Analysis of Presidential Elections
in the 10 Candidate States

by Keith Carlsen

In Tennyson's report Analyzing the Freedom Orientation of Existing State Populations, he analysed the results of the 2000 presidential election and what it means to the FSP and its members. The gist of that report is in this table:

Voter Predisposition to Vote for Small-government Candidates
(2000 Presidential Election)

Rank	State	Percentage
1	Wyoming	151%
2	Idaho	141%
3	North Dakota	73%
4	Alaska	70%
5	South Dakota	66%
6	Montana	53%
7	New Hampshire	-3%
8	Delaware	-35%
9	Maine	-21%
10	Vermont	-37%

Source: Analyzing the Freedom Orientation of Existing State Populations

By looking at the 2000 election, we see that Wyoming and Idaho come out far above all of the other candidate states. However, one election is just that – one election, and cannot be considered the whole picture.

Nine most recent presidential elections

Here is the data from the nine most recent presidential elections: 2000 – 1968. This data presents a more complete picture of all recent Presidential elections.

	2000		1996		1992		1988	1984	1980	1976		1972	1968
State	Candidate	%	Candidate	%	Candidate	%	Cand.	Cand.	Cand.	Candidate	%	Cand.	Candidate	%
AK	Bush (R)	58.6	Dole (R)	50.8	Bush (R)	39.5	Bush (R)	Reagan (R)	Reagan (R)	Ford (R)		Nixon (R)	Nixon (R)
DE	Gore (D)	55.0	Clinton (D)	51.8	Clinton (D)	43.5				Carter (D)	52.0
ID	Bush (R)	61.2	Dole (R)	52.2	Bush (R)	42.0				Ford (R)
ND	Bush (R)	60.7	Dole (R)	46.9	Bush (R)	44.2
NH	Bush (R)	48.1	Clinton (D)	49.3	Clinton (D)	38.9
ME	Gore (D)	49.1	Clinton (D)	51.6	Clinton (D)	38.81							Humphrey (D)	55.3
MT	Bush (R)	58.4	Dole (R)	44.1	Clinton (D)	37.6							Nixon (R)
SD	Bush (R)	60.3	Dole (R)	46.5	Bush (R)	40.7
VT	Gore (D)	50.6	Clinton (D)	53.3	Clinton (D)	46.1
WY	Bush (R)	67.8	Dole (R)	49.8	Bush (R)	39.5

1 Ross Perot beat George Bush in Maine with 30.44% to 30.39% of the popular vote.
Sources: www.multied.com/elections and www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/frametextj.html

(Note: I stopped doing research at the 1968 election because in the 1964, 1960, and 1956 elections, most of the candidate states voted for the same candidate and because the farther back you go, the less representative the data is to the reality of today. Even in the 1970s and 1980s most of the candidate states voted for the same candidate. Before 1956, well, most current Americans were not even alive or at the very least, not even voting back then.)

Republican Totals

The Republican presidential candidates from 1968 to 2000 generally sold themselves as, or were perceived as, or pretended to be, more pro-small government than the Democratic Party presidential candidates. Generally this is the case and is clearly evident by the specific campaign literature and ads of the above presidential candidates.

So we can rank the states by the number of Republican presidential candidates that won their state elections:

Amount for Republicans from 1968 to 2000

Rank	State	GOPs Won
1	Alaska	9
	Wyoming	9
	North Dakota	9
	South Dakota	9
	Idaho	9
6	Montana	8
7	New Hampshire	7
8	Vermont	6
9	Delaware	5
	Maine	5

Reagan and Goldwater

What about races where a candidate from a major party ran on downsizing the federal government?

This has occured twice in somewhat recent times. In 1980 Ronald Reagan (R) ran for president and in 1964 Barry Goldwater (R) ran for president. Both times, their major issue was Downsizing DC. Reagan communicated the message better and won the 1980 election while Goldwater lost his election.

According to Harry Browne and many others, the media even tried to portray Reagan as more libertarian than he was. Ronald Reagan did not act as a libertarian once in office, but that is how he ran for his first election.

(Note: Votes for the LP candidate, Ed Clark, are included with Reagan's, because Reagan used many of Clark's ideas and this is the best election ever for an LP candidate.)

1980 Election - Vote for Ronald Reagan

Rank	State	Percentage
1	Idaho	68.4%
2	Alaska	66.0%2
3	North Dakota	65.5%
4	Wyoming	65.2%
5	South Dakota	61.7%
6	Montana	59.5%
7	New Hampshire	58.2%
Entire U.S.		51.8%
8	Delaware	48.0%
9	Maine	46.6%
10	Vermont	45.3%

2 Ed Clark got 11.7% of the 66.0% total.
(He got < 3% in all the other FSP candidate states)
Source: www.presidentelect.org/e1980.html

Barry Goldwater only had the opportunity to run for office because the paleo-conservative and the libertarian Republicans were able to take over the Republican Party primary and hand the nomination to Barry Goldwater. The national GOP did not even support his bid for president after he was nominated. All records show that Barry Goldwater was set on dramatically reducing the size of government and those in change of the GOP wanted nothing to do with him or such ideas.

1964 Election - Vote for Barry Goldwater

Rank	State	Percentage
1	Idaho	49.1%
2	South Dakota	44.4%
3	Wyoming	43.4%
4	North Dakota	41.9%
5	Montana	40.6%
6	Delaware	38.8%
Entire U.S.		38.5%
7	New Hampshire	36.1%
8	Alaska	34.1%
9	Vermont	33.7%
10	Maine	31.2%

Source: www.multied.com/elections/1964state.html

Average of Reagan and Goldwater elections

Rank	State	Percentage
1	Idaho	58.7%
2	Wyoming	54.3%
3	North Dakota	53.6%
4	South Dakota	53.1%
5	Alaska	50.1%
5	Montana	50.1%
7	New Hampshire	47.2%
Entire U.S.		45.1%
8	Delaware	43.4%
9	Vermont	39.5%
10	Maine	38.9%

Conclusions

I computed this table by averaging the "Amount of Republicans from 1968 to 2000" and "Average of Reagan and Goldwater elections" rankings:

Total Average Ranking According to this Report

1	Idaho
2	Wyoming
3	North Dakota
4	South Dakota
5	Alaska
6	Montana
7	New Hampshire
8	Delaware
	Vermont
10	Maine

Now that we have the whole picture, let's compare it to just the 2000 presidential election:

State Rankings

Rank	Tennyson 2000 Report	This Report
1	Wyoming	Idaho
2	Idaho	Wyoming
3	North Dakota
4	Alaska	South Dakota
5	South Dakota	Alaska
6	Montana
7	New Hampshire
8	Delaware
9	Maine	Vermont
10	Vermont	Maine

Amazingly, they are very similar, almost eerily similar. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe, just maybe, the 2000 presidential election really does provide us with a very good look at the ideology of the candidate states. None of the candidate states move more than ONE position in the state ranking.

Whatever the conclusion, one thing is for sure: Time and time again, both Idaho and Wyoming stand out in the above rankings.