Since the 1860 election, U.S. presidential elections have been dominated by candidates affiliated with the Democratic and Republican parties. While the electoral votes decide the winner of the election, these are generally decided by the winner of the popular vote in each state (or district), and the winner of the nationwide popular vote does not always go on to win the electoral vote. Interestingly, there have been a number of occasions where the winner of the popular vote did not go on to win the electoral vote, for example in the 2016 election, or, most famously, in 2000.

With Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election, the Republican Party cemented its position as one of the two major political parties in the United States. Since 1860, candidates from both parties have faced one another in 41 elections, with the Republican candidate winning 24 elections, to the Democrats' 17. The share of electoral college votes is often very different from the share of the popular vote received by each candidate in the elections, as the popular vote differences tend to be much smaller. Electoral college system In the U.S., the electoral college system is used to elect the president. For most states, this means that the most popular candidate in each state then receives that state's allocation of electoral votes (which is determined by the state's population). In the majority of elections, the margin of electoral votes has been over thirty percent between the two major party candidates, and there were even some cases where the winner received over ninety percent more electoral votes than the runner-up. Biggest winners The largest margins for the Republican Party occurred in the aftermath of the American Civil War, in the pre-Depression era of the 1920s, with Eisenhower after the Second World War, and then again with the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush campaigns in the 1970s and 80s. For the Democratic Party, the largest victories occurred during the First and Second World Wars, and for Lindon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton in the second half of the 20th century. In the past six elections, the results of the electoral college vote have been relatively close, compared with the preceding hundred years; George W. Bush's victories were by less than seven percent, Obama's victories were larger (by around thirty percent), and in the most recent elections involving Donald Trump he both won and lost by roughly 14 percent.

Donald Trump’s first year in office received unprecedented media coverage, with many wondering whether congressional Republicans were “adversaries” or “allies” of the president’s legislative positions. Our paper explores this issue from two vantage points. First, we place Trump’s presidency in historical context by forecasting his Republican support with data from 1969 to 2016. We find that Republicans supported Trump’s legislative positions in 2017 at levels consistent with expectations, contrary to the views of some. Second, we explore the factors that explain why Republican lawmakers supported or opposed their party’s president. We find that conservative and establishment Republicans were more likely to support Trump, contrary to some claims, while female Republicans and those representing affluent, non-white districts were more likely to oppose Trump. Our paper concludes by discussing the broader implications of these results, including the role of identity in contemporary American politics and the possible realignment of the GOP.

Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated vote fraud claims following the 2020 election divided the Republican Party. Numerous Republicans supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, while others did not. These futile attempts reached a boiling point during the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. Even in the wake of such violence, many House Republicans continued to amplify Trump’s baseless claims by voting to exclude the election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania. We analyze these roll call votes to determine likely motivations for why some House Republicans were still willing to support Donald Trump’s position following the Capitol riot. We then replicate our analysis with the January 13th impeachment and May 19th vote to establish a Bipartisan January 6th Commission to investigate the insurrection. Our findings indicate the relevance of constituent preferences, Donald Trump’s popularity, legislator ideology, and the racial diversity of the constituents represented by Republicans.

Since the 2020 U.S. presidential election, perceptions of the validity of the outcome and broader trust in the American electoral process have reached historically low levels among Republicans. While this trend has potentially harmful consequences for democratic stability, there is little research on how beliefs that an election was fair—and trust in the electoral process more generally—can be restored. In a preregistered survey experiment (n = 2101), we find that viewing real messages from Republican politicians defending the legitimacy of the 2020 election increased faith in the election’s outcome and in the broader electoral process among Republican voters, compared to either a neutral control condition or to comparable messages from Democratic politicians. These effects are statistically mediated by shifts in voters’ perceptions of elite Republican opinion about the 2020 election, highlighting a potentially useful intervention for efforts to restore faith in elections going forward. Notably, exposure to messages from Republican politicians affirming the election’s legitimacy did not significantly decrease support for the Republican Party, suggesting that Republican politicians who endorse the 2020 election results might not face backlash from voters.

This dataset was designed to provide information on the personal and political backgrounds, political attitudes, and relevant behavior of party leaders. The data pertain to Democratic and Republican party elites holding office during the election year of 1980 and include County and State Chairs, members of the Democratic and Republican National Committees, and delegates to the National Conventions. These data focus on the "representativeness" of the party elites on a variety of dimensions and also permit a comparison of party leaders from the local, state, and national organizational levels. Other issues explored include the party reform era, the effects of the growing body of party law, and the nationalization of the political parties. Specific variables include characterization of respondent's political beliefs on the liberal-conservative scale, length of time the respondent had been active in the party, and the respondent's opinions on minorities in the party, party unity, national- and local-level party strength, and party loyalty. Respondents were also queried on attitudes toward important national problems, defense spending, and inflation. In addition, their opinions were elicited on controversial provisions in their parties' charters and on the directions their parties should take in the future. Demographic characteristics are supplied as well.

Existing studies—most importantly, Gomez, Hansford, and Krause—provide empirical support for an idea often embraced by popular media: The vote share of the Republican Party (as the percentage of total votes) increases when it rains, because the magnitude of decrease in turnout is larger among Democratic vis-à-vis Republican supporters. Considering the compositional nature of aggregated data, we show that the alleged Republican advantage derives in part from an increase in the number of votes for the Republican Party. Based on the extensive literature of psychology and related fields, we provide a possible interpretation of this counter-intuitive empirical finding. Methodologically, our evidence suggests that researchers must be alert when using rainfall as an instrument to estimate the causal effects of voter turnout on electoral outcome.

Florida was admitted to the union in 1845, and has taken part in 43 U.S. presidential elections since this time. In these 43 elections, Florida has voted for the overall winner thirty times, giving a success rate of seventy percent. Since 1928, Florida has voted for the winning candidate in 21 out of 24 elections, and is considered a key battleground state in modern elections. Florida has voted for a major party nominee in every election, backing the Republican nominee 17 times, Democrat 25 times, and the only time it did not vote Republican or Democrat was in 1848 when it voted for the Whig Party's Zachary Taylor. Florida did not take part in the 1864 election due to its secession from the Union in the American Civil War, and like most other southern states it primarily voted Democrat until the mid-twentieth century, when it then started leaning more Republican. No U.S. President has ever been born in Florida, or resided there when taking office; although Donald Trump declared himself a resident of Florida in 2019, therefore making it his official home state during the 2020 election. The 2020 election in Florida proved to be a surprise for many, as Donald Trump won the popular vote by a 3.4 percent margin; most polls had favored Biden going into election day, however intensive campaigning and increased Republican support among Cuban Americans has been cited as the reason for Trump's victory in Florida.

Florida's importance

In 1920, Florida's population was fewer than one million people; however it has grown drastically in the past century to almost 22 million people, making Florida the third most populous state in the country. With this population boom, Florida's allocation of electoral votes has surged, from just six in the 1920s, to 29 in recent elections (this is expected to increase to 31 votes in the 2024 election). Unlike the other most populous states, such as California and New York, which are considered safe Democratic states, or Texas, which is considered a safe Republican state, presidential elections in Florida are much more unpredictable. Florida is a southern state, and its majority-white, rural and suburban districts tend to vote in favor of the Republican Party (Republicans have also dominated state elections in recent decades), although, Florida is also home to substantial Hispanic population, and is a popular destination for young workers in the tourism sector and retirees from across the U.S., with these groups considered more likely to vote Democrat. However, the discrepancy between voters of Cuban (58 percent voted Republican) and Puerto Rican (66 percent voted Democrat) origin in the 2020 election shows that these traditional attitudes towards Hispanic voters may need to be re-evaluated.

2000 controversy The 2000 U.S. presidential election is one of the most famous and controversial elections in U.S. history, due to the results from Florida. The election was contested by the Republican Party's George W. Bush and the Democratic Party's Al Gore; by the end of election day, it became clear that Florida's 25 electoral votes would decide the outcome, as neither candidate had surpassed the 270 vote margin needed to win nationwide. While Florida's early results showed Bush in the lead, Gore's share of the results in urban areas then brought their totals close enough to trigger a recount; after a month of recounts and legal proceedings, Bush was eventually declared the winner of Florida by a margin of 537 popular votes (or 0.009 percent). Although Gore did win a plurality of the votes nationwide, Bush had won 271 electoral votes overall, and was named the 43rd President of the United States; this was just one of five elections where the candidate with the most popular votes did not win the election. In the six most recent U.S. presidential elections in Florida, the difference in the share of popular votes between the Republican and Democratic candidates has been just two percent on average.

This data collection contains electoral and demographic data for Massachusetts counties and cities during 1848-1876. The data for this collection were compiled to study electoral changes in Massachusetts politics during the Civil War period and to link the changes to socioeconomic determinants of support for the Republican and Democratic parties. Specific variables include number of voters for specific years and demographic information such as number of males and females and number of males employed in certain trades. Electoral data consists of election results.

Abstract This research is aimed at understanding the supposed US party polarization. Through a methodology that privileges the use of national platforms as an indicative of ideological portrait and gradation indicators, this study aims to empirically show in a historical perspective the approximations and distances between the two most important political parties in USA and, consequently, the rise or decline of ideologies as conservatism and liberalism. The time framed goes from 1936 (first election post New Deal) to 2016. The results indicate that there is a party polarization in recent period, not singular in the history of the country, but unique in the sense that both parties head to extremes of the political spectrum characterized, mainly, by a conservative ascendancy by the Republican Party with regards to social issues. Far from a centrist discourse or not committed supposedly intending to collect a higher number of electors, the US parties define themselves by opposed positionings. One still needs to know if this is a process that benefits democracy when representing society with all its idiosyncrasies or it is one process that harms democracy by contemplating extremes not always characteristics of the society as a whole.

The dataset contains information on Republican House members' decisions to run for renomination as well as primary election outcomes. In addition, the data contain information about Republican members' roll call votes on the impeachment of Donald Trump and the creation of the January 6 Commission.

In Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968, Heersink and Jenkins examine how National Convention politics allowed the South to remain important to the Republican Party after Reconstruction, and trace how Republican organizations in the South changed from biracial coalitions to mostly all-white ones over time. Little research exists on the GOP in the South after Reconstruction and before the 1960s. Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968 helps fill this knowledge gap. Using data on the race of Republican convention delegates from 1868 to 1952, the authors explore how the 'whitening' of the Republican Party affected its vote totals in the South. Once states passed laws to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era, the Republican Party in the South performed better electorally the whiter it became. These results are important for understanding how the GOP emerged as a competitive, and ultimately dominant, electoral party in the late-twentieth century South.

The gap between women’s representation in the Democratic and Republican parties has grown significantly in the last three decades. We argue existing explanations undervalue voters’ contributions to this trend by focusing on voter responses to candidate sex rather than candidate gender. We theorize that Republican voters (especially the most conservative) prefer masculine candidates in intraparty and entry-level elections. Because sex and gender are correlated, this limits the number of Republican women who advance through the political pipeline. Experimental vignettes from two rounds of the CCES (N = 2,000) and two large surveys of Republicans (N > 10,000) show that Republican (but not Democratic) voters penalize candidates with “feminine” self-presentation regardless of the candidate’s sex. Original data on the self-presentation of Republican candidates for entry-level office (N=459) confirms Republican candidates often present themselves in gender stereotypical ways. In short, voters play an underappreciated role in the partisan gap in women’s representation.

RealClearPolitics - Republican Party Favorability

Recent evidence suggests that cross-partisan conversation can reduce affective polarization. Yet, this evidence comes from experiments that dampen the contentious features of political environments like elections. We expected that cross-partisan conversation will be less effective at reducing affective polarization for partisans who experience partisan group threat from an election loss. We test our theory using a pre-registered experiment where Democrats and Republicans chatted via text online. Participants discussed the 2020 presidential election immediately following Biden’s inauguration, a contentious context that we show differentially amplified feelings of group threat amongst Republicans. However, for both sides, cross-partisan conversations reduced outparty animosity for at least three days, reduced social polarization, but did not increase perceptions of election integrity. Our results suggest that cross-partisan conversation can effectively reduce affective polarization among both Republicans and Democrats even in contentious contexts that amplify group threat.

Washington and California adopted the Top-Two Primary in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Under this new system, all candidates regardless of party affiliation run against each other, narrowing the field down to the top two for the general election. In some jurisdictions, the general election features two candidates from the same party. Ten percent of California voters chose not to vote in the 2016 U.S. Senate election which featured two Democrats. Using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (2012-2016), I find that among those who vote in the national November elections, orphans, or voters without a copartisan candidate on the ballot are more likely to undervote, opting out of voting in their congressional race. Levels of undervoting are nearly 20 percentage points more for orphaned voters compared to non-orphaned voters. Additionally, voters who abstain perceive more ideological distance between themselves and the candidates compared to voters who cast a vote. These findings support a multi-step framework for vote decisions in same-party matchups: voters are more likely to undervote if they are unable to vote for a candidate from their party (partisan model), but all voters are more likely to vote for a candidate when they perceive more ideological proximity (ideological model).

The Dataset was compiled to examine how Republican members of Congress reacted to President Donald Trump when he behaved contrary to Republican policies or historical norms. It includes tweets from congressional members reacting to five cases in the study, the content analysis data and relevant electoral and demographic data for each member of Congress who tweeted, and the codebook.

Since 1912, the U.S. presidential election has been contested in Arizona 29 times, and the Grand Canyon State has successfully chosen the winning candidate on 23 occasions, giving a success rate of 79 percent. Between 1952 and 2016, Arizona voted for the Republican nominee in every election except 1996, and has been considered a safe, "red state" throughout most of its history. 2020 upset In 2020, Democratic nominee Joe Biden managed to flip the state blue, eventually carrying the state's popular vote by a 0.3 percent margin. This victory was attributed to President Donald Trump's unpopularity among traditional Republicans, following his perceived mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and unpleasant relationship with the late Arizona Senator, John McCain. Additionally, increased turnout among Mexican American and Native American voters, who tend to vote Democratic, helped swing the result in favor of the former Vice President. Allocation of votes Since its admission to the union in 1912, Arizona's designated number of electoral votes has gradually risen from just three votes in 1912, to eleven votes since 2012. As of 2024, no Arizonan has ever ascended to the presidency, however the Republican candidates in the 1964 and 2008 elections, Barry M. Goldwater and John McCain respectively, were both from Arizona.

The Dataset was compiled to examine how Republican members of Congress reacted to President Donald Trump when he behaved contrary to Republican policies or historical norms. It includes tweets from congressional members reacting to five cases in the study, the content analysis data and relevant electoral and demographic data for each member of Congress who tweeted, and the codebook.

The spread of misinformation has become a central concern in American politics. Studies using social media data show that Republicans share considerably more misinformation than Democrats. However, such inferences are confounded by the greater supply of right-leaning misinformation--Republicans may not be more prone to sharing misinformation; rather, they may simply be more exposed to it. We test competing explanations for why Republicans share more misinformation online in a balanced information environment. We show that Republicans are more prone to sharing ideologically agreeable misinformation, but that this asymmetry is not nearly large enough to explain differences observed on social media. Our findings suggest that the remaining asymmetry is not due to Republicans being worse at identifying misinformation or caring less about accuracy. Encouragingly, we find that accuracy prompt interventions are equally effective at reducing the spread of misinformation across parties, suggesting that misinformation sharing among Republicans is not an intractable problem.