A Layman's Guide to U.S. Presidential Politics.

How a behind-the-scenes Washington political strategist sizes things up. Hint: Watch Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Since America's two-party system emerged in pretty much its present form in the election of 1828, the Electoral College has elevated the winner of the national popular vote 41 of a possible 43 times. One of the two times the Electoral College was "wrong," in 1876, it was not so much the Electoral College as the Republican-controlled Congress which pried away the presidency from Democratic nominee Samuel Tilden, as part of a Byzantine deal to bring Reconstruction to an end. The last time, or (depending on how you score 1876) the only time, the Electoral College differed from the popular vote was in 1888, when Republican Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College while being edged out by Democratic President Grover Cleveland in the popular vote. In the subsequent twenty-seven consecutive presidential elections, the Electoral College winner has always been the candidate who finished first in the popular vote.

Given this history, it's no wonder most eyes glaze over at the very mention of the words "Electoral College." A relic of our founders' reservations about direct democracy in the late eighteenth century, a time when no such thing had ever been achieved beyond the confines of a city state, the Electoral College today is not a deliberative body, but a way of apportioning 535 voting units to the 50 states according to the size of their delegations to Congress, plus three electoral votes to the District of Columbia, the nation's capital that sends no voting members to either house of Congress. A majority of the total available electoral votes (270 of a possible 538) is required to elect a President. (If no majority is achieved, the House chooses the president and the Senate chooses the vice president.)

To the casual eye, then, the Electoral College appears an oddity of the election-night vote count, nothing more.

Yet every strategist involved in presidential politics becomes, of necessity, an expert in the Electoral College. And if the decision-makers who run the campaigns, up to and including the major-party nominees, are thinking about the Electoral College whenever they make a move concerning travel, campaign spending, and even issue selection, it'll be hard to know what's going on in the intense period that begins following the national conventions in August unless you have some sense of what makes the Electoral College so important to the participants.

The biggest single reality of the Electoral College is that the states can choose how to cast their electoral votes, and that almost all states choose to cast their electoral votes as a bloc on a winner-take-all basis -- from the 3 votes possessed by Wyoming and six other states, all the way up to the 54 cast by California.

Therefore, if a national campaign knows its candidate cannot carry a state, even a state as big as California or New York or Texas, any money spent in that state is a dead loss. Not a single electoral vote can be won there, even if the popular vote in that state winds up closer than expected. It is in the interest of the campaign to terminate serious spending in such a state, and shift the money and effort to a state or states where the candidate has a chance to build toward the 270 electoral votes necessary for election.

In the 1980s, the Republican Party dominated presidential politics. The GOP's worst showing in the three elections comprising the age of Ronald Reagan was in 1988, when Vice President George Bush won the popular vote by eight percentage points and swept the Electoral College by a margin of 426 to 111 for Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. Yet it is interesting that, among political insiders, the most widely heard description of this dominance was "Republican lock" or "electoral lock," terms that alluded to the Electoral College.

They were popularized by the late Horace Busby, a respected Democratic activist-turned-analyst of the presidential power curve. Busby sensed that, beginning around 1968, there existed a bloc of conservative states, mostly in the South and non-coastal West, which were exceedingly unlikely to vote for a liberal Democrat for President. Taken together, these states had slightly more than 200 electoral votes.

In other words, working for a typically liberal Democrat like Dukakis or Walter Mondale, national Democratic strategists found themselves at the outset of the campaign, facing the need to win 270 out of the roughly 330 electoral votes realistically "in play." Yes, they could concentrate their spending and time in fewer than thirty states, but the Republican edge in the "electoral lock" states then became so obvious that strategists for Reagan and Bush soon realized they, too, could deemphasize those states, deploying their money and effort toward carefully selected targets among the less conservative states the Democrats were trying desperately to win. So the Democrats came to believe not only that they started the campaign as underdogs, but also that even if everything broke in their direction, they still might not get the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Following Dukakis' defeat in 1988, the frustration among Democratic presidential strategists was hard to exaggerate. Democrats then enjoyed overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress, and still dominated state and local offices in virtually every region of the country. Not unreasonably, they considered themselves the majority party of the country. Yet they had carded exactly one of the previous six presidential elections. Democrats had so little hope of winning in 1992 that all of their nationally known leaders, including Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, and Bill Bradley, decided to stay out of the race altogether.

But just as Horace Busby's GOP "electoral lock" was becoming conventional wisdom, it was about to end. The withdrawal of Cuomo and the other Democratic heavyweights, combined with the Bush recession of 1990 to 1991, provided an opening for an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, to win the 1992 nomination and election as a "different kind of Democrat." Clinton's key strategist, James Carville, is best known for his phrase, "The economy, stupid." By that, Carville meant more than the need to take political advantage of economic weakness. He also meant that Clinton needed to move to the center on contentious cultural and lifestyle issues (for example, prison furloughs, opposition to the death penalty, and ACLU membership) that had made it virtually impossible for Dukakis to contend seriously in the more conservative parts of the country. A metaphor Carville often used for all this was "picking the Republican lock."

The only other Democrat to win the presidency in the years between 1964 and 1992, Jimmy Carter of Georgia, had done so in 1976 essentially by holding most of the liberal-leaning Northeast and carrying all but one state in his native South, the most conservative region of the country. Even so, Carter needed Ohio and a handful of other states outside his two strong regions to win with 297 electoral votes, the smallest Electoral College majority since 1916. Even with his Northeastern strength, Carter lost to Gerald Ford in 25 of the 34 states outside the South and Border regions.

In 1992, Clinton's victory over President Bush was both broader and far less based on regional loyalty to Clinton and his running mate, fellow Southerner Al Gore. In fact, Clinton-Gore lost most of the South's electoral votes, but had the upper hand just about everywhere else. Clinton won every state in the Northeast and every state in the vote-rich Great Lakes except Indiana. Perhaps even more impressively, Clinton "raided" into the most conservative bedrock of the "electoral lock," winning four of the eight Rocky Mountain states. To put that showing in perspective, Clinton was the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, to win any of the Mountain states' electoral votes. All in all, Clinton defeated Bush by a little more than 6 percent in the popular vote (43 to 37, with 19 percent for third-party candidate Ross Perot) and by an impressive 370 to 168 margin in the Electoral College.

In 1996, Clinton's popular-vote margin of 8 percent over Bob Dole (49 to 41, with 8 percent for Perot) was only a shade higher than his margin over Bush, so it is not surprising that only 5 of the 50 states switched sides relative to 1992. Dole added two Mountain states and Georgia, while Clinton came away with Arizona and a far bigger prize, Florida, with its 25 electoral votes. So although Clinton won one less state than four years earlier, he scored a net gain of 8 votes in the Electoral College.

The most interesting wrinkle in that year's Electoral College strategy was the Dole campaign's decision to put major money into trying to win California (54 electoral votes) while pulling the plug on Pennsylvania (23 electoral votes). The result? Clinton won California by 13 percent in 1992 and by 13 percent in 1996. Clinton won Pennsylvania by 9 percent in 1992 and by 9 percent in 1996.

These results, seemingly so static, have major implications for 2000. Pennsylvania is in play for Republican candidate George W. Bush in a close national election. California is not.

That is not to say Bush will win Pennsylvania, or lose California. From 1980 on, they have always voted the same way -- for the national winner.

But the last two times they divided -- in 1968 and 1976 -- California went Republican and Pennsylvania went Democratic. The next time they divide -- that is, perhaps, in the next close national election -- there will almost certainly be a role reversal. Since the emergence of social issues as central defining issues between the parties in the post-Cold War elections, socially conservative Pennsylvania has become more Republican and socially liberal California has become more Democratic. The extent of the double trend, and partisan role reversal, was undoubtedly obscured by Dole's decision to target the wrong state, California, in his 1996 Electoral College strategy. It is unlikely that Bush and his strategists will make the same mistake.

The most interesting thing about presidential polls in 2000 is not the fact that most have shown Bush ahead nationally. It is the suggestion in state polls that the Bush-Gore race may resemble the conservative-liberal patterns of the 1980s, rather than the less ideological mix of Clinton's victories of the 1990s. This is potentially good news for Bush.

Gore's greatest strength is in the Northeast and Pacific Coast, but that is no surprise. Even Walter Mondale, back in 1984, did better not just in the Northeast, but also in California, relative to his national showing. In 1988, Dukakis -- who won only 10 of the 50 states -- carded much of the Northeast over Vice President Bush, nearly won California, and wrested Washington and Oregon from the GOP coalition.

What is surprising in state polls is Bush's dominance in the South and in other bedrock states of the old "Republican lock." If this pattern continues, it will give Bush flexibility to put big resources into the chain of Great Lakes industrial states that will be pivotal in the event of a close popular vote: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and possibly Illinois. Assuming his strength in conservative areas holds up, Bush can probably graduate from the Electoral College by winning only two of those four big Great Lakes states.

For Gore, the challenge is to escape the need to have all or most of these Great Lakes states break his way. The clearest way to do this is to put Florida's 25 electoral votes in play. Bush is strong in the South, but Florida is in many ways the least culturally Southern of the Southern states. Clinton-Gore won the state, 48 to 42, four years ago, and a move that won Gore major national criticism -- his refusal to go along with the Clinton administration's repatriation of Elian Gonzales -- actually gives him more of a shot at winning Florida than staying close to Clinton on the issue would have.

In anything other than presidential politics, California, Texas, and New York are the quintessential trend-setting states to watch. But on election night, and in the weeks leading up to it, concentrate instead on Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. It is in these states that the key to the 2000 Electoral College is most likely to be found.

Bush: A return to the 1980 pattern?

The most interesting thing about presidential polls in 2000 is not that most have shown Bush ahead nationally. It is the suggestion in state polls that the Bush-Gore race may resemble the conservative-liberal patterns of the 1980s, rather than the less ideological mix of Clinton's victories of the 1990s. This is potentially good news for Bush.

Gore: Putting Florida in play?

For Gore, the challenge is to escape the need to have all or most of these Great Lakes states break his way. The clearest way to do this is to put Florida's 25 electoral votes in play. Bush is strong in the South, but Florida is in many ways the least culturally Southern of the Southern states. Clinton-Gore won the state, 4842, four years ago, and a move that won Gore major national criticism -- his refusal to go along with the Clinton administration's repatriation of Elian Gonzales -- actually gives him more of a shot at winning Florida than staying close to Clinton on the issue would have.

Jeff Bell is a Principal with Capitol City Partners, a Washington, D. C.-based consulting firm.