United States Senate election in Pennsylvania, 1998

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United States Senate election in Pennsylvania, 1998
Flag of Pennsylvania.svg
  1992 November 3, 1998 2004  

  Arlen Specter official portrait.jpg No image.svg
Nominee Arlen Specter Bill Lloyd
Party Republican Democratic
Popular vote1,814,180 1,028,839
Percentage61.3% 34.8%

Pennsylvania Senatorial Election Results by County, 1998.svg

County results

U.S. Senator before election

Arlen Specter
Republican

Elected U.S. Senator

Arlen Specter
Republican

The 1998 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania was held November 3, 1998. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Arlen Specter won re-election to a fourth term.

Arlen Specter American politician; former United States Senator from Pennsylvania

Arlen Specter was an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as United States Senator for Pennsylvania. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. First elected in 1980, he represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate for 30 years.

Contents

Major candidates

Democratic

Republican

Campaign

Leading up to this campaign, the state Democratic Party was in dire straits, as it was plagued by prior corruption allegations of several key legislators and by a lack of fund-raising. Just as in the accompanying gubernatorial race, the party had difficulty in finding a credible candidate. State Representative Bill Lloyd, who was a well-respected party leader but who had almost zero statewide name recognition, was considered[ by whom? ] to be a sacrificial lamb candidate. Specter ran a straightforward campaign and attempted to avoid mistakes, while Lloyd's bid was so underfunded that he was unable to air a single commercial until two weeks before the election. Lloyd's strategy was to portray Republicans as hyper-partisan in wake of their attempt to impeach President Bill Clinton, but he was unable to gain any traction with his message. On Election Day, Specter's win was by the second-largest margin in the history of Senate elections in Pennsylvania. Lloyd won only two counties: almost uniformly Democratic Philadelphia and his home county, rural and typically Republican Somerset County. [2]

Bill Clinton 42nd president of the United States

William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the presidency, he was the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992, and the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideologically a New Democrat and many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy.

Philadelphia Largest city in Pennsylvania, United States

Philadelphia, sometimes known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous U.S. city, with a 2017 census-estimated population of 1,580,863. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017. Philadelphia is also the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis. The Delaware Valley's population of 7.2 million ranks it as the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

Results

General election results [3]
PartyCandidateVotes%±
Republican Arlen Specter 1,814,180 61.3%
Democratic Bill Lloyd 1,028,839 34.8%
Constitution Dean Snyder 68,377 2.3%
Libertarian Jack Iannantuono 46,103 1.6%

See also

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References

  1. "Demo Lawmaker Wants Specter's Job". Allentown Morning Call. January 6, 1998. Retrieved August 20, 2010.
  2. Kennedy, John J. (2006). Pennsylvania Elections: Statewide Contests from 1950-2004. United Press of America. ISBN   9780761832799.
  3. "Statistics of the Congressional Election of November 3, 1998" (PDF). Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House. Retrieved July 8, 2014.