Understanding American Elections - The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections - Review

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2001 by Philip John Davies

The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections. Yanek Mieczkowski. Routledge. [pounds]19.95 h.b. and [pounds]10.99 p.b. 160 pages. ISBN 0-415-92133-3 h.b. and 0-415-92139-2 p.b.

Covering all fifty-four US presidential elections from 1789 to 2000, this volume provides capsule summaries of each of these competitions. Typically, in two or three pages for each election, Mr Mieczkowski provides a brief textual roundup. This is illustrated with a map of the Electoral College result and pie charts showing the percentage distribution of the popular vote and the Electoral College vote. There is relatively little space for additional illustration, but there is a line drawing of each president and occasional use of political cartoons and other images contemporary to the elections brings added interest to the pages.

Such brief reviews of each campaign do now allow much room for analysis, and the author is for the most part confined by the format to thumbnail, and simplified, reportage. Within the confines of this limitation, the book successfully runs the reader through the history of US presidential elections -- a process that must be one of the purest examples of political geography in action. The extent to which this way of electing a head of state is an exercise in political geography was amply exemplified by the election in 2000. A popular plurality of 600,000 votes was secondary to a federally devolved electoral system that eventually pivoted on the competence of the state and counties of Florida to run their part of the election. The decision of five Supreme Court justices effectively to award the procedural victory to the Bush legal team, and the election by default to George W. Bush in no way repaired the image of organisational failure and suspected prejudice in the way that Florida organised its part of the pr esidential election.

The presidential election is run by the states, and its organisation reflects the tension at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 between large and small states. Those small states were worried that amalgamation into a superstate would sacrifice their interests to those of the large states. The compromise that kept the process moving included a number of concessions. A presidential election system that gave small states extra Electoral College voting power over and above their proportional population size, and one that put the appointment of the Electoral College members in the hands of state legislatures was part of this negotiated process. As popular elections developed to advise the state appointment of Electoral College members, the tradition of devolving the organisation even of national elections to states (and in some states, of allowing considerable local discretion) was undisturbed.

When victory margins are large and accepted, the quality of electoral systems is not subject to challenge. It is certainly possible that, had the Electoral College system and the public vote given another state the key to last year's result, failures in the robustness of the process might equally have been found elsewhere. As it is, Florida has already taken a step towards reform with a state investigation, and a resulting report, Revitalizing Democracy. The voting methods are to be made uniform state-wide, and the confusing butterfly ballot design is to be abandoned. Challenges on the racially discriminatory effect of Florida's election process are dealt with less easily.

This volume's survey of US presidential elections gives plenty of opportunity to see the value of the states. While the book is termed an atlas, there is considerably more space given to text than to illustrative material, but the maps certainly are an essential part of seeing the significance of the states from election to election. Of course the maps show the political impact of the citizens' votes aggregated state by state. While these are pictures of the final results, in these days of advanced political intelligence they also indicate the kind of information on which candidates will have been basing their campaigns.

In a system so defined by geography the conduct of the campaign is similarly influenced by spatial considerations. Additionally, campaigners attempt to remain sharply aware of their appeal to voters, and demographic groups of voters, in terms of policy messages. The most successful campaigns map powerful policy appeals, and supportive coalitions of demographic groups in the electorate, Onto the national Electoral College. The picture of the strategic decisions important to such a campaign would have been clarified by maps showing the relative margins in groups of states (hence, where the race was fought) and by tables giving some breakdown of public opinion on the issues, as well as differences in demographic group support for the candidates.

The close election of 2000 caused some to think again about the close result in 1960, and here Mr Mieczkowski continues the received wisdom about the statesmanlike position of Richard Nixon in supposedly refusing to call for a recount. The Republican supporters of Nixon launched bids for recounts or investigations in several states. The recounting that took place found similar variations in the Kennedy and Nixon votes, and did not work to the Republican advantage. The failure to prove fraud, and to overthrow the 1960 result, was not a consequence of Republican grace.