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It seems there is a common pattern. A president who is elected gets a strong advantage toward being reelected, but after 2 terms, the?
country wants a different party in charge. This pattern repeats over and over. 2 terms of Obama (D) followed by (R) Same for Bush II. Same for Clinton Reagan's success I guess broke the pattern for one term, as did Carter's failure. Nixon elected to 2 terms followed by (D) Kennedy elected to 2 terms followed by (R) Eisenhower elected twice followed by (D) This goes all the way back until there were no term limits. So is it that neither party can keep the country happy for long? Is it that once a president is elected, he has an unfair advantage toward reelection? Is it that the desire for change is stronger than the desire to stay in power, so more people are motivated to vote after 2 terms of a president they don't like from the other party? Maybe we should switch to one 6 year term. The first year is a learning curve. The last year is campaigning. Maybe the country would be better served with a different format. What do you think?
4 Answers
- Tmess2Lv 74 years ago
Not a particularly common pattern. The pattern only exists starting with 1952 and only if you ignore Reagan-Bush. Starting with 1952, a party that has been in power for eight or more years has won one election and lost eight elections. A party (not a presidential candidate) that has been power for only four years has won seven and lost once. When talking about the incumbent running for another term, however, the record falls to seven wins and three losses. The real change is when talking about open seats, and then the record is changing the party in power five times, but keeping the party in power once.
Of course, added to the above is that you are talking electoral votes. When talking popular vote and open seats, the record is three times the party in power has gotten the most votes and three times (two of the three being very narrow margins) the party out of power has gotten the most votes. The reality is that in the nine changes of power since World War II, there have been five elections which were effectively tied and four elections which were landslides.
