By Bob Benenson, CQ Politics Editor

When it comes to electing the president, the modern campaign era has its roots 95 years ago when North Dakota held the first presidential primary. CQ Politics looks back and charts for you, election by election, how this process grew over the last century into the long and sprawling campaigns that have become part of the political landscape. This sixth in a series covers 1996.

Clinton’s political timing going into his re-election campaign year — in which he was unopposed for the Democratic nomination — was as good as Bush’s had been poor.

It was nearly impossible to find anyone who viewed Clinton as a sure thing for re-election even in the year before the 1996 contest. His first two years in office were tumultuous. His first act in office, an effort to lift the ban on gays in the military, was hugely controversial. His deficit reduction package, which include tax increases, passed the Democratic-controlled House by one vote. Key proposals ended in gridlock — including an overhaul of the nation’s health care system (a plan engineering by first lady Hillary Clinton), an anti-crime bill that contained gun control provisions and an economic stimulus program. Even a big victory, Clinton’s push to enact the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, came with a political price, as it angered much of organized labor and many Democratic activists. The election cycle culminated with the Republican takeover of both chambers of Congress (ending 40 consecutive years of Democratic control in the House).

Led by an aggressive cadre of hard-line conservatives that included new House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Republicans in 1995 quickly achieved House passage of many proposals embodied in the GOP’s 1994 campaign platform, the “Contract with America.” Clinton initially was on the defensive as Republicans deemed him “irrelevant.” But the turning point in Clinton’s hopes for re-election came at the end of the year: His resistance to Republican demands that he sign spending bills embodying their conservative priorities and including cuts in programs popular among Democrats spurred a showdown that included brief shutdowns of much of the federal government. Clinton got the better of the clash in public opinion and enjoyed a timely improvement in his approval ratings in early 1996, pre-empting any thoughts of a challenge to his renomination.

The general election matchup between Clinton and veteran lawmaker Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., was quickly set. The dues that Dole had long paid in national Republican politics earned him front-runner status for the 1996 race, and he survived some early bumps, utilizing his strength within the national and state GOP organization to blow through the increasingly front-loaded primary schedule.

Despite the dibs he hoped to have on the nomination, Dole faced doubters entering the campaign. He turned 73 that July, which would have topped Reagan’s mark as the oldest first-elected president by four years. The acerbic manner Dole had occasionally displayed during his political career was thought by some to contrast poorly with the sunniness usually displayed by the much-younger Clinton. A number of conservatives viewed him as an establishment Republican who was too flexible on fiscal issues and not enough of a crusader on their social issues agenda.

The Republican field included political veterans such as Sens. Phil Gramm of Texas and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana as well as Lamar Alexander , a former Tennessee governor and U.S. education secretary under Bush. But two political outsiders generated the strongest opposition to Dole: longtime political commentator Pat Buchanan, making a second try, and wealthy publisher Steve Forbes. Buchanan again gained much of his support from cultural conservative activists; Forbes’ approach was to cast himself as the strongest economic conservative in a campaign in which he emphasized proposals to overhaul the nation’s tax system.

The Feb. 12 Iowa caucuses were a harbinger of the troubles Dole would face in the campaign’s opening weeks. He edged Buchanan by just 26 percent to 23 percent, with Alexander’s 18 percent netting him third place. Dole’s front-runner status was even more shaken on Feb. 20 in New Hampshire, where Buchanan edged him by 27 percent to 26 percent, with Alexander close behind at 23 percent.

Then came Forbes’ turn to briefly emerge as a serious challenger, as he finished first on Feb. 24 in Delaware and on Feb. 27 in Arizona, with Dole running second in both states. Dole’s only February primary wins came in low-profile Feb. 27 events in North Dakota and South Dakota.

But the primary-crammed month of March produced a decisive change in momentum that brought the competition to a sudden end. The turning point came on March 5 in conservative South Carolina, where Dole bested Buchanan by 45 percent to 29 percent. The campaign, which up until then, had been dominated by “retail” politics, turned into a rolling version of a national primary in which only Dole had the resources, name ID and party organizational backing to break from the pack. He swept the eight primaries held March 5, most by solid margins, crushed Forbes by 55 percent to 30 percent two days later in New York, then ran the table again on the mostly Southern card of nine primaries on March 12. By the time he swept the four Midwestern states (Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) that voted on March 19, Dole had the nomination pretty much wrapped up.

That left Republicans in California with little to do but affirm the other states’ judgment, even though the nation’s most-populous state had for the first time stepped into the primary front-loading frenzy, moving its contest from its traditional early June date at the end of the nominating process to March 26.

Dole’s success in locking up the nomination early enabled him to save financial resources and prevented an additional battering over the final weeks of the primary campaign. He resigned from the Senate in June to concentrate on his general election campaign. But the Democrats targeted him early for their own negative advertising campaign. The campaign staged by the Clinton camp and the Democratic National Committee sought to link Dole to Gingrich, whose aggressive pursuit of a conservative agenda had made him controversial. The November outcome was short of a popular vote blowout: Clinton won by 49 percent to 41 percent, with Perot, this time running as the nominee of the Reform Party that he had founded, slipping to 8 percent. But Clinton easily won the Electoral College by carrying 31 states and Washington.

• Part One: 1912-64

• Part Two: 1968-72

• Part Three: 1976-84

• Part Four: 1988

• Part Five: 1992

• Part Seven: 2000

• Part Eight: 2004