Doug Sosnik was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and co-wrote a New York Times best-seller on the future of politics in the United States.

The end of the 2016 presidential election is actually much closer than you might think.

In every game there are decisive moments that determine the ultimate outcome. We like to think that presidential elections are dramatic fall campaigns pitting party against party, but the truth is that the most decisive moments often occur long before the general election kicks off. If history is any guide, the outcome of next year’s presidential campaign will likely be determined before the Republican Party has even selected their nominee. That uncomfortable fact means that the longer and more divisive the Republican primary, the less likely the party will be to win back the White House in 2016.


In eight out of the last nine presidential elections these decisive periods of time can all be traced back to the run up to the general election—not the fall campaign. With the exception of the 2000 election—which was an outlier on every front—voters locked in their attitudes about the direction of the country, the state of their own well-being and the presidential candidates—and their political party—prior to the start of the general election. Once voters’ views solidified, subsequent campaign events or activities simply served to reinforce their initial perceptions about the candidate and party best prepared to lead the country.

In general, the job approval ratings of the incumbent president, regardless of whether they are running for reelection, serve as a proxy for the electorate’s mood and have historically been the most accurate predictor of election outcomes. And the public’s view of the state of the economy and its expectations for the future are the strongest drivers of the job approval ratings of the sitting president. Since 1980 there have been five presidential elections where the incumbent had a job approval rating near or above 50 percent prior to the start of the general election. In each of these elections, the incumbent’s party won the election. In the three instances when the incumbent president’s job approval fell below 40 percent prior to the start of the general election, their party lost each time.

Conventional wisdom has it that the 1980 presidential election was an exception to this rule, but in truth that race only bolsters the pattern. The lore from the race had Jimmy Carter headed to re-election before his support disintegrated in the final two weeks of the election, leading to a massive defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. But that analysis ignored the most significant factors that ultimately determined the outcome of the election. It’s true that Carter led in the polls in the three-way race until the middle of October. However, by mid-May his job approval rating had dropped to 38 percent; it remained under 40 percent for the rest of the campaign. Despite the fact that he led in the polls until mid-October, Carter’s job approval numbers reflected the fact that the country had decided six months before the election that they had had enough of him. By the end of October the anti-incumbent vote had consolidated around Reagan, with Carter’s final 41 percent vote reflecting his low approval ratings throughout the year.

Since Reagan’s 1980 victory, the media have continued to over-emphasize the significance of the general election in presidential races. Rather than reporting on the fundamentals that will ultimately determine election outcomes, the media continue to place a relentless focus on the daily tracking polls—despite the fact that they have proven increasingly inaccurate over the last 20 years. The last presidential race is a good example. In 2012, reporters who followed the ups and downs of the tracking polls concluded that Romney had surged following the first presidential debate. But in reality Obama had already put the election away long before the Republicans had selected their nominee. Obama’s final 51 percent of the vote closely tracked his job approval numbers that remained steady and well within that range during the last year of his first term.

It’s not just history that suggests that the significance of the general election has diminished. There has also been a steady increase in voters casting ballots long before Election Day, with 33 states plus the District of Columbia allowing some form of early voting. Today, every state west of the Mississippi allows early voting. In three of those states—Colorado, Oregon and Washington—all votes are cast by mail before Election Day. In the 2012 election, nationwide 32 percent of all ballots were cast early, with an increasing number of states allowing voting to begin 45 days before Election Day. In these states ballots are being cast prior to the fall presidential debates.

There is every indication that past trends will continue to hold in 2016 and that the outcome of the presidential election will come into focus well before the general election. During this period when voters are beginning to seriously contemplate the type of person they want to lead the country, the Republicans will likely be in the middle of a prolonged and messy internecine intra-party fight—a fight that the unique attributes of the 2016 election will likely make more vocal, extreme and prolonged than the party will wish.

This period of primaries and caucuses will be marked by a relentless barrage of negative ads by the candidates designed to drive down the image of their opponents. At the same time, Republicans will be focused on locking down the hearts and minds of their right-wing base voters rather than appealing for mainstream support.

If these challenges aren’t enough, there are a series of factors—when taken together—during this critical period that that will further complicate Republicans’ attempts to take back the White House.

First, and foremost, the battle for the Republican nomination for president is really an existential fight about the future direction of the party rather than merely a race to collect a majority of delegates. At its core this is an ideological fight with the ascendant tea party-inspired populist and libertarian wing of the party poised to take over the GOP. This Koch brothers-backed effort is being built, funded and operated outside the national political party structure.

The last time that the GOP went through a similar transition was in 1976 when an emerging coalition of southern and western small business conservatives began to wrest control of the party away from the more moderate Midwestern and Northeastern Wall Street wing. This insurgent wing took the nomination fight all the way to the Republican convention in Kansas City, backing Ronald Reagan against the incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford. While this protracted fight likely cost them the White House, they were successful in not only taking over the party in 1976 but also electing Reagan to the presidency in 1980.

With Reagan’s election, the Republican Party became the dominant political party in the country for the following 25 years, amassing power at the state level and in Congress that it hadn’t achieved in decades. Only Bill Clinton was able to stop the Republican dominance during this period due to his superior political and governing skills.

By the beginning of Bush’s second term, the Republican Party had become a spent force that was no longer capable of driving the national debate. During the summer of 2005, a combination of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina and Terry Schiavo sent George W. Bush’s approval ratings into free-fall. For most of the remainder of his presidency, Bush’s ratings remained under 40 percent.

His dismal standing, combined with a Republican-controlled Congress plagued by sex scandals, corruption and out of control spending, has left the national Republican Party with net negative favorability ratings for over a decade. Over a decade.

While it is true that the Republicans now control both branches of Congress, as well as a significant majority of governorships and state legislatures around the country, it’s not enough to become the dominant political party in the country—not without the White House. Despite their successes in these recent off-year elections, Republicans have been unable to articulate a coherent national party agenda that appeals to a majority of Americans in the last two presidential elections—and they’ve lost the popular vote now in five of the last six presidential elections. At a time when the electorate’s makeup is changing and views on social issues are evolving, Republicans continue to espouse a backward vision for the country.

Second, the large Republican field, which is likely to number between 15 and 20 candidates, will make it very difficult for the party to have a serious and meaningful debate about the future. When the Republican Party enters the lengthy six-month joint appearance phase of the primary process with at least nine scheduled presidential debates, there will be a strong incentive for the candidates to “out conservative” their opponents in order to gain enough support to remain viable when the primaries and caucuses begin next February. The “brand builders” looking to capitalize on their notoriety after the presidential campaign with book deals, speaking tours and lucrative television contracts and the right wingers promoting their extreme positions on social issues are the candidates who are likely to stand out with memorable and clever sound bites in the cluttered field—just look at how Donald Trump has monopolized the GOP’s conversation over recent days.

Third, the Republican Party has continued to maintain a primary process that encourages an extended and protracted nomination fight. Under this system delegates are distributed proportionally for the first six weeks before moving to a “winner take all” allocation of delegates in the middle of March, which should finally begin a process to winnow the field. It took Romney until May 29, 2012, to secure enough delegates to lock down the nomination against an historically weak field. Just imagine what could happen next year if there are two, three or even four serious candidates headed into the spring?

Lastly, in the post- Citizens United world of unlimited amounts of unregulated money flowing into our political system, there is very little motivation for candidates to get out of the race as long as at least one of their wealthy backers continues to fund their campaigns. In a nomination fight where the system makes it very difficult to secure the necessary delegates for victory, ideologically based candidates have every incentive to stay in the race for as long as possible to promote their views.

In addition to the four challenges outlined, there are several other significant obstacles that Republicans must contend with in order to win the presidency next year. The first is the math. The current Electoral College map continues to clearly favor Democrats. In every one of the past six elections Democrats have carried 18 states plus the District of Columbia, totaling 242 of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win. During this same period, Republicans have carried 13 states totaling just 102 electoral votes.

Perhaps just as significantly, given the history of elections going back to 1980, Obama’s relative popularity continues to pose a challenge for Republicans intent on taking back the White House. Unlike his predecessors whose popularity varied greatly throughout their time in office, Obama’s all-important job approval ratings have remained quite durable and have stayed within a narrow band since the summer of 2009, with a high of 53 percent and a low of 40 percent. If there’s an expectation that the economy will continue to improve, it is even more likely that his approval ratings will hold in the upper end of this range. If that happens, the Democratic nominee would be in a very favorable position to hold the White House next year.

Working off of this thin margin, how and when the Republican nomination fight is settled is likely to determine their chances of winning the presidency next year. The longer it takes Republicans to unite behind a common agenda and a nominee, the more likely that Democrats will be able—for the first time since 1940—to hold the White House for 12 consecutive years.