Reagan's landslide was quite mediocre compared with the others. He didn't reach the 20%-line.
But Reagan got more electoral votes, and came closer than Nixon did to winning fifty states.
He was just lucky.
I disagree. Reagan was pretty much bound to win no matter who the Democratic nominee was. He already won in a landslide in 1980, and was very popular. Nixon won solidly in 1972, but in that case it was partially due to his opponent, and I doubt that most of the other Democrats would have lost so badly.
Sure that McGovern played a big role in Nixon's win. I said Reagan was lucky in a structural sense : When winning far worse than Nixon, he came close to win 50/50 states.
And BTW, 1980 was not a landslide : he didn't even reach a 10% margin.
