History of Pennsylvania Primary
The Pennsylvania presidential primary has a history that goes back to Progressive Era origins.
Here is a select history of the Pennsylvania primary, and some basic facts about Pennsylvania.
1912 The Republican fight between President William Howard Taft of Ohio and former President Theodore Roosevelt of New York was a test between the more conservative wing of the party, represented by Taft, and Roosevelt’s progressives. Roosevelt won with 60 percent to 40 percent.
Pennsylvania was at the time the second-largest state in the nation and an anchor of Republican support in general elections. But then, however, primaries were not as important as they are today. Taft won the Republican nomination despite a string of losses to Roosevelt. On the Bull Moose ticket, Roosevelt won Pennsylvania in November of 1912.
1916 Henry Ford, of Ford Motor fame, won seven and a half percent of the Republican vote as a write-in candidate. Ford had already won his home state of Michigan and finished strong in Nebraska. Despite this, his campaign stalled in the end.
1920 The terrible Mitchell Palmer won the Democratic primary. Palmer had been a Pennsylvania Congressman and Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson. As Attorney General, he rounded up American Communists and others left-wing supporters during a World War I “Red Scare.” He did this with a frequent disregard for the basic rights of Americans. Mr. Palmer did not win the 1920 nomination.
(Photo is of former steel plant in Bethleham, Pennsylvania that has closed and has been replaced with a casino in the same location.)
1932 Governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York scored an important 57 percent win over the 1928 Democratic nominee, former New York Governor Al Smith. Smith was the first Catholic to win the nomination of a major political party.
On the same day in 1932, Smith beat Roosevelt in Massachusetts. Irish-Catholic Democrats in Boston carried the day for Smith in Massachusetts. However, Roosevelt was the winner just about everywhere else in 1932.
1948 Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen won over New York Governor Thomas Dewey of New York in the Republican primary with 32 percent to 30 percent. Many know of Stassen as a perennial candidate who would announce a White House bid every four years until the 1990’s. He was at one time a serious candidate, but not serious enough though. Dewey was the 1948 Republican nominee.
( Below is a photo of Mr. Stassen from his service in WW II.)
1964 Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton was the 52 percent to 20 percent winner over Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. This was part of a fight within the Republican party, as seen in 1912 and to some degree in 2008, between more moderate conservatives and the red-meat types. After Senator Goldwater’s 1964 win, the red-meat types would hold an edge they’ve yet to give up.
1972 Senator and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota won 35 percent against 21 percent over Alabama Governor George Wallace. He also won 20 percent over Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. McGovern’s anti-war liberalism was not a good match for Pennsylvania Democrats. Even though 1972 was a long time ago, you get a sense of the challenges faced by Senator Barack Obama as he competes in Pennsylvania.
1976 Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter took 37 percent against 25 percent for Senator Scoop Jackson of Washington and 19 percent for Arizona Congressman Morris Udall. This win was a big step in Carter’s nomination fight. While the late entries of Governor Jerry Brown and Senator Frank Church of Idaho gave Carter a bit more trouble down the road, Pennsylvania turned out in retrospect to have ended the process.
1980 Both the Republican and Democratic primaries produced interesting results. For Republicans, the more moderate George H.W. Bush of Texas beat former California Governor Ronald Reagan 51 percent to 43 percent. This happened in a year that Reagan won 61 percent of all Republican primary votes against 23 percent for Bush. Pennsylvania was a late arrival to the “Reagan Revolution.”
(The Ruffed Grouse is the state bird of Pennsylvania.)
Among Democrats, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy beat President Carter by the small margin of 0.3%. Any time an incumbent President loses a primary, he has trouble. Kennedy, like Senator McGovern in 1972, was the more liberal candidate. And like Smith in 1932, he was Catholic. Yet unlike those two men, he won the Pennsylvania primary. This reflected a changing Democratic electorate, a tough economy in 1980, and the political weakness of President Carter.
The victories by Bush and Kennedy in 1980 were the last time Pennsylvania primary voters did not support the eventual nominee for either party. The Pennsylvania primary has taken place late in the process after the nominations have been wrapped up and has not been important since 1976 and 1980.
Jesse Jackson won 18 percent in 1984 and 27 percent in 1988 in Pennsylvania. These showings were consistent with his national showings in Democratic primaries.
In John McCain’s previous run on the Pennsylvania primary ballot in 2000, he lost to George W. Bush by 74 percent to 23 percent. Bush had clearly won the nomination by that point.
John Kerry won Pennsylvania with 51 percent to 48 percent in 2004.
Pennsylvania is home to 12.4 million people and has the sixth largest national population. Just under 10 percent of its residents are black and just over three percent are Hispanic. Here’s some more basic information about Pennsylvania.
Here is some information about presidential politics in Pennsylvania from the “2008 Almanac of American Politics:”
For the last 70 years Pennsylvania has been a swing state in every close presidential election and even in some that were not close. Yet it is not typical of the country. With its older, deeply-rooted population, it tends to be culturally more conservative than the rest of the country; with its long-dying blue-collar communities, it tends to be economically more liberal—though both tendencies have been muted with time. But it does present a problem for political strategists of both parties: Combinations of issue positions which work for Democrats on the East and West Coasts or for Republicans in the South and the Heartland do not work well here.
