American Presidential Races

1992 was an unusual race because there was an unusually strong third party candidate (Ross Perot), that led to an unusual occurance of a president being denied a second term, and this also produced the meteoric rise of Bill Clinton, who was barely on the radar at the beginning of the election year.

2000 was an unusual race because of the unpopularity of both candidates, because the Florida count went down to the wire, because of the coincidence that the Governor of Florida was the brother of one of the candidates, and because the Supreme Court played an unusually decisive role in determining the winner of the election. It's unusual because it was won by a candidate who won fewer votes (but who won more electoral college votes)

2004 was an unusual race because of the improbability that a dullard like dubya would win a second term, and because of the viciousness of the attacks on John Kerry.

2008 was an unusual race because a black guy won. (Actually his mom's white). And it's unusual because the primary was very heavily contested. Nobody believed that anybody would vote in a Republican again, even if he's a half decent guy like John McCain.

2016 was an unusual race because the guy who won was unbelievably even less qualified than Dubya. It was unusually mean-spirited. It was the first election to feature a female candidate for a major party. And for only the second time in hundred years, the winner of the election polled fewer votes than the loser. Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million and still became president, because of the quirks in the way Republicans and Democrats are spread out amongst the states.

2020 is maybe the most unusual race of all because it will take place in the middle of a pandemic, and because both candidates are really really old. Biden might have to beat Trump in a landslide in order to win the presidency, but it's possible that he just might do it.

And that would mean that in the last 30 years, the only "normal" presidential race took place in 1996 and 2012.