GOP’s Eroding Electoral Base Said to Give Clinton a Margin for Error

In the past six presidential elections, Republican dominance of the Sun Belt and several large industrial states left Democrats so little margin for error that political analysts likened their prospects of winning the White House to pulling an inside straight in poker.

In 1988, for instance, George Bush could count on a virtually impregnable base of nearly 200 electoral votes out of the 270 needed for victory. Thus, Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater could build his strategy around denying Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis two states he could not afford to lose--California and Ohio. As it became clear Bush would carry these two, the makings of a comfortable electoral win fell into place.

But this year, many analysts agree, the GOP base appears to have eroded to the point where it is Democrat Bill Clinton who has the flexibility in picking his targets--and Bush who may be forced to draw a perfect hand to build an electoral majority.

“It’s a nasty looking map (for Bush) in terms of who is ahead and who is behind out there,” says Fred Steeper, the pollster for the President’s reelection campaign.

Adds David Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager: “The tables have turned and it is the Republicans who may be left with a thread-the-needle strategy in which they have to win almost every state they target.”

This role reversal stems from the impact of widespread economic discontent across the country. Bush is being forced to fight hard for states like Texas and New Jersey that the GOP has long dominated. And as he battles on those fronts, he faces a steep uphill climb in such crucial states as California and Illinois that, while often competitive, have not voted Democratic since 1964.

Moreover, with an all-Southern ticket of Clinton and Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, the Democrats are now stronger across the South than in 1988 and 1984, when Northern liberals headed their tickets.

As he continues to lag in the nationwide polls, Bush faces the challenge usually forced on Democrats: balancing limited resources of time and money with the need to gain ground almost everywhere.

“The Republicans just can’t target their resources the way they used to,” says Stuart Rothenberg, editor of a political newsletter in Washington. “Right now, in constructing an electoral majority, it is Clinton who clearly has more of a margin of error.”

If Clinton is able to maintain the large lead some national polls give him, these targeting considerations won’t matter much as he coasts to victory. But if the race tightens, Clinton’s increased flexibility could give him an edge in squeezing out a narrow electoral college win. That’s partly because both sides view the campaign as a war of attrition: In the long march to Election Day, the goal is not only to secure territory, but to bleed an opponent’s resources.

Both Clinton and Bush are currently trying to lock up their respective electoral bases as quickly as possible so they can focus attention on such pivotal swing states as Michigan and Pennsylvania--and stage occasional raids on states their opponent is counting on. The goal for each candidate is to maximize the amount of resources he devotes to the battleground states while forcing the other side to spend more time and money than it anticipated defending its turf.

In this political version of the popular board game Risk, the key to Republican victories in five of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 was the party’s electoral base. Among the 50 states, 21 voted Republican in each of those elections; 13 more were carried by the GOP in five of the six contests. This year, those 34 states account for 336 electoral votes.

Democrats, in contrast, carried only the District of Columbia--with 3 electoral votes--in every election since ’68. And only Minnesota, with 10 electoral votes, landed in the Democratic column in five of the races.

Because Republicans could depend on so many states from the outset, they have had the upper hand in deciding where the battle would be joined.

“The one thing you don’t want to do in a presidential election is get painted into a tactical corner,” says Democratic strategist Tad Devine, a senior aide to Dukakis in 1988. “What the Republicans have been able to do is force the Democrats to fight on Republican turf. . . . Then they would throw everything at it: the candidate and his schedule, the vice president, the paid media, surrogates, the direct mail.”

But this year, Devine says, it seems doubtful the GOP can force Clinton to fight on the ground that it chooses because the party is having such difficulty consolidating its base.

That’s already apparent to many GOP strategists. Typically, says John A. Morgan, a leading Republican demographic expert, Democrats by Labor Day realistically have had to write off states representing roughly 170 electoral votes, primarily in the South and West. But this year, he acknowledges, Bush heads into the final two months holding only about 100 solid electoral votes--and even that assumes that such conservative states as Arizona, where Clinton still leads in post-Republican Convention surveys, eventually fall into line.

Bush’s inability to lock up the normal Republican base has allowed Clinton to pursue the type of aggressive strategy usually identified with the GOP.

In late August, for example, the Democrat took a two-day bus tour in President Bush’s adopted home state of Texas. States where Clinton’s first round of advertisements ran included North Carolina, Georgia and Colorado--all places Republicans have come to count on.

To win in November, Clinton may not need any of those states. He can reach 270 electoral votes by winning key Northeastern and Upper Midwestern states, sweeping the West Coast, taking several of the Rust Belt battlegrounds (the most promising for Clinton are Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri and Michigan) and breaking away some of the smaller states where the Democratic ticket now appears strong--such as Maryland, Connecticut, Vermont, Louisiana and Kentucky.

Still, Clinton’s strategists say he can gain simply by forcing Bush to spend time and money contesting Texas, Florida and other once-reliable Republican states.

Mary Matalin, Bush’s deputy campaign manager for political operations, insists that the need to defend former GOP strongholds won’t diminish Bush’s effort in key swing states. “We are not going to be prevented from carpet bombing the states we need to because there are more states in play,” she says. “We are hitting the battleground states about as often as they can absorb us in a given period of time.”

But independent observers question this assertion, saying, for instance, that each day or dollar Bush spends in Texas pinches elsewhere.

“The resources for the Bush campaign are going to be stretched so thin playing defense they are going to have less available for the battleground states,” says political analyst Charles Cook, the publisher of a Washington-based newsletter. “It’s a real role reversal from 1988.”

For Clinton, a key strategic question in the coming weeks will be how far to push his probes into traditionally Republican-leaning states. For instance, while Clinton led in polls taken in New Jersey after the GOP convention, and Florida’s political firmament is now as disordered as its landscape, a Democrat is likely to carry them only as part of a national landslide. Likewise, some questioned why he spent much of Labor Day weekend in South Carolina, a Republican stronghold.

“Those are states that if we win them, we don’t need to win them,” says Democratic consultant Tony Podesta.

More difficult for Clinton may be deciding how seriously to contest Bush in Texas. Economic unhappiness has left the state far from solid for the President; Bill Miller, an Austin-based GOP consultant says, “It is probably going to take everything Bush can do to win.”

But Miller adds that for Clinton to secure Texas, Clinton would also need to invest substantial amounts of time and money--resources that might be better spent in states where the Democrat’s ultimate prospects for victory are greater.

For Bush, the equivalent decision is whether to meaningfully plunge into California--a state that many Republicans fear is virtually within the Democratic column already because of its continuing economic malaise. Matalin says the campaign has not conceded the nation’s largest state--whose 54 electoral votes represent one-fifth of the magic 270. But significantly, she concedes that the GOP does not now include it on the top-tier list of battleground states.

No matter what Bush does, Clinton is likely to keep visiting California at least for awhile--if only to raise money. But insiders believe his media purchases in the state could be curtailed significantly if the Republicans can’t close the gap in the polls; already, Clinton bypassed California in his first wave of ads.

Some insiders believe that ultimately, the Bush campaign may choose to focus on other must-win states for Clinton where they consider his grasp less firm--such as Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

But, in another reversal of the parties’ recent roles, the GOP is likely to spend more time in the next few weeks courting its own balky base--particularly in the Southern cornerstones of Texas and Florida--than poaching on territory Clinton now claims.

The Changing Political Landscape

Then: Republican victories in five of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 were fueled by the party’s success in a core group of states-21 were carried by the GOP in each of those races, 13 more went Republican in all but one of the contests. The so-called Republican “lock” on many of these states gave the party’s candidate a decisive advantage over the Democratic nominee in deciding where to campaign.

States the GOP carried in every presidential election since 1968. (Total electoral votes: 191) Alaska: 3 Arizona: 8 California: 54 Colorado: 8 Idaho: 4 Illinois: 22 Indiana: 12 Kansas: 6 Montana: 3 Nebraska: 5 Nevada: 4 New Jersey: 15 New Mexico: 5 North Dakota: 3 Oklahoma: 8 South Dakota: 3 Utah: 5 Vermont: 3 Virginia: 13 Wyoming: 3 *

States the GOP carried in 5 of the past 6 presidential elections. (Total electoral votes: 145) Connecticut: 8 Delaware: 3 Florida: 25 Iowa: 7 Kentucky: 8 Maine: 4 Michigan: 18 Missouri: 11 North Carolina: 14 Ohio: 21 Oregon: 7 South Carolina: 8 Tennessee: 11 *

Now: Many political analysts believe this year’s presidential campaign has been marked by role reversal, with Democrat Bill Clinton enjoying flexibility in picking his battlegrounds while President Bush struggles to hold onto once-solid Republican states. A preliminary projection by analyst Charles Cook on the outcome of the November election puts several states that had been part of the GOP base into Clinton’s column.

Solid or leaning toward Bush. (Total electoral votes: 207) Alabama: 9 Alaska: 3 Arizona: 8 Delaware: 3 Florida: 25 Georgia: 13 Idaho: 4 Indiana: 12 Kansas: 6 Mississippi: 7 Nebraska: 5 Nevada: 4 New Hampshire: 4 New Jersey: 15 North Carolina: 14 North Dakota: 3 Oklahoma: 8 South Carolina: 8 South Dakota: 3 Texas: 32 Utah: 5 Virginia: 13 Wyoming: 3 *

Solid or leaning toward Clinton. (Total electoral votes: 255) Arkansas: 6 California: 54 Connecticut: 8 D.C.: 3 Hawaii: 4 Illinois: 22 Iowa: 7 Maryland: 10 Massachusetts: 12 Minnesota: 10 Missouri: 11 New York: 33 Oregon: 7 Rhode Island: 4 Pennsylvania: 23 Tennessee: 11 Vermont: 3 Washington: 11 West Virginia: 5 Wisconsin: 11 *

Tossups (Total electoral votes: 76) Colorado: 8 Kentucky: 8 Louisiana: 9 Maine: 4 Michigan: 18 Montana: 3 New Mexico: 5 Ohio: 21 *

Electoral vote totals in past 6 presidential elections (270 needed to win) 1968 Richard Nixon: 301 Hubert Humphrey: 191 George Wallace: 46 1972 Richard Nixon: 520 George McGovern: 17 1976 Jimmy Carter: 297 Gerald R. Ford: 240 1980 Ronald Reagan: 489 Jimmy Carter: 49 1984 Ronald Reagan: 525 Walter Mondale: 13 1988 George Bush: 426 Michael Dukakis: 111 Source: National Journal; Congressional Quarterly; The Cook Political Report.