of endorsements from Democratic Party activists and elected officials. She also raised tremendous sums of money; before 2016 even began, Clinton had already raised over $110 million for her campaign.
Clinton’s overwhelming support among party leaders did not mean that she would easily claim the party’s nomination, however. As she had in 2008, she faced another difficult challenge from an insurgent candidate—this time Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders slowly gained ground on Clinton in the national polls during 2015, based largely on his appeal as the antiestablishment candidate. Indeed, Sanders was not actually a member of the Democratic Party at all. In Vermont, he ran for Senate as an independent; although once in the Senate, he generally voted along with the Democrats in Congress. Sanders’ liberal populist platform helped him to attract support outside the mainstream of the party and especially among younger Democrats. His viability as a challenger to Clinton was established by his ability to raise over $70 million during 2015 and by his success in the national polls, in which he received increasingly more support throughout the year leading up to the first contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Sanders still trailed Clinton by more than 10 points in the national polls, but polling indicated that he was tied with Clinton in Iowa and was leading her in New Hampshire, where the first primary would happen one week later.
In 2008, Clinton lost the Iowa caucuses to Obama, a result that helped prove Obama’s viability as a candidate and suggested the vulnerability of Clinton’s front-runner status. This time, Clinton was able to hold on to defeat Sanders in Iowa—a fact that was especially important given that she was defeated handily by Sanders a week later in the New Hampshire primary. The split results in the two early states did little to separate the two candidates, ensuring that the campaign would extend into the spring and beyond. Both Clinton and Sanders had strengths that allowed them to do exceptionally well in some states, but quite poorly in others. For example, Sanders generally won huge margins among young voters (often receiving more than 80 percent of the vote among primary voters who were 18 to 29 years of age) and also did well among white liberal voters. Clinton typically fared better among older voters (especially women) and minorities like African Americans and Latinos.
Sanders’ inability to make inroads with minority voters ultimately kept him from accumulating the number of delegates he would need to win the nomination. Clinton routinely received support from over 80 percent of black voters and between two-thirds and three-fourths of Latinos. This helped to offset the fact that she often trailed Sanders among whites. What made this particularly problematic for Sanders was that in many states, especially in the South, a majority of those voting in the Democratic primaries were nonwhite. Figure 2 shows just how significant this issue was. The x-axis of the figure shows the percentage of Democratic primary or caucus voters in each state who were white while the y-axis shows the percentage of the vote Sanders won in that state’s caucus or primary. There was a very strong relationship—for every 1 percentage point decrease in the share of white voters in a state, Sanders generally performed about two-thirds of a point worse in terms of the final vote share. This led him to do particularly poorly in states like Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and Maryland, where he received 33% or less of the vote.
On the strength of her showing among minority voters and by performing well enough among white Democrats, Clinton was able to build a small but clear edge in the pledged delegates who would formally choose the party’s nominee at the convention in July. Adding to her margin of victory were the so-called “super delegates”— party leaders and elected officials who also receive votes at the convention. While it was clear that Clinton would win the nomination, many Sanders supporters continued to protest the outcome, even as the Democratic National Convention began. The protests worried party leaders, who understood the importance of unifying the party before the general election campaign began. Ultimately, such unity was mostly achieved, thanks in part to Sanders lending his full endorsement and support for Clinton at the convention and asking his supporters to follow suit.
Figure 2 Percent of Democratic Primary Electorate Who Were White and Support for Sanders in 2016
Note: Figure created by authors using data from exit polls compiled by Ariel Edwards-Levy. Figure includes only states where exit polls were conducted.
On July 26, Hillary Clinton officially received the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, becoming the first woman to run for president as a nominee of one of the two major parties. The achievement was a testament to Clinton’s perseverance and skill during her career in politics, but it also meant that both implicitly and explicitly, gender would be a defining feature of the general election campaign.
The Republican Party Decides Not to Decide
While “The Party Decides” theory did a good job of explaining how the Democratic nomination campaign played out, it fell far short in explaining what happened for Republicans. The nomination of Donald Trump was hardly what Republican Party leaders wanted, and many could not even tolerate it. His ascension to the top during the nomination campaign flew directly in the face of what the authors of The Party Decides would have anticipated. At the same time, Trump’s success also helped to demonstrate the importance of this theory. Trump prevailed not because the party decided on him as its nominee, but rather because the party failed to decide on anyone as its nominee. By failing to back any viable alternative to Trump, party leaders made his path to the nomination much easier.
On the eve of the first contest—the February 1 Iowa caucuses—Trump had not been endorsed by a single governor or member of Congress. By comparison, Jeb Bush had lined up at least 30 such endorsements, Marco Rubio had more than two dozen, and Ted Cruz had more than a dozen national elected officials backing him. But even these totals were paltry compared to previous nomination races. For example, during the invisible primary in 2012, Romney had secured more endorsements on his own than the entire field had received before the Iowa caucuses in 2016. Thus, it was clear that the Republican establishment was not throwing its collective weight behind any particular candidate before the primaries and caucuses began, but it was also clear that Trump was not the preferred candidate of anyone in the party establishment. A lack of party support for Trump was not particularly surprising. Trump had not been an active member of the Republican Party until recently; and, as he had no experience in elected office, he had not built ties with Republican activists and elected officials. He had, in fact, frequently been an outspoken critic of the party and Republican officeholders, a pattern that made him an even less desirable nominee for the party.
Thus, if “The Party Decides” thesis was correct, Trump’s attempt to become the Republican Party’s nominee would not be met with success. Elites would line up their endorsements behind another candidate and work to ensure that person would become the nominee instead. They would do this in order to ensure that Republicans put forward the strongest nominee in the general election campaign, as well as someone who would work in cooperation with the party. But this did not happen. While some Republican elected officials did endorse alternative candidates like Bush, Rubio, and Cruz early in the process, the number of endorsements being made was not particularly large compared to previous election cycles. In 2016, it appeared as though the party was deciding not to decide.
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