As Democrats Unite, GOP Divides, Campaign Is Breaking 40-Year Mold

It’s getting so you can’t tell the parties without a scorecard.

Are those the Democrats quietly looking the other way while President Clinton slaloms toward the center, jettisoning traditional liberal positions on crime, gay rights and welfare? And are those the Republicans tearing each other apart over abortion, in their best imitation of the kind of pre-convention ideological squabbling that Democrats perfected during the 1970s and 1980s?

Well, yes.

This uncharacteristic cohesion among Democratic politicos--and the parallel conflict among Republicans--is mirrored in the electorate itself. All major polls now show that Clinton enjoys more unified support among Democrats than presumptive GOP nominee Bob Dole does among Republicans. That’s another entry in the lengthening list of ways in which this election is breaking the mold of the last 40 years.

Division during presidential election years has long been a uniquely Democratic hallmark. From 1952 to 1992, the Democratic presidential candidate carried a smaller percentage of his own party’s voters than the Republican nominee in all but two elections. The first exception came during Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964. The second came in 1992, and that deserves an asterisk. George Bush and Clinton each attracted a meager 10% of the voters from the opposition party; but because Ross Perot drew somewhat more Republican than Democratic votes, Bush’s overall showing with GOP partisans was slightly weaker than Clinton’s performance with Democrats.

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In every other election during the last 40 years, Republican voters have united behind their presidential candidate much more reliably than Democrats have. In seven of the past 11 elections, the Republican presidential nominee has won the votes of at least 90% of those Republicans voting, according to network exit polls and Gallup surveys.

No Democrat has carried that high a percentage of voters in his own party over that period. During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan peeled away so many voters from the Democrats--more than 20% in each of his two elections--that he created a new category in American politics: the culturally conservative, blue-collar Reagan Democrat.

Yet this year, the pattern is inverting. Both national and state polls now consistently show Clinton drawing support from 15% to 18% of Republicans (a recent New York Times/CBS survey put the defection as high as 25%), while Dole attracts only 6% to 8% of Democrats--leaving Clinton with about 90% of his own party. If the president can sustain this level of performance through the election, political scientists would probably shelve the Reagan Democrats and begin talking about “Clinton Republicans.”

Most analysts doubt that Clinton can hold that level of Republican support. As memories of the bitter GOP primaries recede--and the party convention in August stirs partisan emotions--Dole’s showing with Republicans is likely to improve, argues David Moore, the managing editor of the Gallup Poll.

Yet a closer look at the nature of the Republican defectors suggests that there is no guarantee Dole will be able to produce a reconciliation. Recent national surveys by both Gallup and the Pew Research Center show that Clinton’s Republican support is concentrated among moderate GOP voters who have become a minority in an increasingly conservative party. In the Gallup polling, just 2% of Republicans who call themselves very conservative say they plan to vote for Clinton; but the president is now attracting a head-turning 26% of moderate and liberal Republicans (who constitute about 40% of the party overall).

On social issues particularly, the Clinton Republicans tilt away from the dominant current in the GOP. Nearly two-thirds of Clinton’s Republican supporters say abortion should remain generally available or be only slightly restricted; 55% of Dole Republicans say abortion should be banned, or permitted solely in cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother, the Pew poll found.

Republican optimists can look at these divisions as growing pains. Democrats suffered larger defections in the past partly because they were a larger and more diverse party than the relatively homogenous GOP. As the GOP has grown--lathering social conservatives onto its Main Street and suburban foundation--it has also become more susceptible to division. Even if Dole lost 15% of Republicans, by historic Democratic standards, that wouldn’t be a particularly poor performance.

The problem is that, even as Republican defection is ticking up, Democrats are displaying almost unprecedented unity. This year, Clinton became the first Democratic president to be renominated without meaningful internal opposition since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. While Dole is banging heads with social conservatives, the Democratic interest groups have been uncharacteristically quiescent--even as Clinton swivels toward the center.

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What gives? Clinton has been careful not to push his base too far. For all his moves toward the center, he’s hewed the party line on affirmative action, abortion (including his veto of the bill to ban what opponents call “partial-birth” abortions) and legislation opposed by unions that would ease the way for employers to establish workplace teams--issues of passionate concern to core Democratic constituencies.

Mostly, though, the credit for unifying Democrats goes to Newt Gingrich and the Republicans. Above all, it is the fear of Gingrich and the aggressively conservative congressional GOP agenda that has silenced Democratic interest groups and annealed rank-and-file Democratic voters to Clinton. “They have taken care of it for us,” said Democratic pollster Guy Molyneux.

With his base secure, Clinton has been freed to focus on wooing voters in the center of the electorate. Right now, Clinton clearly controls that terrain. He’s not only winning about one-fourth of Republican moderates, but he’s also carrying a clear majority of independents (about 55% in most polls) and holding an overwhelming majority of conservative Democrats (almost 80% in the latest Pew survey).

These centrist voters will decide the next president. The principal--if not the sole--question remaining in this campaign year is what could cause them to turn away from Clinton.

Republicans are investing much of their hopes in the mounting array of ethical allegations against the president. The sheer number of threats swirling around the White House is unprecedented: the second Whitewater-related trial in Little Rock, Ark., the two grand juries investigating other aspects of the controversy, congressional inquiries into the White House requisition of FBI files on hundreds of former Republican appointees, and books from an assortment of journalists and memoirists turning over rocks in the West Wing. (The latest is from former White House FBI agent Gary Aldrich.) This has to be the first administration in history that awaits with dread each new copy of Publisher’s Weekly.

Yet even some conservatives fear that Dole is putting too many of his chips on the possibility that the massed firepower of all these investigations will ultimately obliterate the White House--sort of like the alien invaders in the new sci-fi movie “Independence Day.”

For one thing, polls show most voters already give Dole higher marks for integrity than Clinton--yet still prefer the president. (If elections were solely a referendum on moral probity, Jimmy Carter and George Bush wouldn’t have been looking for other work after four years.) Further revelations could change that balance; but betting his campaign on new disclosures would leave Dole in a fundamentally passive position--waiting for deliverance from the heavens (or more precisely the Starrs) in the last act.

For Dole, there is probably no alternative but to challenge Clinton at his strength. The president regained the political initiative last fall with a nimble two-step: embracing the cause of limiting government (by proposing his own balanced budget), while rejecting the specific GOP plan to get there as “extreme.” In effect, Clinton installed himself with centrist voters as the legitimate defender of the center-right consensus that carried the GOP to control of Congress in 1994.

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Clinton’s success is measured in his strong showing with independents and moderate Republicans. Dole appears cognizant of the problem--his call for tolerance of dissenting views on abortion reflects that--but he has not placed a consistent priority on addressing it. Even Dole’s reported advice to his vice presidential search team to avoid a choice that angers conservatives suggests that he’s still too focused on solidifying the right. Maybe Dole should start looking over his other shoulder--toward the center of his party, where his real trouble is brewing.

The Washington Outlook column appears here every other Monday.

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Party Loyalty

Democrats this year are giving President Clinton almost unified support in early polls, while a substantial number of Republicans are defecting from Bob Dole. That reverses the political pattern of the past four decades. In most campaigns, Democratic presidential nominees have suffered much larger defections than their Republican opponents.

Percentage of voters supporting their own party’s nominee

In 1992 Ross Perot’s candidacy drew support from both parties.

Source: 1992, VRS Exit Poll; 1976-1988, NYT/CBS Exit Poll; 1952-1972, Gallup Organization Inc. surveys.