The data used for calculating both the VPR and the Predicted VPR, based on Official U.S. Government data, can be found below. From 2000 to 2020, the number of ballots cast in Tennessee has increased by 47.09% and the population during this same period increased by 21.47% – a 2.2 Times increase in ballots versus Population.
A positive incline trend for the total VPR. Most election results fall within the Tolerance Bounds.
Outlier #1 is the result of a lackluster campaign in 1948 with low turnout by both of the two major parties, especially the Republicans. In 1968, we see the voting level at the Upper Tolerance Bound; this can mostly be explained by additional votes being cast for the major 3rd Party candidacy of George Wallace. Again we see this happening in 1992 with the major 3rd Party candidacy of Ross Perot. In 1996, the voting level is along the Lower Tolerance Bound; this is the result of a poor performance by the Republican candidate (Bob Dole) and support for Perot being half of what it was in the prior election.
With both individual party VPR being below their trend line, this resulted in the Total VPR for 2000, with the race between Bush versus Gore, to be along the Lower Tolerance Bound. Al Gore is from Tennessee, but he did NOT win his home state. There are several possible reasons for Gore’s lost and the low Total VPR. It is believed that Al Gore’s values changed too much for the citizens of Tennessee after leaving the state and becoming a part of the Washington DC crowd. But Bush didn’t fare much better with these same people either; many thought a vote for Bush was a vote for the “rich.” The result was a very low level of voting in
2000.
For the 2012 election cycle, we see the data point for the Total VPR actually below the Lower Tolerance Bound (a marginal Outlier). This can be mostly explained by support for Obama by Democrats greatly waning for a second term in the Volunteer state. Election Cycle 2016 is also a negative Outlier. Similar to what happened to Al Gore in 2000, many of the people in Tennessee didn’t believe Hillary Clinton represented their values; with a poor performance by the Democrats, this dragged the Total VPR way down. The 2020 election is actually what one would expect to see with these regression charts: Trump was above the Tolerance Bound with an offsetting move on the downside by Biden; the net result was a very small movement off the trend line for the Total VPR.
In part and with a Vote Difference for the Total VPR of only 61,506 votes, Tennessee is considered as having one of the more Free and Fair elections in the 2020 cycle.
The long-term trend for both the Republicans and Democrats have a (positive) incline, but more so for the Republicans.
For the Republicans in both 1972 and 1984, they were positive Outliers for their party VPRs/charts; and likewise for the Democrats in 1964 and 1976, they too were positive Outliers. In each of these instances of an overly strong support for the candidate by the voting population, there is at least a somewhat offsetting move in the opposite direction by the other party candidate. (This is most striking for 1972 in the race between Nixon versus McGovern, where some of the largest margins ever were recorded.) In 2000, Gore was below his trend line; it is believe that he did not represent the views of most citizens in Tennessee, regarding abortion, gun control, and tobacco. Bush too was below his trend line in that election as well. But the Republicans bounce back in both 2004 and 2008 in the Volunteer state. Even with a fairly large Black population, Obama did not receive the level of support found in other Southern states with similar demographics in the 2008 and 2012 election cycles. Again, Clinton did very poorly in 2016. For 2020, note the (positive) Vote Difference number of 257,774 for the Republicans and the (negative) Vote Difference number of -256,392 for the Democrats.
Very often this category of votes represents 1% or less, close to zero, of the total population. But in cycles where there is greater than a 1% showing, it generally creates havoc for the two major parties at the national level – with the election being “thrown” from one party to the other.
In 1968 for the state of Tennessee, it was a close 3-way race involving George Wallace – helping Nixon to win the state. Ross Perot performance in Tennessee for 1992 was not as strong as seen in other states; and half of that level in 1996.
Because the 3 rd Party vote is usually at or very close to zero (with the exception of 1948, 1968, 1992, 1996, and 2016), the Data for this section is Insufficient for Linear Regression Analysis.
