So I have a spreadsheet where I have recorded the partisan alignment of the federal government and how Americans have voted for the President, House, and Senate. This data is from Wikipedia.
If you navigate to the Organized table this is as easy to understand as I’ve figured out how to make it so far. From this, I have found some interesting findings.
- There have only been three times in American history where the president, house, and senate have flipped from one party to the other. These were in 1800, 1840, and 1952.
- The House usually flips before the Senate. The only exceptions since the 17th amendment were in 1946, 1952, and 1980.
- Democrats have won the popular vote for the President in every election since 1990 except 2004 and 2024.
- When we add up the vote totals for three Senate elections in a row to get an overview of how the entire country feels, with a rolling sum (so the count for 2024 is in the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections), the Republicans have not received a majority of the popular vote for the Senate since 1998.
Here is a list of presidential elections where the popular vote matched the results for the President, House, and Senate, for an election leading to a trifecta, with a three-election rolling sum for the Senate:
- 1936: All Democratic
- 1940: All Democratic
- 1944: All Democratic
- 1948: All Democratic
- 1960: All Democratic
- 1964: All Democratic
- 1976: All Democratic
- 1992: All Democratic
- 2008: All Democratic
- 2020: All Democratic
The Republicans have not won a trifecta while also winning the popular vote among all three branches since Wikipedia records the sum of votes for the Senate.
The Democrats have not won a trifecta without also winning the popular vote for all three branches since the popular vote for the Senate began.
This leads me to the conclusion that the Republicans have not had broad-based appeal since at least the 1920s.
So why do Republicans keep winning the presidency if they have not done well across the board since the 1920s for any six years?
Let’s look back at the Keys to the White House, the best prediction system for Presidential elections developed so far.
But first I need to make some corrections.
Lichtman predicted Harris would have won and if the perception of the economy was accurate among most Americans then his prediction would likely have been accurate. However, there was a divergence between the perception of the economy and the actual economic performance. Also, I disagree that there was a major military success under Biden’s term. The war in Ukraine is still ongoing. I also don’t see anything Biden did as being a major policy change, the BBB act turned into a major slush fund for overpriced infrastructure projects. This adds 4 false keys to the four he gave Harris, giving her 8 false keys and the win to Trump.
With this modification we realize his model correctly predicts the winner of the popular vote or the electoral college in every year since 1876, so it’s worth using.
Now let’s delve into the elections where Republicans won a trifecta without winning a popular vote trifecta.
The first obvious case is 2024. The Democrats continue their 22-year-long streak in the Senate by popular vote. It becomes clear to me that Americans were not so much enamored by Trump but repulsed by Biden’s foreign policy, the only issue where he is behind in the polls.
2016 saw a narrow win for Republicans in the House since Hillary Clinton’s coattails end at her shoulders. Neither Trump nor Clinton have long coattails because they are extremely unpopular candidates. Biden has never been that popular either, since before Warren dropped out he had a minority of the popular vote in the primary. The message is clear. We need different candidates.
2004 is an interesting case because even though Bush won the popular vote and the House popular vote, Democrats won a majority of the vote for the Senate. Bush was never very popular.
2002 is tricky because even though Jim Jeffords was a Republican before 2001, he switched to being an Independent and caucused with the Democrats. Once adjusting for this switch the Democrats had a majority of the popular vote in 2002.
In 2000 Bush was unable to carry a solid majority in the Senate and lost the popular vote. He was unpopular.
Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan never had coattails long enough for the Republican Party to win the majority of the vote in the House. Either they were unpopular or the Republican Party was disorganized. It also was an era where the Republicans still had a lot of support in the North and Democrats carried the Solid South, so it was a different party system.
We only saw the final crystallization of policies between candidates and parties at a nationwide level in 1994 with Gingrich’s Contract for America. Before then the party alignment mattered less than the region the politician was from.
Another factor is that California has grown to be such a massive state while still carrying only two Senators. Even though the small states are pretty evenly divided between liberal northeastern states and conservative middle-American states, California has over 10 million more people than Texas in the last census and over 10% of America’s population. This has led to the Senate being very disproportionate for the last 50 years. But this is not a new problem either. Virginia had 18.9% of the population in 1790, in a way America is less disproportionate now than it was when it was founded! The country became slightly disproportionate from 1880 to 1920 and 1950 to 1960 when New York had just under 10% of the national population (woo! Relative proportionality!) but the meteoric growth of Silicon Valley and Hollywood in the latter half of the twentieth century to today led to California becoming the largest state by far.
If Texas continues to add half a million people per year they will finally surpass California in around 2040.
The Senate has always been disproportionate. The skew between the Senate popular vote and the majority in the Senate since the 1980s is due to California’s explosive growth.
Ideal candidates
To finish this up, who would be the ideal candidate for each party who would be able to capture the imagination of the American people and have long coattails leading to a strong trifecta?
Let’s start with the Republican Party. The candidate should be a veteran. He should be level-headed and appoint a very experienced Republican politician who already has a high profile to be his vice president, fixing John McCain’s mistake. Socially conservative, but not giving Nazi salutes. Fiscally the Republican wants to move to a superannuation system instead of OASI. He wants to end red tape. He is not going to attack Medicare, because that hurts seniors. Strongly anti-communist and in favor of America’s alliances like Eisenhower was. Appear levelheaded and calm to voters. Key issues:
- Military strength
- Fiscal responsibility
- End red tape
- Anti-abortion
Every Republican candidate since Eisenhower has violated one of these principles. Even Eisenhower made some very poor choices with his cabinet, particularly with picking Vice President Nixon. Every Republican President since Eisenhower has been very corrupt and has had a certain level of disdain for our allies, which is why none of them have had significant coattails. I think a Republican candidate like this would be the first Republican since Eisenhower who I would not absolutely detest, while also carrying some of the values of the Republican Party which are fairly agreeable, aside from the anti-abortion stance which is shrouded in ignorance.
The ideal Democratic candidate however will support expanding Medicare and Medicaid, with a focus on ensuring every American always has health insurance. They might support Medicare for all. Very socially liberal, supporting Black Lives Matter and trans rights. Supports auditing the Department of Defense and alternatives to policing. Like the Republicans the Democrat supports strengthening American alliances, but with conditions regarding the treatment of prisoners and how war is conducted. They will support a peaceful solution in Israel and Palestine without blank checks. They support Ukrainian accession to NATO. They support visa-free travel and reforming our immigration system for migrant workers to give them a pathway to work in this country legally. They strongly support the rights of refugees. They work closely with our allies, building bridges. They support building out passenger rail and likely support buying out private railroad tracks. Aside from that, the Democrat is an ardent capitalist, supporting regulation to protect consumers while also opposing red tape which serves no useful purpose.
Key issues:
- Socially liberal
- Internationalist, strong Atlanticist foreign policy. Embraces allies.
- An economically moderate capitalist in favor of railroad nationalization and Medicare for all.
- End unnecessary red tape.
This Democrat will be very similar to Obama in terms of social and economic policy but with a major upgrade to our foreign policy. Building up alliances in Asia is a good thing, but not at the expense of NATO.
This will help us move away from the current state of American politics and towards a bright future where we have never been before.
On top of this, we need to ensure that the party machinery is well-oiled beyond the president, supporting excellent candidates for every office from your local school board to the presidency and everywhere in between.
This is how Democrats won in 2008, and this is how Democrats will win in 2028.