It doesn’t matter which candidate you’d rather have a beer with
By many measures, the turn of the 21st century was a fantastic time to live in the United States. The economy was roaring, the U.S. was paying down its debt with its surpluses and there was relative global peace. In January 2000, 69 percent of Americans told Gallup they were satisfied with the way things were going in the country, one of the highest ratings ever.
As President Bill Clinton's second term wound down, there was every opportunity for his vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore to take credit for those good vibes. In fact, some election forecast models suggested Gore may get up to 60 percent of the popular vote in the 2000 election.
That, of course, didn't happen. Gore won just 48.4 percent of the vote, which was half a percentage point better than Republican candidate George W. Bush, but not enough to win the Electoral College. For observers who believed peace and a good economy were the key ingredients for electoral success, it was something of a conundrum.
One explanation for Gore's loss was that voters simply didn't find him likable or relatable. It was summed up by a talking point that grew popular among pundits and pollsters in the 2000s: "the beer question." The idea was that voters might choose presidential candidates based on who they would rather have a beer with, or who they could better relate to personally, instead of on things like the economy. And Bush did in fact win the "beer question" in polling from 2000.
This is the third installment of the 538 Politics podcast mini-series, "Campaign Throwback." Across three episodes, we take a look back at campaign tropes from past elections and assess where those tropes came from, whether they were actually true at the time and if they still hold up today. In past episodes we reevaluated the conventional wisdom of "it's the economy, stupid" and asked whether "soccer moms" really are the quintessential swing voter. In our third installment, we look at the "beer question."
Are Americans really choosing their presidents based on personal relatability? If so, what implications does that have for our democracy? And if not, why did election watchers become so obsessed with it as an explanation? Listen to the podcast below, or wherever you get your podcasts:
