less one day

On the morning after the 2004 election, Tom Brokaw observed that   [Democrats] are not going to be a national party until they can get back into the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain West to some degree and into the South and make a stand there because they're not even close in those states. I mean, George Bush is winning by two-to-one and three-to-one in some of those states. (Bush didn't win any states by better than 3 :1; the last time that has happened is 1984, when Reagan carried Utah by better than 3:1.)  If someone is carrying a state by better than 2:1, he or she is getting over twice as many votes as his or her closest opponent. If someone is getting > 66. 6 % of the vote in a state, he or she is getting over twice as many votes as his or her combined opposition (and therefore is necessarily getting over twice as many votes as his or her closest opponent). If a nominee is getting less than this but is still winning by better than two-to-one, it is at least p...

Another way to gauge re-alignment is to see how many counties a winning presidential nominee is the first nominee of his party (in some period of time) to win without . For example, regarding 1960, Albert J. Menendez noted that '[T]here were 427 counties that supported Roosevelt and Truman five times but refused to support Kennedy. Kennedy was the first Democratic winner to lose these counties in modern times.' I would use Woodrow Wilson as the relevant signpost for Democratic nominees, as he was the first Democrat elected after the realigning election of 1896. Democrats in the 20th century have often invoked Wilson, but seldom Grover Cleveland, the last Democratic president prior to Wilson (and who, outside the South, had a very different coalition to Wilson). Furthermore, Wilson won narrowly in 1916, so his carrying a county is meaningful immediately (whereas, say, the fact that FDR carried a county in 1932 and 1936 is of little meaning regarding 1940, or even t...