Why Gore will win

So what if the suburbs go for Bush? Dozens of big-city strongholds
give Gore a huge head start in collecting electoral votes.

by Robert David Sullivan

AL GORE has one advantage going into this year's presidential election: he leads George W. Bush in the number of neighborhoods where he could walk into a crowded McDonald's, fire an automatic weapon in every direction, and not hit a single person who has ever given a moment's thought to voting for his opponent. I suppose I could have come up with a nicer way of making this point, but with Bush raising so much money from the National Rifle Association and Gore raking in donations from the producers of violent movies, bullets and ballots seem to go together like burgers and fries. For a variety of reasons, there are cities and towns all over the United States where voting Republican is about as popular as pulling out your own teeth. The Democrats are certainly unpopular in some spots, but even in deepest Utah a significant number of people support the party of tree-hugging and same-sex loving. The most recent Almanac of American Politics, which breaks down the vote in the last presidential election by congressional district, reveals how far the Republicans have fallen behind in creating areas of total, bone-crushing domination.

In 1996, Bill Clinton's worst district was the 19th in Texas, which includes Amarillo and Lubbock and happens to be the district where George W. Bush first ran for office (losing a congressional seat to a conservative Democrat in 1978). Clinton got 26 percent of the vote there, or 51,996 out of approximately 197,716 votes cast (the Almanac doesn't include votes for minor candidates in their totals). Incidentally, the Almanac notes that "President George

Bush always liked to refer to [this area] as a bellwether of public opinion." Of course. Everybody knows that Amarillo, Texas, is a trendsetter of American culture. For example, the term "hip-hop" was first uttered in Amarillo a good four days before it made an appearance in Kennebunkport, Maine. It was this keen grasp of the national Zeitgeist that allowed President Bush to display genuine awe at a supermarket checkout scanner during the 1992 campaign.

But even in the most rabidly anti-Clinton part of a country full of Clinton-haters, more than one out of four voters cast a ballot for him. And I don't think that all the Clinton votes came from women silently punishing their husbands for making them live in Amarillo.

Republican nominee Bob Dole's worst district was in the Bronx, New York, where he got four percent of the vote -- a measly 4825 out of approximately 124,311. That's one out of 25 voters in a district where most people don't bother to cast a ballot. (Consider that the Texas 19th is about the same size as the district that includes the Bronx; about 73,000 fewer voters went to the polls that year from the Bronx.) In other words, as befit his personality, Dole was limited to the crank vote (which may or may not have been dominated by people who remember hand-cranked automobiles).

The Bronx did not stand alone. There were 21 other districts where Dole failed to receive 15 percent of the vote (the benchmark that the Commission on Presidential Debates uses to define a "serious" candidate): one in Oakland, California; four in Los Angeles and its immediate suburbs; one in Miami; four in and around Chicago; two in Detroit; one in Newark; six more in New York City; and two in Philadelphia. And the Republican ticket in 1996 seemed more sensitive to inner-city needs than most GOP candidates: vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp spent much of his time in Congress advocating tax-free enterprise zones in distressed urban areas, and Dole looked like someone familiar with the term "mean streets" (the first half, anyway).

COMPARED TO the 1996 GOP presidential ticket, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney appear much less comfortable in urban settings. Dubya isn't talking about his rumored past drug use, but it's safe to assume that his fraternity brothers never chose him to drive downtown and pick up the party supplies. And whereas Kemp used to talk about showering with black guys (during his career as a professional football player), Cheney was an executive at a company that maintains separate bathrooms for Americans and host-country nationals at its foreign sites. I'm counting on the Republicans to crack that four percent record somewhere this year.

In all, there were 44 districts where Dole couldn't match the 26 percent that Clinton got in his worst district. Many of these were mostly African-American or Hispanic, but anti-Republican sentiment seemed to come as much from living in the city as from ethnicity. The bottom 44 also included overwhelmingly white districts in places like Boston, Minneapolis, and Seattle.

Dole got less than one-third of the vote in 107 districts (out of a total 435); Clinton got less than one-third of the vote in only 19. Where both candidates were competitive, Dole won almost as many districts as Clinton did, but there just weren't enough places where people would rather admit to having head lice than to voting Democratic.

The GOP is supposed to be the party with greater masculine appeal, but Clinton owned all the tough, one-syllable counties with large voter endowments. He rolled up ratios of more than two to one over Bob Dole in Cook County, Illinois (1,111,208 to 452,610); Kings County, New York (402,306 to 78,372); and Wayne County, Michigan (467,568 to 144,558).

Dole won by more than two to one in places like Caribou County, Idaho (1740 to 841) and Antelope County, Nebraska (1986 to 879). He also kicked butt in Petroleum County, Montana (186 to 62), where there must be jubilation over this year's Big Oil ticket of Bush and Cheney. Predictably, the GOP nominee was a hit in Rich County, Utah (521 to 175), and it stands to reason that the party of Richard Nixon cleaned up in Crook County, Wyoming (1698 to 651). But on the whole, I'm sure the Republicans would rather carry Philadelphia County (which Clinton won 407,209 to 85,154).

Still unsure about the political leanings of your area? Well, if you ride a bus to work, the chances are good that the guy who stands on your foot while yelling into his cell phone, the woman who spills hot coffee on you, and the man who "accidentally" keeps scratching your ass are all Democrats. If you drive a pick-up truck to work and pass more than one JESUS SAVES sign along your commute, the guy who put a rifle shot through your back window after you passed him last month is probably a Republican. Fortunately, there seem to be more perverts than paranoid gun owners in this country, a fact that has saved Bill Clinton's political career more than once.

What does all this mean for the impending election? George W. Bush could still win, but his tactics need more refinement than Al Gore's. In most major cities, the Democrats can use billboards, megaphones, and blimps to urge people to vote, knowing that any increase in turnout is to their benefit. (When I moved to a New York district that voted 95 percent for Clinton in the last election, I was besieged by presumably Democratic street-corner volunteers looking to register new voters. They had no problem maintaining the appearance of nonpartisanship, knowing that the handful of Republicans in the neighborhood were too afraid to venture out of their rent-controlled apartments.) Even in affluent suburbs, Republicans have to rely on telephone banks and direct mailings to invite only the right people to the polls.

Sometimes this is a winning strategy, if an expensive one. And the Bush campaign demonstrated its ability to turn out supporters during this spring's campaign for the nomination, particularly in the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary. But Bush could face a problem in the electoral college. The Democratic strength in the major cities means that Gore is almost certain to win several of the states with the most electoral votes. That leaves him with more money to spend in states where the race is close. In both 1992 and 1996, Clinton quickly nailed down New York, California, and Illinois. Because of the Democrats' huge margins in the nation's three biggest cities -- New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago -- it didn't matter that the GOP remained competitive in the surrounding suburbs and rural areas. Those three states alone gave Clinton 109 of the 270 votes he needed to win in the electoral college, and Gore has maintained clear leads in each of them this fall, even when he's been tied with Bush in national polls.

In addition, the urban Democratic strongholds in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have put another unshakable 62 votes in Gore's column. And the major cities in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (another 87 votes) have kept Gore competitive in those states even when Bush outspends him on TV advertising.

Bush, of course, has a commanding lead in Texas, which has 32 electoral votes, but for the most part his strength lies in smaller states throughout the South and West. In other words, he has to maintain leads in many more states -- anywhere from six to 12 -- than Gore does in order to win. This may be a problem for a guy who doesn't seem capable of correctly pronouncing the names of that many states.

There's still time for Bush to build a significant lead in national polls -- as his father did over Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988. But it's notable that the Democrats won four of the five closest elections of the 20th century (Wilson in 1916, Truman in 1948, Kennedy in 1960, and Carter in 1976), in part because their strength in major cities pulled several large states into their columns. (The exception was in 1968, when independent George Wallace won a large percentage of urban white voters and helped throw the election to Republican Richard Nixon.)

If anything, that big-state advantage seems more pronounced this year. In 1976, when Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford by two points, Election Day was especially exciting because all the big states were up for grabs. Ford narrowly won California, Illinois, and New Jersey; Carter had equally thin margins in New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. (Even after the infamous New York Post headline FORD TO NEW YORK: DROP DEAD, referring to the president's refusal to help get the city out of bankruptcy, Carter carried the state with only 51 percent.) Most of the smaller states, too, were closely contested.

This fall, approximately a dozen states, including Florida and Ohio, fall into the toss-up category, which helps Gore by minimizing Bush's spending advantage. (There are only so many advertising spots the Republicans can buy in one media market.) By 9:01 p.m. on Election Day, we should know who won almost every state east of the Mississippi. If the election is close, we'll have to sit through hours of idiotic exit-poll analysis while waiting for one state (probably Michigan, possibly Pennsylvania) to decide the whole thing. I predict record ratings for Nick at Nite.

HOW DID the Republicans get into this situation? In the 1980s, the Democratic Party lost three presidential elections by foolishly trying to appeal to "special-interest groups" -- that is, they counted on winning almost the entire black vote, gay vote, Jewish vote, and so on. But the Republicans have since done their part to assist this Democratic strategy, making sure that their own share of the vote among many of these groups approaches zero.

In the early '90s, for example, the California GOP decided that immigrant-bashing would be a fine way to attract new voters. This was only a couple of years before a labor shortage left American employers begging for workers of any nationality, and before Ricky Martin redefined the meaning of mainstream music. (You know things have changed when CBS, home of the Country Music Awards and Walker, Texas Ranger, starts televising the Latin Grammys in prime time.) Bush may be able to win the Hispanic vote in Texas this fall, but he'll be crippled by his party label in other states with large Latino populations.

The Republicans have similarly gone out of their way to alienate gay and lesbian voters, and incidents like Bush's primary-campaign speech at Bob Jones University haven't helped their standing among African-Americans. And the party's philosophy on crime -- build more prisons and arm more citizens -- seems specifically designed to alienate urban voters. I don't think many Republican political strategists during the last Bush administration foresaw the sharp drop in urban crime rates and the renewed interest in city living. They probably didn't think there'd be anyone left in the Bronx by now.

Unfortunately for George W., there are indeed enough voters left in the Bronx to help make it impossible for him to win New York. Similarly, the Castro section of San Francisco and the Watts section of Los Angeles have helped doom Republican chances in California, which now carries more electoral votes than any state in American history.

This year's campaign coverage, as usual, is concentrated on "swing" voters in "battleground" states. But if Gore wins, he should save some credit for the urban voters who gave him a head start.

Robert David Sullivan is a frequent
contributor to the Phoenix. He can be
reached at Robt555@aol.com.