The West Wing timeline and elections my favourite subject!!!!

The President's up to Nixon are set, then of course it gets vague. I think Albert and Ford where Presidents in this timeline (although Ford dies earlier than the real world as he is not alive when President's Bartlet and Former President Newman and Former Acting President Walken go Former President Lassister's Funeral in Jan 2004).

D W Newman served only 1 term that is made clear in that epsiode and that Lassister beat him for re-election. It was never made clear that Lassister was the President directly before Bartlet, although it would mean that if he wasn't then the Republican prior to Bartlet died before August 1999, just eight months after leaving office (August 1999 is when the first epsiode is set). It does get a little more confused when during the 2006 election between Vinick and Santos, Vinick mentions that California is play for the Republicans for the first time in 25 years- which equals to the 1982 election. Now we know Lassister was from California is it possable for him to win both of his elections without his own state, rather unlikely.

It is also mentioned at various points during the 2006 election that a Republican had won 49 out of 50 states twice in the last 30 years. One of these may have been Nixon's win 1972 and was rounding down.

Also it was noted that during the 2006 election that no Senator had won a Presidential Election since 1960 (same as our world), which rules out Newman and Lassister being from Senate when they ran for President.

As for the 1998 election in which Bartlet won the Presidency it was never made clear who he defeated. Now there was a a single throwaway line in Series 7 (during the 2006 election), when talking about eight years before " I wouldn’t have gotten the money because I would have been in Illinois. The polls there looked as bad as when we were running against Eisenhower".

Eisenhower it seems was Bartlet's opponent in 1998.

THE 1998 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Two term New Hampshire Governor Josiah Bartlet and his running mate Texas Sentor John Hoynes won the Presidency by 303-235 in the electoral college (confirmed in series 5 epsiode Memorial Day). They got 48% of the vote and 48 million votes. Now it was mentioned our a couple of ocassions that Hoynes helped Bartlet win the south. Now it was mentioned that Bartlet won both Florida and Georgia in 1998 and he did lose in Texas.

It was also mentioned that he won in Oregon by just 10,000 votes.

He also lost in Maine and looks likely to have lost in New Mexico and Colorado (In his landslide 2002 re-election he only carried New Mexico by 6,000 votes, and it was mentioned that Bartlet was never popular in Colorado and New Mexico).

Anyone want to guess how the states fell in 1998 based the small bits of information given during the seven series of the show.