Why Gore will win, continued

by Robert David Sullivan

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 (see "Cheney's Corporate Past," News and Features, September 22). 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 subway 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.

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Michelle Chihara can be reached at letters[a]phx.com.