Ted Gains Why Isnt He Running Again
UPDATE (September xx, 2021, 3:56 p.yard.): Over the weekend, Axios reported that quondam Autonomous presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke will denote his plans to run for Texas governor later this year. And then far, no high-contour Texas Democrat has said they'll challenge Gov. Greg Abbott, simply O'Rourke — if he enters the race — could face up long odds, as he will be coming off an unsuccessful Autonomous presidential campaign in 2019 and a loss to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.
Read more on why candidates who've already lost two elections don't usually run again.
On paper, erstwhile Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke and current Florida Rep. Charlie Crist have little in common. The former, a somewhat progressive three-term Democratic Firm member with a failed presidential bid, is reportedly mulling a gubernatorial run in Texas. The latter, a former Republican, is hoping to reclaim his old role in the Florida governor's mansion — this time as a Democrat — by challenging Republican incumbent Ron DeSantis. Just both O'Rourke and Crist are risking their political credibility if they run again and lose, as they've already failed to win two consecutive runs for function. Fifty-fifty worse, they could be marked as perennial candidates. And given the rail tape of candidates who have already had multiple unsuccessful bids for college office, both men are facing uphill climbs.
For starters, candidates who've lost but in one case — let alone twice — oft don't accept much better luck the side by side get-around. Nosotros looked at candidates who've run for U.South. Senate, governor or president after they lost just one election and and then tried to run again and found that since 1998, only 33 of 121 of them have managed to win higher office later on having lost once.1 Losses transcended political parties, too, with 53 Democrats and 36 Republicans declining in their 2nd endeavour.2
In understanding why these 33 candidates were successful the 2d time around, one pattern stands out: Just over ane-third of these candidates were already in office when they tried to seek another seat; specifically, they were all sitting senators with their optics on the presidency (think Lindsey Graham of S Carolina, John McCain of Arizona and Cory Booker of New Jersey, to name a few). Another 30 percent were candidates who unsuccessfully ran for i role merely successfully ran for another (Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp). And and so there were 27 pct who lost their first race simply won in a subsequent election for the same office (onetime North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, former Nevada Sen. John Ensign). The last notable trend here is the people who have run for president more than one time, winning their party'south primary later previously losing it (Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden).three To be clear, though, neither Clinton nor Biden sought the presidency in back-to-dorsum cycles; these are just the terminal two elected offices that either sought. (Clinton ran in 2008 and 2016, while Biden ran in 2008 and 2020.) And for Biden specifically, serving every bit Barack Obama'due south vice president for eight years may have helped his 2020 bid for president, every bit he was able to build upwards both his proper noun recognition and political bona fides.
But after 2 failed bids, the numbers go even worse.4 Only xx people have run for U.S. senator, governor or president after losing two consecutive elections. And just ane, Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, who won a 2016 runoff race later on losing two previous Senate races, was successful.
That's why several political scientists I spoke to said that for candidates like O'Rourke and Crist, running a third time later two consecutive losses is a dangerous game. "It is hard for people to run successfully after losing twice," said Peter Francia, a professor of political scientific discipline at Due east Carolina University. "Donors want winners. As a issue, fundraising is a challenge. Interest groups want winners. And so, endorsements are a challenge. Local, state, and national party organizations are too strategic in where they place their resource. Voters may even grow tired of a perennial candidate."
In other words, history doesn't bode well for O'Rourke and Crist, and neither do the polls. Information technology'due south too early in the cycle for reliable caput-to-caput polling, simply favorability ratings testify that despite being relatively well-known, neither human is terribly popular. An April statewide poll by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler found that just 35 pct of registered Texas voters viewed O'Rourke very or somewhat favorably compared with 37 percent who viewed him very or somewhat unfavorably. And in a February Mason-Dixon poll of registered Florida voters, just 27 percentage viewed Crist favorably, compared with 41 percent who viewed him unfavorably.
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Plus, if O'Rourke and Crist do run and lose, they'd be in pretty bad visitor, as people who lose three elections in a row are non considered serious politicians. Nosotros constitute 19 candidates who had lost three or more elections since 1998 per our assay, and information technology included trivial presidential candidates like old Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Alan Keyes, a former diplomat and radio commentator who ran long-shot bids twice — not to mention a bid for the U.Southward. Senate, besides. Not all candidates started out unserious, though. Onetime Washington state Sen. Dino Rossi, for case, was a respected politician who ruined his career by running for role unsuccessfully several times. That said, many who autumn into this category are like Paul and Keyes, or Roque De La Fuente, a businessman and car dealership owner who lost so many times on the Republican and Democratic tickets that he'south now a perennial third-political party candidate.
The all-time-case scenario, then, for people like O'Rourke and Crist if they exercise run once more and lose is that they become someone similar old land Rep. Cam Cavasso of Hawaii — a respectable politician whose legacy was overshadowed equally he gained a reputation every bit a perennial loser. (Beginning in 1984, Cavasso was elected to three consecutive terms in the Hawaii House simply ran for a U.S. Senate seat three times and lost in 2004, 2010 and 2014.)5
"The process of losing tends to characterization ane a loser," said David Barker, a professor of government at American University. "You get-go to look like somebody who'south simply so ambitious that you don't care near annihilation else … and you start to look like a petty flake of a fool. If you want to exist taken seriously, or seen equally someone who cares well-nigh the problems, then you lot find non-political ways to contribute for a while, let some time become by and use that as a springboard for the time to come."
Plus, said Barker, having the stain of a loser isn't good for voter psychology. In fact, i 2015 study by professors at Washington University in St. Louis, Harvard University and UCLA, institute that when Obama defeated Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, Republicans' reported happiness decreased twice as much as the reported happiness of Bostonians after the Boston Marathon bombing and American parents after the Sandy Hook Elementary Schoolhouse shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. That'due south because, the authors note, partisan identity is cardinal to the cocky and well-being. "[T]he hurting of losing an election is much larger than the joy of winning one," they write. "Election outcomes strongly affect the curt-term happiness/sadness of partisan losers, with minimal bear upon on partisan winners."
Of course, this hasn't stopped a lot of candidates from running over again, and some of them, like Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who have each run for president twice, nonetheless accept their reputations intact thanks to their political dynasty or passionate fan base. But they're the exception, not the norm. Most perennial candidates don't find much political success, and later on two consecutive losses, a candidate's chances of winning become dicey.
In short, Barker said, if voters' most contempo memory of a candidate is two election losses, they may not want to vote for that person again. "They commencement to view you equally desperate," he said. "You're similar the guy who won't terminate calling after you've already told them no."
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Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-most-candidates-dont-run-again-after-losing-twice/
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