The presidential nomination process has a
history of being fuzzy. For much of the nation’s political existence,
starting in the 1830s, national party conventions selected nominees for
the highest office in the land. At these events, the oft-used term
“smoke-filled rooms” described the sometimes behind-the-scenes activity
that led to the final selection of a nominee. Sometimes this person was
an obvious, well-known national figure; other times, an unexpected,
relative unknown captured the nomination.
As time passed, more and more states began to
use presidential primaries to either determine the delegate commitments
of their state’s representatives at these conventions or to at least
indicate the electorate's preferences (non-binding events that have been
referred to as “advisory primaries,” “beauty contests,” or, in the case
of many caucuses, “straw polls”). Still, many states continued (and
continue now) to use a series of caucuses, mass meetings, and
conventions to pick their delegations, a process that can be murky and
complicated. Historically, the candidate preferences of these
caucus-determined delegations were more fungible and flexible, as they
weren’t necessarily “bound” to any choice. The efforts by different news
organizations to estimate delegate support for each candidate were as
much art as science.
After the chaotic and controversial 1968
Democratic National Convention, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey won
the nomination after not running in a single primary, the national
Democratic Party sought to reform its nomination process. It began to
set down an increasingly nationalized set of rules that each state party
had to obey, particularly certain guarantees for participation by women
and minorities in state delegations and the distribution of delegate
support to candidates in proportion to their vote support. This is why
many view the 1972 Democratic primary as the first campaign of the
“modern” era of presidential politics, as it was the first contest to
feature many of these rules.
While the Republican Party also went on to
adopt many reforms as well, it importantly has never adopted
proportionality as a universal rule, largely leaving delegate allocation
methods to the state parties. This has led to a variety of systems,
ranging from plurality winner-take-all states, to hybrid proportional
states with winner-take-all thresholds, to states that allocated by only
the statewide result or others that chiefly use the results in each
congressional district, to variants of what are known as “loophole
primaries,” where most or all delegates are named individually on the
ballot (sometimes without a listed presidential preference) and directly
elected by the voters in a congressional district and/or statewide.
Although 2016 will see more stringent rules regarding the binding nature
of Republican presidential preference votes under many of these
systems, the GOP’s delegate allocation process is still incredibly
diverse. Philosophically, this corresponds with each party’s political
inclinations: Democrats have embraced a more top-down approach over the
last four decades than Republicans, who have left more up to the states.
As such, laying out the winners of individual state primaries and
caucuses on the GOP side is harder to do. Yet the maps below seek to
present the state-by-state outcomes for competitive Republican
presidential nomination contests since 1976, as best can be recorded by
election results, newspaper accounts, and election histories.
Importantly, the maps attempt to set all things equal by recording the
presidential preferences of states in primary elections or, in most
cases, the first step in the nomination process in caucus states. In the
case of the latter, individual delegates are often selected over the
course of many months, and their presidential preferences are not always
well defined. In 1976, for example, the first-step presidential
preferences in many caucuses were not well documented, were based mostly
on speculation, or featured small samplings of precincts that were
sometimes highly disputed. Generally, it would have been easier to use
the final delegate support votes at the GOP conventions. However, the
preferences of delegations in most caucus states (and some primary
states, too) shift over time as candidates withdraw from the race. So by
using earlier points in the process to measure presidential preference,
these maps somewhat diminish the effect of withdrawals on states that
decided their eventual delegate support levels late. This standard
attempts to make every election a time stamp of sorts on where the race
stood in a respective cycle.
In the end, there is no perfect way of
determining who won what state if there wasn’t a binding primary result.
There are exceptions and notes below some of the maps explaining
complications. The maps also attempt to denote (with an asterisk)
results that had little or no bearing on the eventual delegate support
of the states. Besides most caucuses during this period, such contests
also include the aforementioned “beauty contests” and uncommitted
delegates elected in “loophole primaries.”
Of the seven nomination cycles presented below,
the most noticeable pattern is that one candidate tends to dominate in
the end. At least, this has been true since the heavyweight GOP tilt
fought between incumbent (but unelected) President Gerald Ford and
Ronald Reagan in 1976, the last time a nomination for either party went
into a convention truly up for grabs. Perhaps the 2016 nomination battle
will be the same, with one candidate eventually breaking away from the
rest of the pack to win most primaries and caucuses. Or perhaps it will
be the next 1976. Election watchers naturally hope for the latter!
As the latest presidential voting begins in 11
days, here’s a look back at the past 40 years of competitive Republican
primaries and caucuses. As you survey these maps, note one thing:
Despite some big GOP fields over the years, only two or at most three
candidates won a state caucus or a primary in a given nomination
contest. In other words, many seemingly-promising candidates didn’t even
win a single state. It’s something to keep in mind as the 2016 race
begins with a dozen candidates. If history is a guide – and it might not
be this time -- only two or three of 2016’s candidates will ever finish
first.
Map 1: 1976 Republican nomination contest
Map 2: 1980 Republican nomination contest
Map 3: 1988 Republican nomination contest
Map 4: 1996 Republican nomination contest
Map 5: 2000 Republican nomination contest
Map 6: 2008 Republican nomination contest
Map 7: 2012 Republican nomination contest
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