Jeb Bush's greatest advantage is being from Florida

Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia has long since anointed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as the "nominal frontrunner" for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. It's partly due to the lacklusterness of the opposition (third time's the charm, Mitt) and partly due to the fact that he's the only Republican so far to have officially announced an exploratory committee into a candidacy. But Jeb Bush has a fairly obvious advantage that comes into play not just in the general election but in the nomination fight, too: He's from Florida.

This may be less important for the general election than you think. While Mitt Romney's decisive loss in Massachusetts in 2012 and Al Gore's loss of Tennessee in 2000 probably burn sharply in the minds of the two men (probably more so Gore than Romney, since winning any other one state would have won Gore the presidency), those two are exceptions to the general historical trend: presidential candidates almost always win their home states. Before Gore, the last candidate to lose his home state at all (while winning at least one other state) was George McGovern, who lost his home state of South Dakota by over 8 points in 1972, and the last candidate to lose his home state while winning the presidency was Richard Nixon, who didn't need New York to win the presidency in 1968. (Nixon therefore belongs to an exclusive club along with Woodrow Wilson and James Polk, the other two presidents who were elected without the support of their home states.)

Even so, that may not be so much due to a "native son" effect as much as it's a result of the nomination process working. Democratic primary voters will probably nominate a moderate-to-liberal candidate; these candidates are easiest to find in places like New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and so on. Those moderate-to-liberal candidates will likely win New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California not necessarily because they're from one of those states, but because those states tend to vote for moderate-to-liberal candidates anyway, especially when given the choice between that and a moderate-to-conservative candidate. Of course, in a state as close as Florida is at the national level, being from there might make a difference. But for someone like Hillary Clinton (New York) or Rick Perry (Texas), there is no real home state advantage to make use of.

Primaries, though, are different. In a primary, it's no longer a broad spectrum of voters comparing the moderate-liberal candidate to the moderate-conservative candidate; it's now the right side of the political spectrum trying to pick its favorite moderate-conservative candidate out of a bunch of conservative candidates (for the Republican primary, that is). This means distinguishing between candidates ideologically is much more difficult, and other factors may come into play. One might be electability--does even the most partisan of Republicans really believe that, barring a massive, 1929-sized economic implosion, that Ted Cruz can beat Hillary Clinton? But another easy factor could be home state. I, as a New Jerseyan, might vote for Chris Christie in the Republican primary since he's from the state, and I know I can trust a New Jerseyan to serve the functions of the office well.

Okay, couldn't keep a straight face for that one. But just replace "New Jersey" with "Florida" or "Wisconsin" or "Texas" or whatever state you like. (As long as it's not Illinois.) Historically, this home-state advantage has been just as real in the primaries as it has been in general elections, if not more so:

The chart lists all of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates who have won the popular vote in at least one state in presidential primaries dating back to 1976, the first year where both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates ran in primaries in all fifty states, plus the District of Columbia. (It does not include candidates from primaries where one candidate won every state--so the 2012 Democratic primary and the 2004 Republican primary, for example, are not included on this list because those were swept by incumbent presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, respectively.) I've bolded those candidates that ended up being the nominee. 

73.9% of the candidates on this list won their home states in the presidential primary. This includes 2004 Democratic candidates John Edwards and Howard Dean, who won their respective home states of North Carolina and Vermont even though they had already publicly suspended their campaigns. Another home-state loss, that of Jesse Jackson in Illinois in 1988, doesn't "really" count because although he lost, he came in second behind another Illinoisan, Sen. Paul Simon. Interestingly, the percentage of presidential candidates who won their home states in presidential elections is also about 73%.

So why's the native son thing so good for Bush and not for the other candidates? Why doesn't Rick Perry get a big boost as a former governor of Texas, with its 155 delegates in 2012?

First of all, it's not clear to whom Texas would give any native son advantage, given that Ted Cruz is a sitting senator from the state and Jeb Bush himself has strong familial ties to Texas (including two presidents in his immediate family, both from Texas). But second, the way in which states allocate their convention delegates isn't uniform. Some states award delegates roughly proportionally--New Hampshire, for instance, splits its Republican delegates proportionally between all candidates that receive at least 10% of the vote. Texas does a multi-leveled proportional thing where a large chunk of at-large delegates are divided proportionally by share of the statewide vote and smaller district-level chunks of delegates are divided proportional to the share of the vote in the district.

But Florida does it the way the U.S. runs its presidential elections--all or nothing. If you win 100,000 Republican primary votes in Florida and another guy wins 100,001, the other guy takes off with all 99 of Florida's delegates and you get none. (It really shouldn't be at all surprising that Al Gore's campaign met its end in Florida.) Only in California and Florida can a single victory assure you of so many delegates at once--and to my knowledge, so far no Republican from California has expressed interest in the presidency in 2016. Bush is the only Republican candidate whose residency can give him such a large chunk of votes so easily--and so early, given that Florida, with its January 31 primary in the 2012 election, was only the fourth state to hold its primary (although it moved its primary up that early at the cost of half of its delegates).

Oh, and for what it's worth, the winner of the Florida primary has gone on to win the Republican nomination every single time since 1956. Which was the first Florida primary ever. It could be a coincidence. But then again, it might not be.