ACC Basketball Ups And Downs In Presidential Election Years

Red or blue, this chart is for you.

We used to reach all the way back to 1956 and the triumph of Dwight Eisenhower to track presidential elections and their correlation with team success over the course of ACC history. With 18 elections under our belts, however, we decided to reduce the scope of our scrutiny to more recent, manageable, and perhaps more germane results since 2000.

That still gave us six elections that inaugurated a basketball season, three each won by Democrats and Republicans. Donald Trump’s most recent triumph will be noted in the future as defining a seventh 2000s season, 2024-25, in which the GOP won.

Trump has won enough times with varying results that we considered examining only the years he ran: 2016, 2020, and 2024. But since the jury is out on the ’25 basketball results, we’ll stand pat with the 2000 through 2020 seasons, a substantial stretch.

Admittedly, to a large extent the correlation between ballot-box success and on-court success is tenuous, circumstantial. Not to mention not every ACC member was included in the league for the past quarter-century, thereby reducing their pools of success and failure.

Only three programs had unblemished records to date in seasons that started with a presidential matchup – Duke at 6-0 (with no losing record overall since 1995); Louisville with a winning season related to a victory by both a Republican (Trump) and a Democrat (Joe Biden), a refreshing balance given the program’s most recent struggles; and Virginia with six winning efforts in six presidential seasons since ’00, the last four under Tony Bennett.

Recent arrivals (2004) Notre Dame and Syracuse each prospered following wins by both Republicans and Democrats, although two instances is not sufficient evidence to draw any inferences.

On the flip side, BC is the only ACC school that posted losing marks following every presidential election since it joined the fold (in 2006), with an equal proportion of failures among Republicans and Democrats.

Clemson has done notably better when Dems won, going 3-0 over the presidential picking period since 2000 compared to 1-2 when Republicans won. Watch out Tigers in ’25!

NC State prospered when the GOP triumphed, going 3-1 compared to breaking even when Democrats held sway.

Worth noting: The majority of current ACC members joined subsequent to the 2004 election. And of course the clock just now started for Cal, SMU, and Stanford.