Like many of you, I dropped by
Daily Kos to vote in the latest
Presidential preference straw poll (to vote for Clark, as it happens), but I also left a
comment there which included a pointer to
an analysis posted on my weblog in January 2004, which concluded from the historical record that governors have a much better chance of being elected President than do senators.
Because of this we should seriously think about dropping Senators (who currently make up 6 of the 10 named contenders in the poll) from our consideration. Senators are just too vulnerable to attack because of their legislative records, and are also (as JTA remarks in a response to my comment) perceived as Washington insiders, which prevents them running as outsiders committed to making a change.
This is a topic I think we should return to in the next two years as the Democratic field winnows itself down, because the data seems undeniable. Looking at the 13 14 Presidential elections since World War II (1952 - 2004), governors have a clear and distinct advantage over senators:
[click on graphic for larger image]
Both Republican governors who ran (Reagan and GW Bush) won, as did two (Carter and Clinton) of the four five Democratic governors (the others were Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 and Dukakis), giving a score of 4 out of 6 7 (67 57%) for all governors. In contrast, only 1 (Kennedy) of the 3 Democratic senators won (McGovern and Kerry lost), while neither of the 2 Republican Senators (Goldwater and Dole) were elected, giving senators overall a score of 1 out of 5 (20%).
(I eliminated from consideration former senators, like Richard Nixon, who had achieved higher office in the meantime, and all minor party candidates, such as governor George Wallace, as well as incumbent presidents and vice presidents).
It's not a matter of disliking the senators currently considered to be possible candidates -- I myself like Edwards and Feingold -- but simply a matter of the inherent disadvantages a senator brings to the contest, disadvantages that a governor just doesn't have.
We really ought to give this some serious thought -- we cannot afford to lose in 2008.
[Cross-posted to unfutz]
Note: I removed from the text a mention of Strom Thurmond, a remnant from a first draft which included the election of 1948. I later decided to consider only post-World War II elections.
Important note:I've just seen that I made a mistake and inadvertantly left out of my data crunching the results of the 1988 election, and partially mislabelled the results from 1992. I've corrected those errors now, and the point remains, if somewhat less emphatically so.