Reviewing 2000 election coverage

 So...I don't have a map for this one so this analysis is gonna be a bit less sophisticated, but I still wanted to live through the chaos again as I was rather apolitical back then, being a kid and all more focused on cartoons, video games, and pokemon cards than on politics. 

Hour 1

Man, they called Florida for Gore QUICK. No wonder in 2004 they refused to call Ohio. Like really, I was gobsmacked by that one. What a monumental F up. Imagine it being 2000 and you call Florida for Gore ALMOST IMMEDIATELY. Wtf. 

Anyway, from what I can tell, they seemed to be basing their views on say, a 1990s Clinton map, where not only was like, the Rust belt in play, but also parts of the south, especially along the mississippi delta. We saw some artifacts of this in the 2004 map with Arkansas being a swing state. They also seemed to think nearby states like Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc. are all swing states. Again, kinda bizarre, until you understand Clinton's electoral map. But yeah. 

It seemed like this was a close election though. They basically said this is the first since 1960 when Kennedy ran against Nixon that they didnt know who won on election night. THat makes sense. Most of those were cut and dried and leaned overwhelmingly one way. We didnt really start seeing maps with set swing states until more recently. In the past, most of the country went one way or another and while each side might have like 100 electoral votes set in stone, we had maps with massive uncertainty all swinging one way or another. So despite the uncertainty of the partisan leans of a lot of states, the country generally leaned one way or another, and the outcome was kinda decisive. So basically the map was less polarized and open to broader electoral swings between candidates. From the 1990s onward, we've seen increasingly polarized electoral maps. 

And yeah, when polling leans one way, yeah, we can see why it would be a blowout for a candidate, but polling was rather close. Generally speaking, if you took the last 5-10 polls of the election cycle, you'd get a Bush +4-5 outcome. Without a map and state wide data its hard to project what that would look like in practice. Again, from what I can tell, there's A LOT of swing states on the table. Like a lot more than a modern election cycle. 

Anyway, I will say this, gore overperformed nationally. As you can tell, if Bush was up 4 or 5, and he actually lost the popular vote, Gore did A LOT better than expected. he made up a lot of ground. And that made it a lot closer. I know RCP projected Bush would win by 400+ EVs. That sounds ridiculous, but if I took the 2004 map from the last analysis I did, center it on florida being a tie, and calculate a D+4 scenario, we get 186-352 Bush. So I'm not really sure if a strong projection for Bush winning actually was that unreasonable. If youre dealing with a R+6 median with it in reality being R+2 to R+10, I'm not sure if that's unreasonable. I mean, it seemed like their low end was Bush winning 308 and their high end was Bush 446. Again, if I took the 2004 map i produced based on their data centered it on florida, and shifted it 4-5 points to the right, something in the mid 300s for Bush isn't unreasonable. There was a lot of possible error in this one. And without detailed polling data on the state level, I literally cant offer a more sophisticated analysis. RCP only has data back to 2004, and I cant really predict more in detail than this. 

Attempting to build a map based off of this, I end up with this:

So yeah theres a lot on the table here. There's around 14 swing states, with a lot of states being "leans" not solids. So I guess a 400+ EV result for Bush is possible if he has a good night. But yeah, that seems a bit outlandish and that article doesnt discuss margins, just categories. But yeah I do see here how assuming gore loses florida, he has to run the table here. 

Hour 2

They called a lot of stuff very fast, and with Gore winning Florida in this scenario, it seemed like a nail biter. Despite Bush having a clear polling advantage, Gore overperformed and it was super close. Gore looked like he could actually win, and had he won Florida, he WOULD have won. 

But Bush started challenging the results for Florida, and the network ended up rescinding the call, as there were a lot of outstanding votes in florida and Bush had a chance. 

Conclusion

Anyway there was more discussion on the race, but clearly it ended without it being called because of, well...the obvious. Gore didnt win florida, and it turned out the whole thing came down to florida. And then we spent weeks trying to figure out who won going through several recounts, until the supreme court just ended up and made Bush the winner. And that was seen as partisan AF, leading to liberals being pissed off and butthurt over it for decades. Still, unlike some psychos, we didnt storm the capitol. We accepted it and moved onto the next one.

The 2000 election has been a controversial one though. The left loves to frame it as "those darned Ralph Nader voters", but this was itself a mini realignment. Look, Clinton won parts of the south, West Virginia used to be a blue state for example, but the Clinton coalition alienated a lot of white working class voters. Clinton was a minor realigning figure himself, he formed an ideological consensus with the Reaganites of the republican party, which caused the remnants of the new deal coalition to turn on the democrats for good. And that's the story of the night. 

We saw this in 2004 too. There were questions of whether the democrats lost the south for a generation. And they did more or less. They became flat out uncompetitive there. They were conservative, the core of Bush's coalition, and a loyal part of the democratic party since, with this only being challenged by the suburbanization of the larger cities down there. 

Bush...also had a huge electoral advantage going into it. As I said, based on what little polling I saw, I'd expect a win from him. Gore actually overperformed, and this was like 2020, but with Bush being Biden and Gore being Trump. What shouldve been a romp ended up being super close, and this was more contested than even 2020. The difference was that we accepted the results and didnt throw a tantrum over it. 

And yeah, that's my analysis of 2000, and that's as far back as I'm gonna go. Been interesting, learned a lot, but there's little point in me going further back without detailed polling or maps. THe elections were before my time, and I just dont have the data to follow them along as well. Most of them were stomps anyway.