Was 2016 A Realigning Election?

First, a primer: A realigning election, generally speaking, is one in which the country as a whole seems to dramatically shift in its political leanings. The media often talks about wave elections, where one party or another does significantly well across the board in certain years—as Democrats did in 2008, and Republicans did in 2010 and 2014. A realigning election is more significant than even that—an election that rewrites the electoral map, sees party coalitions change, and ushers in a new era of politics as it is generally understood. The 1860 election, which saw the election of Abraham Lincoln, the rise of the Republican Party, and ultimately the beginning of the Civil War, is generally considered to be such an election. The election of 1932, which heralded FDR’s election as President and the rebirth of the Democrats as the major liberal party in America, is another.

Sean Trende, a skeptic of the realignment theory, laid out what are generally considered to be the major hallmarks of realigning or critical elections, in his 2012 book The Lost Majority: “sharp and durable” voter changes; the emergence of new issues; spiking voter turnout; turmoil at conventions; and a strong third-party showing. The 2016 election indisputably had most, if not all, of these factors:

·         “Sharp and durable” voter changes: The relationship between working-class white voters and the Democratic Party has been increasingly strained for years, if not decades, but this year the tensions finally broke into the open, flipping three states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan) that had been reliably blue at the presidential level since the 1980’s. Working-class whites are to Democrats now what Hispanics were to Republicans following the 2012 election. The changes in party coalitions this year, and the resultant changes in the electoral map, were sharp; only time will tell if they become durable.

·         Emergence of new issues: In 2016, trade became an important campaign issue for the first time since at least the 1990’s. Immigration was even more important, becoming perhaps the biggest defining issue in a campaign dominated by personal attacks. The traditional major issues of national campaigns, national security and the economy, meanwhile played no major, defining role for the first time in years.

·         Spiking voter turnout: This factor is less impressive. Turnout was down slightly from 2012 (from 54.9% to 54.6% of eligible voters), and overall was the lowest since 2000, presumably because of the nasty and seemingly never-ending campaign.

·         Turmoil at conventions: Um, yes. Trende argues that since the rise of the national primary process, and the concurrent decline in importance of the conventions themselves, extended primary battles are the best modern way to measure this factor. Either way, 2016 had it all: convention drama and brutal primary fights on both the Republican and Democratic sides.

·         Strong third-party showing: There was no single groundbreaking third-party candidacy, as in the mold of Ross Perot or George Wallace, but the third-party vote was far from dormant, as I discussed here. One third-party candidate got 20% of the vote in Utah, and had a very realistic chance at winning the state outright. Two others combined for almost six million votes between them, although neither came close to winning almost a single state. Polling showed that had a strong independent or third-party candidacy emerged, that person would have been a legitimate threat to win, no small feat in modern American politics. I would argue that these respectable showings from several less-than stellar third-party presidential candidates underline what could have been, if a single, stronger candidate had decided to take the plunge, and the failure of third parties to make more of an impact hinges more on the personal decisions of a very select group of people than on the political climate of the country as a whole.

By my estimate, the 2016 elections satisfy at least three, and possibly four, of the five main criteria for determining pivotal realigning elections. The question then becomes whether one believes in the overarching realignment theory, a subject much too broad for this post. But I find many of the arguments in favor of it compelling, if some proponents of the theory to go somewhat overboard in their attempts to ram every national election into a narrow framework of cycles and “deviating elections”. And if one accepts the overall theory, then the evidence seems clear that we have just witnessed such a realigning election.

The Third-Party Vote in 2016

One of the less-noted surprises of 2016, for me, was the lack of any major third-party presidential effort, one led by a national figure whose focus was not just to serve as a protest vote, but to actually win the presidency. There were rumblings from the moment that it began to seem likely that Trump would win the Republican nomination, that someone like Mitt Romney or Tom Coburn, a former or current officeholder, would emerge to appeal to the sizable bloc of voters dissatisfied with both Trump and Clinton. Rumors that Romney was considering the move, and an early poll showing Romney earning over 20% of the vote in a hypothetical three-way matchup, further fueled speculation.

Of course, nothing ultimately came of the rumors, and no well-known figures challenged Clinton and Trump in the general election. The three main third-party candidates were the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson, the Green Party’s Jill Stein, and the independent Evan McMullin. (I previously wrote about third-party candidates in 2016 here, here, and here.)

In the end, none of the three made a significant impact on the race nationally in terms of raw vote totals, although all three performed better than is normal for third-party presidential candidates in recent history. Gary Johnson received around four and a half million votes, or 3.3% of the total, while Jill Stein received 1.4 million, or just over 1%. Evan McMullin got 608,000 votes (0.45%), many of which were concentrated in Utah and Idaho.

The state-by-state results are slightly more impressive. Johnson’s best three states were New Mexico, his home state, where he earned just over 9% of the vote; Alaska*, where he won 6%; and Montana, where he won 5.5%. Jill Stein only made it above 2% of the vote in one state (Hawaii, where she won 3%), but Evan McMullin earned 21% in Utah, only a few points behind Hillary Clinton. It seems as though Mike Pence’s last-minute pleading for Utah Republicans to come home did the trick in the end: Trump outperformed his average in the last few state polls before the election, while McMullin’s share dropped significantly from the same polls, costing him any shot at becoming the first independent candidate to win electoral votes since 1968.

It should also be noted that McMullin earned the highest percentage of votes in a single state since Ross Perot, and that Gary Johnson set an all-time record for number of votes received by a Libertarian presidential candidate (smashing his own record of one million votes in 2012).

What does all this mean? Third-party candidates’ shares of the popular vote may have dropped significantly from their polling numbers before the election, but that seems to speak more to the weakness of these particular candidates and the still-widespread belief among the electorate that a vote for anyone other than the Democrat or Republican is simply a vote wasted. To me, the numbers indicate that if someone with a wide national following, name recognition, and access to donors (like Mitt Romney) had ultimately waged an independent bid, they could have been victorious, or at least given Trump and Clinton a run for their money.

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*Alaska had another interesting third-party candidacy: Joe Miller, the Libertarian nominee for Senate, won almost 30% of the vote (amusingly, the Democratic nominee came in fourth). But this is a special case: Miller was actually the Republican nominee for the seat in 2010, beating incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the primary, but Murkowski came back as a write-in candidate in the general election and narrowly won reelection. As such, Miller has abnormally high name recognition in the state for a third-party candidate. (However, Gary Johnson also did very well in the state, and Alaska currently has an independent governor. Alaskans, like other Westerners, are notorious for their independent spirit.)

So, What Now?

It has now been almost one week since Donald Trump stunned nearly everyone by defeating Hillary Clinton, long enough for the reality of a Trump Presidency to begin to sink in. Appointments are being made. Plans for the first hundred days of the Trump administration are being touted. This is actually happening.

And, overall, I’m feeling downright gleeful. I proudly voted for Evan McMullin on Election Day, as I had planned. If I had to do it over again, I would. I remain fully committed to the idea that both choices offered for president by the major political parties were unfit for the office, and that neither truly deserved to win.

But I, like many others, was also convinced that Clinton, not Trump, would be the 45^th President (although I had begun having doubts the week before). And, until it actually happened, I had underestimated just how good it would feel to crush the Clinton dynasty for good.

And, to be honest, it feels good. As I said several times before the election, the bad news would be that either Trump or Clinton is going to win. The good news is that we get to see the other lose. And, while Clinton supporters can yell all they like about how she won the popular vote and Trump’s Electoral College victory is illegitimate, she still lost thirty states, including some that have been reliably Democratic for decades. To Donald Trump. How bad of a candidate do you have to be to lose to Donald Trump? Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton is finished in politics, unless some future Democratic president wants to nominate her to some ceremonial position when she’s eighty years old.

Everything I said about Trump, that I believed him to be unfit for office and a liberal at heart, I believe still. But I hope I’m wrong. If he keeps to his campaign promises and appoints Supreme Court justices from his vaunted list, secures the border, and repeals Obamacare, I will have been sorely mistaken about him, and in that case I will forget my prior arguments against him and enthusiastically campaign for him in 2020.

But we have four years before then for him to prove himself. Early signs are somewhat encouraging, but with no constitutional power until January 20^th and a potential Cabinet yet to be named, it is still far too soon to say. One way or another, Trump is now the President-elect, will soon be the constitutional head of state, and deserves both new respect and a chance to prove all of us naysayers wrong.

We will be watching closely.

A Brief Rundown of the Results

What a night.

As everyone has heard by now, Donald Trump is now the President-elect of the United States. It’s worth dwelling on that fact for a moment. Here is a man who broke literally every rule of politics, who purposely and repeatedly insulted women and minorities, and who never sought political office before descending to his campaign launch, in his own office building, on a golden escalator. He then proceeded to reinvent himself as a populist crusader, while simultaneously bragging about his billionaire status.

And now he has won the presidency, defeating Hillary Clinton and defying all predictions, and will become the first president to have never previously served in either elected office or in uniform.

The final tally for the popular vote and Electoral College won’t be known for several days yet, as votes are still being counted across the country, and many news outlets still have not called New Hampshire, Michigan, or Arizona (Trump leads in the latter two). But what is certain is that, barring Trump’s sudden death or resignation, The Donald will be our 45^th President.

It looks likely that, in the end, Clinton will win the popular vote while Trump wins the Electoral College, ensuring a renewed avalanche of liberal calls for a constitutional amendment instituting a national popular vote for President. But Trump’s victory is still sweeping in scope—he held all of the Romney states, and won the battlegrounds of Iowa and Ohio by substantial margins. Florida was closer, but was called in Trump’s favor comparatively early on. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two states in which Clinton was confident of victory, were the final states Trump needed to ensure an electoral majority. Both, along with Michigan, had not voted for a Republican presidential nominee in over two decades.

Meanwhile, in Utah, Trump also prevailed over both Clinton and Evan McMullin, although the latter still received over 20% of the vote, a surprising result for a third-party candidate. And Trump managed to win an additional electoral vote from Maine’s 2^nd congressional district, although the state as a whole was eventually called, late in the night, for Clinton (Maine divides its electoral votes on the basis of who wins each congressional district).

Unsurprisingly, Republicans will also retain control of the House, and, more surprisingly, keep the Senate as well. Democrats picked up Mark Kirk’s Illinois Senate seat (largely expected), and retained Harry Reid’s seat in Nevada. Apart for those two races (and New Hampshire, which has still not been called), Republicans have won all of the competitive Senate elections.

And in gubernatorial elections, Republicans successfully defended Indiana, while picking up Missouri, Vermont (!), and New Hampshire. The North Carolina governor’s race has also not yet been called.

So, all in all, a good day for Trump and Republicans in general. And, on the presidential level at least, a humbling day for me and my predictions of doom.

Now that he has been elected, I am cautiously optimistic. Maybe the last sixteen months haven’t been all an act. Maybe he’ll boldly push for repealing Obamacare and appointing conservative judges just as he’s promised. Regardless, we’ll find out soon enough.

I’ll take a deeper look at the results and what they mean for conservatives, the country, and the Republican Party in the days and weeks ahead. But for now, the only prediction I feel comfortable making is that the next four years are going to be very interesting.

Trick or Trick

This year, both major party candidates are tricking the American voter. The many lies and deceptions of Donald Trump are hardly worth repeating at this point—from his policy flip-flops to his refusal to release his tax returns, to his past praise of his supposed opponent. The evidence continues to mount that he is conducting this campaign either as a favor for his friend Hillary Clinton, or as an ad campaign for Trump TV, or both.

And Clinton herself is no better. Her own lies and deceptions have been on public record for decades, from Whitewater to Benghazi to her private email server and the pay-to-play schemes of the Clinton Foundation. Leaked emails from campaign chairman John Podesta show her discussing how she has a “public position” and “private position” on certain issues, and now word emerges that she may have illegally coordinated with SuperPACs. Meanwhile, the FBI reopens their investigation over the mishandling of classified information.

And the one candidate who emerges from 2016 with a “lying” nickname is Ted Cruz.

At this late stage, there’s just no other way to say it: Both Trump and Clinton are god-awful candidates, and would make god-awful presidents.

So choose neither. Look at Evan McMullin (especially if you’re in Utah!) Give Gary Johnson a chance. Check out Darrell Castle, the Constitution Party nominee, or someone else. Just remember that it’s not necessary to vote for someone who’s neither run a scam university nor stored state secrets on a private server in her basement.

Trump and Clinton backers will say that a vote for a third option is a vote wasted, that only the Democratic or Republican nominee stand a chance of winning. But that only remains true as long as the voters believe it to be true.

I'm Voting for Evan McMullin for President

In July, when I first decided to support Gary Johnson for President, he seemed likely to be the only semi-viable third-party candidate on the ballot come November. More importantly, he was the only notable candidate for President who had displayed the temperament and character necessary to be an effective Commander in Chief, and his platform actively pushed for several policies appealing to conservatives searching for an alternative to Trump and Clinton—including fiscal responsibility and the appointment of originalist justices to the Supreme Court.

When Evan McMullin announced his candidacy as an independent conservative in August, I initially believed him to be little more than a curiosity. He had joined the race late, with no name recognition whatsoever, no infrastructure, and no outside support. I assumed that, rather than a viable third option for conservatives disgusted with Trump, he was yet another of the hundreds of people who run for president each election cycle merely for the novelty and excitement.

The past two months have proven me wrong.

Far from fading into the background of an election season dominated by outsized personalities, McMullin has been making campaign stops across the country, appearing on every TV station and radio program that will have him, and aggressively reaching out to disaffected Republicans and independents. His platform is not merely a “good enough” offering of the sort embraced by the Libertarian ticket, which, while it has much to offer conservatives, is troublingly liberal in areas such as immigration, drug legalization, and the death penalty. McMullin’s platform, in contrast, is unashamedly conservative—from embracing enforcement of immigration law and a solid pro-life stand, to supporting fiscal responsibility, the rule of law, and the preservation of the Constitution.

In short, a platform worthy of wholehearted support by conservatives everywhere.

And if the prospect of supporting a bold, conservative candidate for President in 2016 wasn’t incentive enough, McMullin has also proven himself on the campaign trail to be a man of integrity, character, and decency, who would honor the office once held by Washington and Lincoln.

To be sure, McMullin has as little chance of becoming President as does Gary Johnson, and trying to decide which of the two to vote for may seem like a meaningless endeavor. But in 2016, the possibility of voting for a presidential candidate with both strong moral character and a realistic chance of victory is long gone. But voters should never lose sight of their duty to choose the person they believe to be the absolute best option, regardless of an ability to win. For President, in 2016, Evan McMullin is that option.

The Good Thing About Having No Candidate to Support

For the first time in my life, I truly have no candidate to support in a presidential election. I truly see no effective difference between the two major party nominees. I will likely vote for Gary Johnson, as I believe him to be the most honest, trustworthy, and overall best candidate currently running (although Evan McMullin is an appealing choice as well), but I carry no emotional attachment for either Johnson or his party, and disagree with both on a substantial number of issues. Realistically, either Trump or Clinton will be the next president, and it can be sobering and slightly depressing to stay on the sidelines.

The silver lining, however, is that I no longer feel any constraints on pointing out the flaws of one candidate or another, simply because I hope for a certain outcome. Both are terribly flawed candidates. Previous candidates I have supported, for both national and state office, have had flaws as well, but because I wanted them to win and saw them as infinitely better than the alternative I would often hold onto those opinions which could negatively affect the outcome I preferred.

This election, however, all of us who remain #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary can regain some intellectual honesty we may have lost over the last few election cycles. Neither of the two major candidates want or need our support, and most of the minor party candidates have significant flaws, as well. This election gives us a chance to truly voice our opinions, tell it as we see it, and hopefully regain some independence from the opinions and pressures of others in the process.

Evan McMullin and Write-In Presidential Candidates

In case you haven’t yet heard, former CIA officer and House Republican policy director Evan McMullin has launched an independent campaign for President.

I’ll just go ahead and state the obvious—McMullin doesn’t have a chance of winning the election. Filing deadlines for ballot access will have already passed in roughly half the country by the end of the week, and even if he wanted to mount a legal challenge to those deadlines his campaign would be spending a crucial part of the election bogged down in court. The most likely result will be that he will be waging a write-in campaign in the majority of the country, a tactic that almost never ends well.

(There are exceptions—Lisa Murkowski won reelection as Alaska’s senior Senator in 2010 through a write-in campaign after losing the Republican primary, but she was already an incumbent with high name recognition. Almost no one had heard of McMullin before Monday. If an independent effort by a first-time candidate with no name recognition was to have a chance of influencing the election, it would have had to begin months ago.)

In addition, he has yet to earn any high-profile endorsements or significant financial backing. If people like Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, or the Koch brothers were to become seriously involved with the campaign, McMullin might begin earning more votes and making a bigger impact, but until something changes that looks unlikely.

This isn’t to say that any vote for McMullin is automatically a vote wasted because he can’t win—although Gary Johnson has a better chance of making an impact on the race, he has almost as little a chance of winning. This election, every voter needs to chart their own course and follow their conscience. And I’m sure McMullin has better principles and character than either Trump or Clinton (not, admittedly, a very high bar).

But when a candidate will likely only secure ballot access in a handful of states, has no significant backing, and enters the race only three months before Election Day, the question needs to be asked: Why does this candidate deserve my vote more than one of the third party candidates already on the ballot, or even one of the countless other possibilities for write-in candidates? Is this a serious effort to win, or just the addition of one more name to the nearly infinite list of choices to write in?

Of course, circumstances can always change. But for now, despite my issues with him, I’m sticking with Gary Johnson.