohio, 23. Democrats complain Dukakis could have made the state safe for himself by picking Sen. John Glenn as his running mate. Still Dukakis has a good shot here, based on his stress on full employment and his ethnic background.

Related stories: Pages 4, 5, 18-21; View, Page 1; Calendar, Page 1.

PARTY STRONGHOLDS IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS From 1952 to 1984, 27 states have been reliably Republican in presidential elections. Only six states and the District of Columbia have gone regularly for the Democrats.

Average Republican vote-- 55% or more Average Democratic vote-- 50% or more Source: Mellman & Lazarus Inc.