Talk Elections

I've seen Clinton's and Obama's victories referred to as landslide despite being mid-high single digit popular vote wins. 1948 is often seen as a close election (mainly due to being an upset) despite being a mid single digit popular vote win (and a fairly reasonable EC margin as well). So where are the "moderate wins"?

1896 & 1900...

1892

1968

That's all I've got at the moment

Btw, Obama in 2008 had better popular vote results than any other candidate since Bush in 1988.

The relative closeness of previous elections shouldn't much influence whether a given election is classified as a landslide. Besides, Clinton's elections had Perot in them. Clinton won by a larger % margin in 1996, and a higher share of the two-party vote in both elections.

Well, Clinton's wins weren't a landslide in any way, nor were Obama's. I didn't hear anybody claim that but if someone does, I'd like to hear his arguments. As for Tuman, remember that a signle point swing from Dem to Rep would have flipped OH, IL and CA, thus the victory, to Dewey. In this way, it was close indeed.

Obama was a party-pickup. Bush was a party hold.

Obama's 52.87% U.S. Popular Vote is the fourth-highest of a pickup (obviously winning a first term), following 1920 Warren Harding (60.32%), 1932 Franklin Roosevelt (57.41%), and 1952 Dwight Eisenhower (55.18%).

No one president, nor his party (Harding died in 1923), has failed to hold the White House under these circumstances.

I think this might be an example of "overfitting" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfitting). Obama was a sitting Senator when elected President, and in no identical situation did the President's party fail to hold the White House at the next election. Well ...  and the other former sitting Senators all died in the third year of their Presidency. I guess we should start betting on Biden 2012.

2008
1996
1992

Google the phrases "X's landslide" and you get quite a few. (In case you think it happens at every election, I haven't found anyone describing 2004 as a landslide except sarcastically).

I think I remember either watching the news on election night, or the day after, people calling it a "landslide".

Well if the media says it, it must be true! ::)

First off, you forgot to include Andrew Jackson's 55.93% of the popular vote in 1828 and William H. Harrison's 52.87% in 1840 (both pickups, though the latter's party failed to hold the WH or the Congress by next election.  I'll get to that in a minute).  If we were to do things by the way you do it (aka hurr durr the stats add up method) that would actually make the list of highest pickups this:

1. Warren Harding (Republican) 1920: 60.32% Popular Vote
2. Franklin Roosevelt (Democratic) 1932: 57.41% Popular Vote
3. Andrew Jackson (Democratic) 1828*: 55.93% Popular Vote
4. Dwight Eisenhower (Republican) 1952: 55.18% Popular Vote
5. William H. Harrison (Whig) 1840: 52.87%.  Barack H. Obama (Democratic) 2008: 52.87%. Tie
Due to only a few states at the time having popular vote I excluded Thomas Jefferson EPIC trouncing of John Adams.

*for the record (and Wikipedia will back me up on this) President John Quincy Adams was part of the National Republican Party when he was running for re-election, so I consider it a party pickup.  Let's say this tidbit doesn't count and John Q. is considered a Democratic-Republican all four years, well that's still technically a party pickup since Andrew Jackson was running as the presidential nominee of the Democratic party and was sworn in as the Democratic president.  Just saying if someone brings that up.

Now as most of us probably already know William H. Harrison died just a month or so into his presidential reign and things definitely didn't go so well for his Whig Party, now did it?  In fact Harrison's successor John Tyler was EXPELLED from his own party and went through the rest of his term as an Independent because he went against his party so many times.  Let's just say after all of that things didn't go so well for the Whig Party in the Election of 1844.

......And William H. Harrison was tied with Obama in terms of popular vote percentage from a party pickup.
Based on DS's logic I might as well make this kind of conclusion (courtesy of Nichlemn):

DS was too lazy to research any trends that went outside of his Obamabot brain.  Not only is Obama not the fourth highest popular vote "pickup" in a presidential election ever, the guy he's tied with in fifth place:

a) died 30 days into office
b) successor was so unpopular WITH HIS OWN PARTY THAT HE GOT EXPELLED FROM IT
c) Whig party got beat like a hillbilly on his wife in the midterm election by the Democratic Party in the US House of Representatives in 1842.
d) Oh just a midterm election says you?  How about the Election of 1844? The Whig Party lost the presidential election and eleven US Senate seats to the Democrats.  The only gains they had were in the House, but Democrats still had an OVER 62% MAJORITY in the US House.
e) Oh yeah did I forget to mention that his party failed to hold the White House or US Congress by 1845?  Did I?!

So either Obama is looking to be the next Jesus Mohammed Rocky Balboa Christ figure in Murican political history, or he's bound to:

a) die sometime before 2012
b) Be so unpopular that his party gets massacred so bad in Congress that it makes the chainsaw murder scene from Scarface look like a mercy killing.
c) Lose re-election.

Okay let's say that you can prove that Jackson's number shouldn't be included in the list due to some states not having a popular vote system (those states being Delaware and South Carolina.......yeah, that would put Jackson's number in doubt).  Let's also say that Obama won a tiny bit more than Harrison did (let's give him a generous ceiling of 53%).  Newsflash: 53% is closer to 52.87% than it is to 55.18%!  Does the fact that Obama won just a non-noticeable amount of more PV percentage than Harrison suddenly mean he is going to be invincible come re-election time?!  Is there some kind of spell, gift, blessing of the Magi that occurs because he would happen to be the fourth highest PV percentage point pickup in US presidential history?  I mean I know I'm not the smartest of individuals, big words confuse me and stuffs, but for some reason I can't muster the brainpower to accept the idea that some kind of higher power exists that means that any president who wins more than 53% of the PV in a pickup election is bound to win re-election.  Please save us Mister Stats Man!

()

Mechaman.

That. was. amazing.

Certainly impressive... but whichever way, you can't draw parallels between re-election and initial vote tallies.

By that logic GW Bush shouldn't have been re-elected, since all three presidents who had been elected without winning the popular vote didn't serve a second term.

Dear, Mechaman:

YOU ARE A F**KING GENIUS

From,
Your friend feeblepizza

Yeah, I think Mechman really said it better than any of us could.

Good post, mechaman.

How do we classify elections with third party Electoral Voter winners (like 1860, 1948 and 1968) where the winner won only a narrow majority of the Electoral Vote, but second place was far behind? We could go by the party controlling the House... but is that really a reasonable metric? Didn't Wallace aim to throw the election into the House so he could have sway? Wouldn't this strategy only work if there was uncertainty about who would be elected in that scenario?

First of all I think ya got a purdy mouth boy like the way you think.

That is a very interesting question, and I think I might attempt (emphasis on the word "attempt") to make a list of Presidential Election Popular Vote winners (emphasis on popular vote winners, ie Samuel Tilden would make the list) by the margin of popular votes they won over the nearest candidate in terms of popular vote.  Since I do usually do this stuff in excel it should be quite easy.
As for how do I classify such elections, no idea.

2012? I've seen some references to it as a landslide but that's pretty dumb when it's historically one of the smaller margins. But a near 4 point PV margin and a fairly early election call makes it probably about the best case I can think of.

The tipping point State, Colorado, was won by just over 5 points, so it was clearly not close and clearly not a landslide.

The only really dubious landslide case is 1980, because Reagan's PV margin wasn't that impressive, but the EC results were. All the other victories slightly below 1980 levels (see 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008) were NOT landslides in any meaningful way.

Clinton's wins were considered electoral landslides in that the night was never really in doubt.  In the end, I think most of us could see that 2012 was going to be an Obama night; the results were never really in doubt, although several states were close.

I consider it a landslide if the losing candidate gets less than 100 EVs.  1960 was one of the closest presidential elections in history, and the Electoral College vote sure didn't show it.  I would call many of the elections you mentioned either "comfortable victories", or if they're larger, like Clinton or Obama '08, a "near-landslide."  1960 was so painfully close, and even if the electoral vote didn't show it, the popular vote did.

The 1880 election is hardly ever mentioned as a "close" election, despite that the national popular vote difference was less than 2,000 votes and that only about 20,000 votes in New York would have swung the election.

1880 clearly was a very close election. Every election from 1876 to 1888 was.

1980?? Reagan's PV margin was almost 10 points. That's pretty huge.

True, but Reagan got less than 51% of the vote in 1980, which certainly would not have been a landslide in a two person election, and he only got 254 of his EV by winning a majority of the vote in the States in question.  (Reagan would still have won versus a combined Carter+Anderson, but not versus a combined everyone else.)  Judging by the swing/trend for 1980, a solid majority of the 1980 Anderson voters were 1984 Mondale voters.  With the exception of Utah, all of the States that actually swung Democratic in 1984 were ones that Anderson did better than average in.  (Were Mormons voting against Carter in 1980 because he was a Southern Baptist?)

Nah, 10 points is good but not great. You are too focused on our modern hyper-partisan era, where everything above 5 seems outstanding.

He got 50% of the PV IIRC. The margin was big because of a third party candidate. See 1992/6

2012.

Barack Obama won 61.7% of the electoral vote in 2012. This is in between one election (McKinley in 1900) getting 65.35% of the electoral vote and another  (Truman in 1948) getting 57.1% of the electoral vote. The 2012 Presidential election is about as average in results as any Presidential election can be. A 4% split between the two major-Party nominees is about as average as it could be.

But since 1900 there has been only one 'average' election either popular votes or electoral votes, and that was in 2012. Enjoy it. It may be the only such election for a very long time because few Presidential elections approach the mean result.

Many thought that Truman would surely lose, and the Chicago Tribune had its infamous headline. It was not 'mere' wishful thinking as was so in 2012 when many on the Right were certain that President Obama could not win because he was 'so terrible that nobody could vote for him'. Anyone who followed the statewide polling knew that although the popular vote would be close, Mitt Romney had a very small random chance of winning without changing the dynamics of the election.     

I'd say 2012 qualifies as a "moderate" win, in that Obama's margin was comfortable but not overwhelming.

1896, 2008.