Michael Barone‘s latest column for the Washington Examiner delves into the prospects for a partisan realignment in 2016.
There’s no question that the partisan divisions have shifted little in recent years. Consider the almost precisely identical popular vote percentages for Barack Obama in 2012 (51.01 percent) and those when you combine the 2000 vote for Al Gore and Ralph Nader (48.38 + 2.74 = 51.12 percent). The Republican percentages in those elections were nearly identical too: 47.15 percent For Mitt Romney, 47.87 percent for George W. Bush.
The circumstances were similar. Gore was incumbent vice president in an administration with positive job approval; Obama was the incumbent president whose approval reached 50 percent on Election Day. Under different circumstances, the Republican percentage rose a few points higher in 2004, the Democratic percentage a few points higher in 2008.
Moreover, the national pattern was matched in most states. In 28 states and the District of Columbia the Obama 2012 and Gore+Nader percentages were within 1 or 2 percent (rounded off) of each other.
The biggest shifts were not, by the way, in California, Texas or Florida, despite large Hispanic immigrant influxes. They voted just 1 or 2 points differently in 2000 and 2012. Similarly for the large states from New York and New Jersey westward to Illinois and Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.
The biggest shift toward Democrats, 9 points, came in Obama’s birthplace, Hawaii, and in left-trending Vermont. The next biggest, 5 points, were in Virginia and North Carolina, where the Obama campaign rallied high-education newcomers and larger-than-national-average black populations to the polls. …
… All of which suggests that the 2016 results should look somewhat similar. Neither party has won less than 46 percent or more than 53 percent nationally since 1984. Like economic forecasters, psephologists usually expect the next cycle to look like the last one.
But maybe not. Consider another extended period with even more turmoil during which the two parties’ presidential percentages were almost identical at beginning and end: 1960 to 1976. John Kennedy got 49.72 percent of the popular vote, Jimmy Carter 50.08 percent.
Barone goes on to remind readers what happened in 1980.