Who Had The Greatest Democratic Landslide Of All Time?

[MIKESOWELL]

I only see two serious options for this question, FDR and LBJ. Who do you pick?

[MIKESOWELL]

I think Pierce won the popular vote in 1852 with something like 51.4% of the vote to 44 percent for his opponent, which is considerable but not landslide proportions. I believe that Taft in 1908 (yes, I know he was a Republican) did a bit better percentage wise in spread than Pierce. The electoral vote was considerable, 254 to 42, but it pales in comparison to the Roosevelt and LBJ landslides. Heck, Andrew Jackson did much better in the popular vote than Pierce.

[MIKESOWELL]

This is something that I have always wanted to say about Lyndon Johnson's popular majority record of 61.1 percent. Yes, it is incredible. Yes, it is almost a certainty that this mark will remain unchallenged. However, there was very little opposition that year to the major party vote that year. I think that minor parties only made up 0.5 percent of the total vote. That is extremely paltry in any election year. By comparison, in 1972 minor parties were 1.8 percent of the total vote, in 1936 2.7 percent, and in 1920 5.5 percent. This may be a bad comparison, but it's sort of like if a team scored 52 points against the Giants defense last year, compared to a team scoring 45 points against the Broncos defense this past year. Sure, the other team scored more points, but did not face the level of opposition and resistance that the Broncos opponent did. I might be reaching a bit, but do anyone see my point?