Board 8 > Most consequential election in American history?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think this one has a clear winner, thought I'd run it anyway.

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It's Lincoln/Breckenridge, but I think Trump/Clinton has a good claim to being the #2 on this poll even when you discount recency bias.

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I think #2 is 1876 pretty easily

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according to the most recent election it's Trump/Biden

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#2 is 1800, and no bullshit it has a legit argument for number 1. Who knows what might of happened if it werent for Jeffersons aggressive pursuit of Louisiana.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

The correct answer (Nixon/JFK) isn't even on the list of options.

Imagine elections without televised debates. That election changed everything -- not since has ANY election been about policy.

This is a good point. Every election since has been "who is the cooler candidate/the lesser asshole".

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Whats the case for Bush/Gore supposed to be here?

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Somehow the 1860 election doesn't seem like the obvious right answer to me. It did directly lead to the Civil War, but I feel like that would have happened eventually anyway. I guess maybe the North just lets the South leave rather than finish the war if Lincoln isn't in charge?
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AxemRedRanger posted...

Whats the case for Bush/Gore supposed to be here?

Well, it's been reported that the delayed transition to the new administration made it more difficult to stop the 9/11 attack...

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KamikazePotato posted...

It's Lincoln/Breckenridge, but I think Trump/Clinton has a good claim to being the #2 on this poll even when you discount recency bias.

I think the roots of Trump stretch way farther back to Newt Gingrich and Trump just made them obvious. If it wasnt trump in 2016 I bet it was someone trumplike in 2020. Beating a sitting Hillary would probably have been a cakewalk with coronavirus.

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masterplum posted...

I think the roots of Trump stretch way farther back to Newt Gingrich and Trump just made them obvious. If it wasnt trump in 2016 I bet it was someone trumplike in 2020. Beating a sitting Hillary would probably have been a cakewalk with coronavirus.

Most world leaders actually got a popularity boost from covid (Trump probably would have too if he had made even the bare minimum effort to take it seriously)

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I voted Hayes/Tilden without really thinking about less contentious elections

Voted Lincoln

The alternate history where gore wins in 2000 is something I'm really curious about, even assuming 9/11 still happens

I'd like to see if the u.s. still goes on the middle east revenge tour without baby bush at the helm

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Jefferson/Burr, because it was directly responsible for Hamilton's death and the fall of the Treasury Department.

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My first thought was Bush/Gore tbh, hard not to wonder if wed have started the current endless wars if it went the other way.

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banananor posted...

even assuming 9/11 still happens

9/11 was going to happen. Bin Laden said the Mogadishu incident proved that the US was a paper tiger (or maybe a different metaphor), so he set the wheels of the attack in motion. Some of the terrorists were in the US in 2000, and aside from a bare handful of people, nobody expected anything like the attacks to happen.

(I say "bare handful of people" because I remember one of the prime time news shows showing a segment where a guy said a plane could theoretically be used as a weapon. That was a long time prior to 9/11, so I doubt many people remembered it before it actually happened.)

LordoftheMorons posted...

Most world leaders actually got a popularity boost from covid (Trump probably would have too if he had made even the bare minimum effort to take it seriously)

No way the MY FREEDOM right dont rally against Clinton.

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masterplum posted...

No way the MY FREEDOM right dont rally against Clinton.

I'm sure they would, but they would have already hated her

Most people were just terrified at the beginning of the pandemic, looking for reassurance that their leaders were taking the situation situation seriously and willing to give them some benefit of the doubt. Given that Clinton (or any normal president, really) certainly would have actually tried her best to address the situation, I think she'd get a similar response to those other world leaders

(Admittedly there is one area where this might break down: I could definitely see Congressional Rs just absolutely refusing to pass any sort of remotely sufficient covid relief bill if Hillary was president).

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Xeybozn posted...

Somehow the 1860 election doesn't seem like the obvious right answer to me. It did directly lead to the Civil War, but I feel like that would have happened eventually anyway. I guess maybe the North just lets the South leave rather than finish the war if Lincoln isn't in charge?

Yeah, this was the thought that struck me too. That felt like something that was going to happen sooner or later. It's probably still #1 just because it's hard to argue the hypotheticals.

#2 is between Hayes/Tilden and Jefferson/Burr, I think.

After that I think I lean towards JFK/Nixon, actually, for the rise of TV in politics. Nixon/McGovern is worth consideration for Watergate and its effect on public trust afterwards.

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xp1337 posted...

After that I think I lean towards JFK/Nixon, actually, for the rise of TV in politics.

I don't see why this makes the election itself especially consequential; that seems like a thing that happens around that time regardless of who's running

To me the matter at hand is how much the county's (or world's) trajectory meaningfully changed because candidate X won instead of Y.

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While I get 1860 leading, 1912 set the stage for everything that's happened in American politics and economics over the last century. If Wilson doesn't win the entire world is a different place.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

I don't see why this makes the election itself especially consequential; that seems like a thing that happens around that time regardless of who's running

To me the matter at hand is how much the county's (or world's) trajectory meaningfully changed because candidate X won instead of Y.

Well, that skyrockets FDR/Hoover on the list, and I did give it some thought (for the #4/5 spots where I put the Nixon elections) but I concluded "yeah but there's no way Hoover could win re-election in those circumstances."

I think it's just a matter of how you look at it, I respect your take on this.

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The oldest election sort of wins by default. Butterfly effect and all that.

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Bush/Gore is my belief because I think Gore as president would have taken actions to prevent climate change, and because we got W, we've been on a spiral decline that will never end.

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1912, this video is a great explanation on why:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLiI6kXZkZI

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HanOfTheNekos posted...

Bush/Gore is my belief because I think Gore as president would have taken actions to prevent climate change, and because we got W, we've been on a spiral decline that will never end.

This is definitely a lot more interesting than the usual "Gore would have prevented 9/11" idea. It's crazy to think how different things would be if the US had put tons of money into reducing oil dependence instead of starting a war in Iraq.
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yeah I feel like that election sealed the fate of the human race

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The global effects of Bush's presidency are still being felt to this day. He's by far the worst president of the last few decades and his policies have basically snowballed out of control. He's why our lives are all significantly worse than they were for people our age in the late 90s/early 2000s.

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Wasn't explicitly mentioned yet but my reason for thinking it's Adams/Jefferson for #2 and arguably #1 is that it was the first time we had a change in parties.

Washington wasn't part of a party but Adams was his VP so you had continuity in that sense and Washington himself stepping down was massive itself but Jefferson defeated an incumbent president from the opposite party and while Adams did some stuff like last minute appointments it was still a peaceful transition of power between parties. It was probably one of the most fragile and potentially dangerous times for democracy in the US and it held.

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Tilden/Hayes is pretty easily the answer in my book mainly because I dont even think Lincoln had the secret sauce. That could just as easily been Salman P Chase or Fremont or Edward Bates and the effects would have been comparable.

I think with Tilden/Hayes not only was a lot of the fallout devastatingly consequential, but the result we got was way worse than if either Tilden or Hayes had been able to win outright.

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I went with 1860 for obvious reasons.

My galaxy brain answer for #2 is 1916. I've been thinking a lot recently about what happened to the GOP, and where the turning point was, and I think that this is it. If Hughes wins, the Republicans are the ones one that WWI gets blamed on, and get thrown out in 1920. With the Republicans on their toes, the conservatives in the party can't afford to steamroll the progressives/moderates like they did in reality. I'm not sure how things shake out, but it can't possibly go worse for them than it actually did.

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