TITANIC TUESDAY: BIG AND DECISIVE

Below: A Bush Upside, A Gore Downside McCain: A Spartacus Parallel? Titanic Tuesday Vote Totals McCain and Bradley: A New England Cornerstone Primary Vote Tally Through March 7

For all practical purposes, the competitive portion of this year’s presidential nominating process ended both when and how many people expected it to – with Al Gore and George W. Bush scoring decisive victories in the nationwide voting March 7 that essentially wrapped up their party’s nominations.

The balloting on March 7 was arguably the biggest one-day vote in the history of the nation’s nominating process, certainly the biggest to be held on such an early date.

And the results from the day’s voting underscored the initial presumption – that Titanic Tuesday (or Super Tuesday, or Mega Tuesday, depending on one’s terminology of choice) - was tailor-made for candidates with a modicum of momentum, plenty of financial resources and broad backing from their party establishment.

PREVIOUS ANALYSES

BUSH & McCAIN: Dead Even At the Ballot Box... Two things could be said about the Republican primary vote on the eve of Titanic Tuesday. It is close and it is fractured... <more...>

THE END OF ROUND ONE Round One of this year’s presidential nominating season ended Feb. 29, with the day’s voting a confirmation of the basic mosaic that has been coming into focus throughout the month... <more...>

BACK INTO THE MOSH PIT... It wasn’t supposed to be this way. George W. Bush was expected to coast to the GOP presidential nomination, but with John McCain's success in Michigan, all bets are off. <more...>

AFTER NEW HAMPSHIRE: Two Paths Diverge… With the votes from New Hampshire tallied and in the record books, the 2000 presidential nominating campaign has moved in separate directions for the two major parties... <more...>

THE FIRE WALL HOLDS The fire wall held for George W. Bush in South Carolina, but unlike his father, who was able to use a South Carolina triumph as a springboard to victory across the Super Tuesday South, the Texas governor must do well on the road before his home region votes in mid-March... <more...>

Gore’s triumph over Bill Bradley on the Democratic side was the more one-sided; the vice president swept all 11 primaries and the four Democratic caucuses on Titanic Tuesday by double-digit margins percentagewise. Meanwhile, Bush won nine of the 13 events on the Republican side – including the big three of California, New York and Ohio – and defeated challenger John McCain decisively outside the Northeast.

State-by-State Results Page National charts and results from the states that have already voted.

Yet for the day, and thus far for the year, Gore has been a more impressive vote-getter. By the time that Bradley and McCain exited the race on March 9, Gore had amassed more than 70% of the Democratic primary ballots, compared to the bare majority of the Republican primary vote (53%) that Bush had received.

And Bush’s primary showing revealed some obvious limitations. He ran poorly east of the Hudson River – losing every New England state except Maine – and he ran poorly among non-Republican voters virtually everywhere, most of whom flocked to the GOP primaries to support McCain.

That was evident in the exit polls, but it was also underscored by the actual results. Even as McCain was losing the Republican primary in California March 7 by more than 650,000 votes, he was trouncing Bush in the separate tally of non-Republicans by nearly 325,000.

A Bush Upside, A Gore Downside

Still, Bush’s victory had its upside. A dozen years ago, his father had a comparatively simple path to the Republican nomination that boiled down to winning New Hampshire and the South.

This year, "W" confronted a more diverse and challenging schedule of primaries and caucuses. He had to win nationally to nail down the nomination March 7 – and he did, taking key contests in all regions of the country: New York in the Northeast, Ohio and Missouri in the Midwest, Georgia in the South, and California in the West.

Meanwhile, Gore’s wall-to-wall victory on the Democratic side had its downside. It was achieved against the backdrop of unusually low primary turnouts. While voter participation in Republican primaries surged from New Hampshire through Titanic Tuesday, turnout tanked in many states on the Democratic side as poll after poll before March 7 showed a Gore landslide in the making.

Nearly complete but unofficial returns showed barely 900,000 votes were cast in the Democratic primary in New York, the lowest total since the party’s presidential preference vote was initiated in 1980.

The late count of absentee ballots in California should push the Democratic primary turnout above 2.5 million, but it would still be the lowest number of ballots cast in a contested Democratic presidential primary in California since 1964.

And in Georgia, more than twice as many ballots were cast in the Republican than the Democratic presidential primary on March 7, the first time that the GOP total has ever been higher in Georgia when there were contested primaries on both sides of the ballot.

Meanwhile, the lively Bush-McCain contest that had set Republican turnout records in state after state throughout the month of February, continued to do so on Titanic Tuesday. Turnouts in California, Ohio, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Rhode Island and Vermont reached record highs for the Republicans.

A cautionary note, though: High turnouts in the presidential primaries are not always good news for the party in question. They often reflect a powerful challenge to the party establishment and a party divided, rather than one ready to do battle in the fall campaign.

McCain: A Spartacus Parallel?

It is always tempting to look for far-reaching historical parallels in evaluating a political campaign, so why shy away from that here.

In some respects, McCain’s candidacy resembled the tale of Spartacus, the ancient gladiator whose bid for freedom mushroomed into a full-blown revolt against imperial Rome. Spartacus and his motley band roamed the countryside, picking off individual garrisons. But once confronted by Rome’s military might, Spartacus and his compatriots were annihilated.

At least McCain will not be hung up to dry along Pennsylvania Avenue as Spartacus presumably was along the Appian Way. Yet McCain’s campaign illustrated the difficulty of an insurgent candidacy in making the transition from the staggered primary schedule of February to the multi-front action of March 7.

McCain held his own throughout February when primaries were being held one or two at a time. But as it turned out, that was not good enough. It was widely thought that he needed to drive Bush from the race before March 7, when the Texas governor’s superior resources and organization would be difficult to surmount. And that proved to be the case.

Following is a comparison of the Bush-McCain vote totals for the primaries in February with those on March 7, with each candidate’s percentage of the total Republican primary vote in parentheses. Totals are as of March 13, and are nearly complete but unofficial for most states.

s	February	March 7	Total
Bush	1,692,995 (47.1%)	3,619,910 (57%)	5,312,905 (53%)
McCain	1,690,309 (47.0%)	2,419,169 (38%)	4,109,478 (41%)
Bush Plurality (in votes)	2,686	1,200,741	1,203,427

McCain might have stayed in the race if the Republicans used the same rules as the Democrats, and required delegates to be allocated proportionally to reflect the primary or caucus vote. But Republicans allow winner-take-all, or some variation of winner-take-all, and that magnified Bush’s victories in the GOP delegate count.

In California, for instance, Bush won 60% of the Republican primary vote, but took all 162 delegates at stake. And similar-sized victories in Georgia, Maryland, Missouri and Ohio gave Bush all but six of the 189 delegates at stake in those states. By the end of March 7, Bush had in hand almost 60% of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination, with much of his home region, the South, ready to vote on March 14.

McCain and Bradley: A New England Cornerstone

McCain, though, made a distinct mark on this opening stage of the 2000 presidential election. When he suspended his campaign, the tally of Republican primaries stood at 11 states for Bush, 7 for McCain. And five of McCain’s primary wins were by margins of at least 18 percentage points.

He scored notable victories in Michigan and his home state of Arizona. But the cornerstone of his success was New England, where McCain followed his decisive triumph in New Hampshire Feb. 1 with even more one-sided victories March 7 in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, as well as a narrow victory in Bush’s state of birth, Connecticut.

By and large, McCain had the upper hand in virtually every New England constituency – the old mill towns, the academic communities, the suburbs, and cities from Boston to New Haven (where "W" was born). Bush, though, did carry Kennebunkport, site of the family’s Maine vacation home.

New England was also Bradley’s strongest region, yet while McCain established strong beachheads across the region, Bradley at best could make tenuous toeholds.

He won Portland, Maine, carried a number of upscale suburbs, such as Greenwich and Darien in Connecticut and Barrington in Rhode Island. And he ran well against Gore in several New England college towns, even carrying Orono, home of the University of Maine, by one vote in the unofficial returns.

Outside New England, though, neither Bradley or McCain could make much headway on Titanic Tuesday.

McCain tended to run better in the cities than the suburbs. In Missouri, for instance, he carried St. Louis and Kansas City, but lost the vote-rich suburbs of St. Louis County to Bush by more than 15 percentage points. In California, McCain nearly carried San Francisco, but lost Contra Costa County across the bay by nearly 20 points.

On the other hand, Bradley tended to run better in the suburbs than the cities, where he was unable to compete with Gore for the support of minority voters. Bradley drew less than 15% of the Democratic primary vote in Los Angeles County and Fulton County (Atlanta), and garnered barely 20% in Baltimore and Cuyahoga County (Cleveland).

Even in New York City, where Bradley was a household name from his days as a pro basketball star with the New York Knicks, Gore defeated him by a margin of better than 2-to-1. Yet Bradley’s showing improved in the New York suburbs, as he approached 40% of the vote in Long Island’s Suffolk County and surpassed 40% in Westchester County.

If there was a consolation prize for Bradley, it came in his home state of Missouri. Although he lost the Democratic primary there badly, he did carry Jefferson County, which includes his birthplace of Crystal City. Bradley announced his candidacy there last September and won the county March 7. The tally: 7,361 votes for Bradley, 4,969 for Gore.

PRIMARY VOTE TALLY THROUGH MARCH 7
s	Vote	Percent	Primaries Won	Best State
DEMOCRATS
Al Gore	4,882,059	71.5%	14	Georgia (83.8%)
Bill Bradley	1,798,600	26.3%	0	New Hampshire (45.6%)
Others	145,637	2.1%	1	–
Total	6,826,296	s	s	s
REPUBLICANS
George W. Bush	5,312,905	53.4%	11	Georgia (66.8%)
John McCain	4,109,478	41.3%	7	Massachusetts (64.7%)
Alan Keyes	407,787	4.1%	0	Maryland (6.7%)
Others	125,142	1.3%	0	–
Total	9,955,312	s	s	s
Note: Primary vote totals are based on official returns through the contests of Feb. 22, and nearly complete but unofficial results from primaries that have been held since then. As of March 13, several hundred thousand absentee ballots were still to be counted in California. Only states are included in the total of primaries won. An "Uncommitted" line received the most votes in the Michigan Democratic primary, as neither Gore or Bradley competed there. Bush is credited with victory in the New York Republican primary as he won the most delegates. But no votes from New York are included in the Republican tally since there was no direct vote for GOP presidential candidates. The "Best State" is where each candidate received his highest share of the primary vote through March 7; the percentage is indicated in parentheses.