Were the 1992 and 1996 Presidential Elections landslides?

[Phony Moderate]

Discuss.

[RIP Robert H Bork]

No, but it depends on what you consider to be a landslide.

For me:

popular vote landslide: margin of at least 10% between the winner and the runner-up
electoral vote landslide: winner gets 400 EVs or better

So, I wouldn't call 1992 or 1996 landslides.

[Antonio the Sixth]

No way.

1992 is even arguably a close election (Bush could have won with a mere 4.65% popular vote shift).

[RIP Robert H Bork]

Also see the thread about elections unlikely to be called close or a landslide.

I agree with Antonio on 1992; Bush's re-election wasn't all that implausible. On the other hand, 1996 was clearly not a close election, but I still wouldn't call it a landslide.

[#CriminalizeSobriety]

Nah, just "Decisive."

[Kinger87]

Nah, just "Decisive."

That's a very fair assessment.

I would say that a "landslide" victory would any candidate getting between 55% and 60%+ of the popular vote. So, only a few historical landslides:

pre-1900: Mostly Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.
1904: T. Roosevelt (56.4%)
1920: Harding (60.3%)
1928: Hoover (58.2%)
1932: F. Roosevelt (57.4%)
1936: F. Roosevelt (60.8%)
1952: Eisenhower (55.2%)
1956: Eisenhower (57.4%)
1964: Johnson (61.1%)
1972: Nixon (60.7%)
1984: Reagan (58.8%)

[#CriminalizeSobriety]

Nah, just "Decisive."

That's a very fair assessment.

I would say that a "landslide" victory would any candidate getting between 55% and 60%+ of the popular vote. So, only a few historical landslides:

pre-1900: Mostly Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.
1904: T. Roosevelt (56.4%)
1920: Harding (60.3%)
1928: Hoover (58.2%)
1932: F. Roosevelt (57.4%)
1936: F. Roosevelt (60.8%)
1952: Eisenhower (55.2%)
1956: Eisenhower (57.4%)
1964: Johnson (61.1%)
1972: Nixon (60.7%)
1984: Reagan (58.8%)

Agreed.

While I don't have any official 'benchmark' as how to categorize landslides (I look at it on a case-by-case basis) I would agree with most of those.

[TheHoorn]

No way were 1992 or 1996 landslides.  In fact, the results were similar to the 2008 results.  What distorts the picture is the breakdown in the Electoral College.

1992:
Clinton-Gore 370 
Bush-Quayle 168

1996:
Clinton-Gore 379 
Dole-Kemp 159

2008:
Obama-Biden 365   
McCain-Palin 173

[MorningInAmerica]

No way.

1992 is even arguably a close election (Bush could have won with a mere 4.65% popular vote shift).

In that case, couldn't you say 2008 was arguably a close election? The results were very similar.

Neither 1992 nor 2008 were "arguably close," but they weren't landslides either. I agree with whoever above used the phrase "decisive."

[Antonio the Sixth]

No way.

1992 is even arguably a close election (Bush could have won with a mere 4.65% popular vote shift).

In that case, couldn't you say 2008 was arguably a close election? The results were very similar.

Neither 1992 nor 2008 were "arguably close," but they weren't landslides either. I agree with whoever above used the phrase "decisive."

It all depends what criterion you retain to qualify an election as "close", "normal" or "landslide".
- Popular vote margin ? Seems sound, but there could be case when the PV is decise in favor of one candidate but the electoral college is close.
- Electoral college breakdown ? Very bad idea, considering how very different PVs can produce similar ECs and inversely. Just compare 1964 and 1984...
- Finally, there is a third option. You rank each State from "most rep" to "most dem" and you find the State that could flip the election to one or another candidate. I personally call it "key State". In some election, the key State is rather evident to determine, like FL in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Some times instead, people can't find it that easily : did you know Iowa, Washington and Illinois were the key states in respectively 1932, 1964 and 1980 ? Then, have a look at the popular vote margin in the State. That number is the popular vote margin that the losing candidate would need to gain in order to win the election.

You say 1992 and 2008 are similar, and they are (somewhat) PV-wise and EV-wise. But that's not all. If you look at the key State, you find two very different realities : Tennessee, which would have given Bush a victory, went to Cinton by only 4.65 points. Colorado, which would make the Electoral College tied if it went to McCain, was won by Obama with 8.95 points. Thus, it is arguable that Obama's victory was twice as strong as Clinton. Of course, that's only one criterion, and other ones can be used as well. But this helps realizing that things that look similar aren't necessarily so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

1992 was a de facto multi-party election so can't be strictly compared to others anyway...

[MorningInAmerica]

No way.

1992 is even arguably a close election (Bush could have won with a mere 4.65% popular vote shift).

In that case, couldn't you say 2008 was arguably a close election? The results were very similar.

Neither 1992 nor 2008 were "arguably close," but they weren't landslides either. I agree with whoever above used the phrase "decisive."

It all depends what criterion you retain to qualify an election as "close", "normal" or "landslide".
- Popular vote margin ? Seems sound, but there could be case when the PV is decise in favor of one candidate but the electoral college is close.
- Electoral college breakdown ? Very bad idea, considering how very different PVs can produce similar ECs and inversely. Just compare 1964 and 1984...
- Finally, there is a third option. You rank each State from "most rep" to "most dem" and you find the State that could flip the election to one or another candidate. I personally call it "key State". In some election, the key State is rather evident to determine, like FL in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Some times instead, people can't find it that easily : did you know Iowa, Washington and Illinois were the key states in respectively 1932, 1964 and 1980 ? Then, have a look at the popular vote margin in the State. That number is the popular vote margin that the losing candidate would need to gain in order to win the election.

You say 1992 and 2008 are similar, and they are (somewhat) PV-wise and EV-wise. But that's not all. If you look at the key State, you find two very different realities : Tennessee, which would have given Bush a victory, went to Cinton by only 4.65 points. Colorado, which would make the Electoral College tied if it went to McCain, was won by Obama with 8.95 points. Thus, it is arguable that Obama's victory was twice as strong as Clinton. Of course, that's only one criterion, and other ones can be used as well. But this helps realizing that things that look similar aren't necessarily so.

Hmm this sounded like a very confusing way to say yes, you have to say that if the 1992 election was "arguably" close, the 2008 election was "arguably" close as well. But I agree that independent factors exist and do have an effect, such as Perot's 3rd party candidacy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

That was instead a very clear way to say that, it is arguable that 1992 was close and 2008 was not. Maybe you should read my post again.

[Nichlemn]

Nah, just "Decisive."

That's a very fair assessment.

I would say that a "landslide" victory would any candidate getting between 55% and 60%+ of the popular vote. So, only a few historical landslides:

pre-1900: Mostly Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.
1904: T. Roosevelt (56.4%)
1920: Harding (60.3%)
1928: Hoover (58.2%)
1932: F. Roosevelt (57.4%)
1936: F. Roosevelt (60.8%)
1952: Eisenhower (55.2%)
1956: Eisenhower (57.4%)
1964: Johnson (61.1%)
1972: Nixon (60.7%)
1984: Reagan (58.8%)

I'd include 1924, where Coolidge got 54% of the vote, however Davis (D) only got 28.8% due to the third-party candidacy of La Follette (P).

[Nichlemn]

I quite like this chart as a measure of closeness (the minimum number of changed votes that would be required to swing the election). It's hardly a perfect measure of how plausible a different result could have been, though. If swings are close to uniform, then it underestimates the closeness of elections where one candidate wins a number of states by tiny margins (e.g 1948). However, in some cases it may overestimate the closeness of states when candidates succeed in heterodox states (e.g. the New Deal coalition). If Mississippi and Massachusetts are both close, for instance, adjusting your platform to try to win the former might cost you votes in the latter. A final problem with these results is it overestimates small states (due to the Senatorial EVs). The 1984 "Mondale wins" map, for instance, has him winning Wyoming, despite the fact Reagan won it by 52 points. This is because the number of votes it would take to swing Wyoming per electoral vote is small. In reality, it would be much harder to swing all those votes in Wyoming than in a larger state.

A simple way to reconcile these might be an average of the uniform swing rank and the minimum votes rank.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A simple way to reconcile these might be an average of the uniform swing rank and the minimum votes rank.

Indeed, the method I  detailed in the post above was precisely about the uniform national swing in term of PV margin.

[feeblepizza]

In my terms, a landslide is

a 10% popular vote margin

a 400+ Electoral Vote victory

Both of them were close to the second qualification, but not enough.

[SingingAnalyst]

Although the Detroit News headline on Nov. 4, 1992 was "Record Vote Gives Clinton a Landslide", I don't believe it was, nor was 1996. I believe the criteria is at least a 10% popular margin of victory and at least 80% of EVs. Thus even 1980 was not a landslide though it was very close to being one. 1996 was also fairly close to being a landslide.