A Sea-Change in American Politics?

[Douglas Laycock]

  Sandy, I don't know what you meant to say about 1912, but what you
typed cannot be what you meant.  Roosevelt did not get more popular
votes than Wilson, nor did he get more electoral votes.  Roosevelt
and Taft together got more popular votes than Wilson, but Wilson got
435 electoral votes, a smashing victory as you say.  Link to those
results here:

  http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html[1]

  Quoting Sanford Levinson <SLevinson at law.utexas.edu>:

> Depending on your definintions of third party and of a stable party

> system, the Republican Party, in 1856, might have been defined as 
> such.  Needless to say, four years later (though with only 40% of
the
> popular vote, but that's another story), they put their man in the 
> White House (and triggered secession).
>
> We'll never know what the result in 1912 would have been if we had
a
> sensible voting system, such as the alternative transferrable
vote. 
> After all, Teddy Roosevelt got both more popular and electoral
votes
> than did Woodrow Wilson, who won a smashing electoral vote victory 
> with only 42% of the popular vote.  (It is, incidentally, hard to 
> argue that the US was better off with a Wilson victory than a TR
one,
> given Wilson's racism and his disastrous conduct of US foreign
policy
> in the aftermath of war, but that, too, is another story.)
>
> sandy
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu on behalf of
RJLipkin at aol.com
> Sent: Sun 1/21/2007 9:48 AM
> To: CONLAWPROF at lists.ucla.edu
> Subject: A Sea-Change in American Politics?
>
>
>         Can anyone direct me to sources describing and explaining 
> circumstances in which a new political party replaced one of the
two
> existing parties?  Also has there ever been a really serious third 
> party presidential election. I familiar with some of the attempts, 
> but can't recall whether any of those parties had a realistic
chance
> of prevailing. Thanks.
>
> Bobby
>
> Robert Justin Lipkin
> Professor of Law
> Widener University School of Law
> Delaware
>
> Ratio Juris, Contributor:  http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/[2] 
> <http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/[3]>
> Essentially Contested America, Editor: 
> http://www.essentiallycontestedamerica.org/[4]
>

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713

Links:
------
[1] http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html
[2] /horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fratiojuris.blogspot.com%2F
[3] /horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fratiojuris.blogspot.com%2F
[4] 
/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.essentiallycontestedamerica.org%2F

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