Do Front-Runners in September Always Win?

Does President Bush's lead in the polls indicate he will win in November? It is a good indicator, but recent history demonstrates that the polls are highly volatile in some elections. There are at least four documented instances over the past fifty years ('48, '68, '76, and '80) where a candidate enjoyed a strong lead on Labor Day only to see it dissipate toward the end of the race. In two cases--1948 and 1980--the leader in the early fall lost in November. In the other years the early leader came close to losing.

The 1948 election pitted President Harry Truman against Republican hopeful Thomas Dewey. The campaign began with Truman as the underdog. The Democratic Party had become deeply divided. Some Southerners bolted and formed a new party under Strom Thurmond. Some progressives left and rallied behind candidate Henry Wallace. Republican Thomas Dewey, sensing he was guaranteed victory if he didn't alienate voters, ran a cautious and uninspiring campaign. Despite the significant split in the Democratic Party, on November 2nd Truman defeated Dewey, 303 electoral votes to 189.

The 1976 campaign found President Gerald Ford facing off against the Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter. As the campaign began Ford found himself trailing Carter by more than thirty points. In the wake of President Nixon's Watergate scandal, Carter was seen as wholesome and honest. After the first debate, Ford managed to cut into Carter's lead but during the second debate Ford made the mistake of saying that Poland was free of Soviet control. That single mistake may have cost him the presidency. Carter defeated Ford 297 electoral votes to 240, winning the popular vote 50.1 percent to 48 percent.

The 1980 election featured a Republican governor from California named Ronald Reagan against incumbent Jimmy Carter. As the United States entered a new decade it was experiencing many serious problems. The U.S. was experiencing a downturn in the economy, high inflation, not to mention a hostage crisis in Iran. The campaign of 1980 gave the public a sharp choice between a conservative challenger and a liberal president (though some Democrats bemoaned Carter's fiscal conservatism). Carter favored the Equal Rights Amendment, Reagan opposed it. Carter supported SALT II, Reagan opposed it. These issues coupled with the hostage situation in Iran and Reagan's positive outlook ultimately doomed Carter's chance to be re-elected.

Of these four elections the one that most resembles the current election is the one in 1968, when America was divided as it is today over a foreign war and hot social issues. There was even a third party candidate with substantial strength: George Wallace. The chief difference was that no incumbent was running, though Vice President Hubert Humphrey was saddled with the defense of President Johnson's Vietnam War policy. Like President Bush today, Richard Nixon began the campaign as the front-runner. Humphrey only began to pick up ground when he became more critical of Johnson's handling of the war. But Humphrey only began to take an anti-war position toward the end of the campaign--too late to affect the outcome, though he clearly gained strength once he did so. Nixon won the election with 301 electoral votes to Humphrey's 191 in a close election

The lesson of this short history lesson? In some races it's not easy to predict how the election will go based on poll results in September. Is this one of those elections? We'll know in November.