The West Wing presidential election, 2006
The most crucial incident of the campaign was the near nuclear meltdown at the San Andreo power plant in Vinick's home state of California just four weeks from election day. President Bartlet was forced to vent radioactive gases from the plant into the atmosphere and issue a large scale evacuation order for the surrounding area.
Although meltdown was avoided, the event still had a severe effect on the campaign. Vinick was a long-time supporter of nuclear power, a position that was summed up repeatedly on news broadcasts in a clip from the presidential debate where he repeatedly defended nuclear power as being "completely safe."
President Bartlet wanted to visit San Andreo, and standard protocol dictated that the President invite the state's congressional delegation to accompany him. Much to the chagrin of the Santos campaign, this meant that Vinick, as the senior Senator from California, would be able to stand by the President at the accident site. Some believed that this would allow Vinick to be "absolved" by Bartlet and provide him with an opportunity to appear presidential. However, before leaving for California, Senator Vinick publicly blamed the Bartlet Administration for maintaining lax federal regulations. This public slap in the face, combined with a spat with Vinick on Air Force One over the safety of nuclear power, led President Bartlet to refuse to make a statement blaming his own administration for the accident, thus thwarting Vinick's pursuit of absolution.
In addition, any positive publicity Vinick may have gained from the trip soon vanished when The Washington Post reported that while in the Senate, Vinick played a key role in furnishing quick federal authorization for the San Andreo nuclear power plant decades earlier. This revelation caused a dramatic turn of public opinion against Vinick, who until then had a rather substantial lock on the electoral college. He managed to regain some ground in a press conference following the near nuclear meltdown in which he provided compelling rationale that nuclear energy was still safe.
The accident however proved to be the turning point of the campaign. States with nuclear plants saw a sudden shift in polling away from Vinick, increasing the number of undecided voters and Santos supporters, bringing several states into contention (including Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, and California[3]). In polls done at the national level, both men were locked in a statistical tie of 44 percent.
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Election day
Election Day arrived on November 7, 2006. A variety of factors seemed to affect voter turnout and each campaigns' expectations of the results. Rain in Boston looked to deter voter turnout in the key districts Santos needed to carry Massachusetts, while massive field operations were employed to get the Latino vote to the polls for Santos. Strategists in both camps noted various problems with exit polls, citing new laws that might have affected the data collected in unexpected ways while other polls were skewed by disproportionate samples.
The election started off with a pair of surprises: South Carolina, traditionally a Republican state, but one that President Bartlet had won four years before, was called for Santos within minutes of polls closing on the East Coast while West Virginia, a traditionally Democratic state (but one which has recently become strongly Republican and was the home state Vinick's running mate, Ray Sullivan), was called for Vinick. More expected outcomes were had with the blue-leaning swing states of Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania going to Santos and the solid red states of Indiana and Kentucky going to Vinick both by 60% to 40%.
The election was thrown into potential chaos when Leo McGarry, Santos' running mate, died from a sudden heart attack. The polls on the west coast were open for another ninety minutes, creating a difficult situation for both campaigns. The Santos campaign wanted to delay the announcement until after polls on the west coast closed, fearing that undecideds in those states might choose to rely on Vinick's experience in the wake of McGarry's passing (though they realized this option was impossible given the number of people outside the campaign who knew about McGarry's death). Some in the Vinick campaign saw McGarry's death as a potential rationale for challenging the election results if the Senator lost (the logic being that people had voted for Santos and McGarry, so the results were tainted by McGarry's death). Vinick vehemently refused to employ this option, finding it unconscionable to use the death of a candidate as a tool for challenging the outcome of an election.
As the night went on, the election became a tit-for-tat, see-saw battle. Vinick captured the lower Midwest and Great Plains, including both Iowa and Ohio by 51% to 49%, although Santos took the reliable presidential bellwether state of Missouri, foreshadowing his eventual victory. With the exception of South Carolina and uncalled Texas, Vinick captured most of the South, including Florida, and Vinick also won the non-contiguous conservative state of Alaska. The red states of the Mountain West all went to Vinick, although Santos took three of the four Southwestern swing states due to Latino support, with only Nevada left in play. Two blue-leaning Pacific states, Washington and Hawaii, also went to Santos. Most of the traditionally Democratic Northeast also went to Santos, including the libertarian-leaning swing state and Bartlet home state of New Hampshire. Although a welcome surprise for Vinick were his victories in the states of Maine and Vermont, both by 52% to 48%, due to strong support from libertarian and independent voters in these states. Finally, a big blow was dealt when Texas was called for Santos, by 52% to 48%, and it looked as if the Democrats were headed towards a surprise runaway victory. Indeed, Vinick believed a Santos win in California was imminent, and was ready to concede the election as soon as it was announced.
That notion was quickly dispelled when California went for native son Vinick by a mere 80,000 votes, giving him 266 electoral votes to Santos' 260 putting Vinick just 4 electoral votes short of victory, with only Oregon (7 electoral votes) and Nevada (5 electoral votes) left in play. While only one of these two states would give Vinick the presidency, Santos would need to win both. Oregon was first, going into the Santos column by just 2,000 votes and making the electoral college count 267 for Santos and 266 for Vinick. That left Nevada as a "winner-take-all" for either side, a strange situation since Santos had conceded Nevada to Vinick early on in the race, while Vinick's campaign had gutted their Nevada operations to focus on California.
Finally at 5:45 AM EST on Wednesday November 8, 2006, Nevada was called for Santos, handing him both the election and the presidency. Vinick chose to concede the election rather than contest the slim margin of defeat in the Silver State (just 30,000 votes) and called Santos to congratulate him on his victory. Once the absentee ballots were counted, Santos' margin of victory in Nevada was announced as 70,000 votes.
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Election results
| Presidential Candidate | Party | Home State | Popular Vote | Electoral Vote |
Running Mate | Running Mate's Home State |
RM's Electoral Vote |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Pct | |||||||
| Matt Santos | Democratic Party | Texas | 68,746,542 | 49.63% | 272 | Leo McGarry | Illinois | 272 |
| Arnold Vinick | Republican Party | California | 69,754,328 | 50.36% | 266 | Ray Sullivan | West Virginia | 266 |
| Total | 138,500,870 | 100 % | 538 | 538 | ||||
| Needed to win | 270 | 270 | ||||||
As of the end of the second part of the episode Election Day, the following states have been called by the major TV networks, giving Santos a 272-266 victory over Vinick:
| Santos | Vinick |
|---|---|
|
|
| Total - 272 | Total - 266 |
The actual popular vote totals were never specified on the show, but it can be clearly heard twice that Vinick was winning the popular vote by around a million votes on the TV coverage. Vinick is confirmed to have won the popular vote in the episode "The Last Hurrah" although no margin or total was given. On a commentary for Season 7, John Wells states the popular vote numbers were written into the script and explains how they forgot to add them to the show and confirms that Vinick won the popular vote by over a million votes.
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Congress
The Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives with a four-seat 221-214 majority (first Democratic House Majority since 1996 in The West Wing canon). One Democratic loss was Bartlet's son-in-law, Doug Westin, who lost by a double digit margin for the New Hampshire 1st CD House seat. This was much to the outgoing President's pleasure after it was revealed prior to the election that Westin was having an affair.
The Republicans kept control of the Senate, due to Senators Fuller (D-Maine) and McKenna (D-Pennsylvania) losing their seats. That exact Republican majority is not clearly stated. The loss of the two Democrats being attributed to the loss of the Senate suggests a two seat Republican majority (52-48) and Josh describes the Republican majority as "movable". But it was also stated that to confirm a new Vice President in the Senate, they would need at least five Republicans to break ranks. Given the lack of a VP to cast a tie-breaking vote, the Democrats would therefore need 51 for a majority, probably meaning that the Democrats have 46 Senators and the Republicans have 54.
Once it was clear that the Democrats had taken back the House, a hotly contested race for the speakership began. The initial favorite was House Democratic Leader Tim Fields, a liberal Texas Congressman who was an old friend of President-Elect Santos. But Mark B. Sellner, a more moderate congressman who voted with the Republicans on school vouchers and tort reform, rapidly gained support due to perceptions that Fields was too liberal and would be a "lackey" for the Santos White House. A third candidate, Jim Marino (D-Ohio), ran to make a point on behalf of the deficit hawks, but had little support. Sellner was eventually successful in winning the race, as he reflected the opinions of the caucus and was committed to protecting the party's small majority.
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See also
- The West Wing
- The West Wing presidential election, 2002
- U.S. presidential primary
- U.S. presidential nominating convention
- U.S. presidential election debates
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References
- ^ Steinberg, Jacques. "'West Wing' Writers' Novel Way of Picking the President", The New York Times, 2006-04-10. Retrieved on 2006-04-11.
- ^ Media Life Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-04-10.
- ^ Commentary on "Duck and Cover" for FootnoteTV by Stephen Lee on January 22, 2006. Retrieved March 19, 2006.
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External links
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