Greatest landslide

[Gabu]

I'm going to use the following scheme: I induce a 10% shift to the loser in every state in each landslide, to weed out the landslides with a deceptively large number of states won.  Basically, this will show whether an election was truly a monumental landslide or actually a very close election in which nearly every state just barely went to the victor.

1936:



Roosevelt 284 (50.80% PV)
Landon 247 (46.55% PV)

1964:



Johnson 301 (51.05% PV)
Goldwater 237 (38.47% PV)

1972:



Nixon 301 (50.67% PV)
McGovern 237 (47.52% PV)

1984:



Mondale 278 (50.56% PV)
Reagan 260 (48.77% PV)

So, according to this scheme, 1964 and 1972 are tied (!) for first in the EV, with Johnson barely getting a higher percentage of the PV, making him the overall winner.  In third is 1936, and in fourth is 1984, the only election in which a 10% shift made the victor into the loser.  So, to summarize:

1. 1964
2. 1972
3. 1936
4. 1984

Yes, Reagan lovers, I'm sorry to say that your favorite president wasn't the one who had the greatest landslide in US history.

[Gabu]

I think 1936 looks the best on your maps.

I'm going based on the electoral votes the candidate wins; if you want to go based on how many states the candidate wins, then yes, 1936 would be the winner.

[Gabu]

Your "10% shift" is really a 20% shift.

I took 10% of the winners' voters from each state and made them vote for the loser.  Hence, it's a 10% shift.  The total disparity is 20%, but it's not inaccurate to call it a 10% shift.

Sen Gabu,

The maps are great, but your conclusion is ridiculous. 

The vote totals and the electoral vote totals don't lie.  Reeagn's victory was phenomenal.

Your efort to shift 10% here and there reminds me of a  recent comment by John Kerry.  He told Tim Russert that he won the youth vote, won the Catholic vote, won the single women vote, and on and on.  Yet when you look at the results, he still lost the lection by 3 million votes.

However, I will entertain the notion that the other landslide were more dramatic if you can supply the party identification numbers for the elections in question.  It isn't too impressive of a landslid if you only carried your own voters.  However, if you carried a rge majority of the independents and a significant minority of the other party, then I'll xonsider that an impressive landslide.

I can't find party identification numbers for the elections in question at the moment (though I'm still looking), but I'm curious regarding what you back up your claim with that Reagan's landslide was the greatest landslide in history.  He didn't win the largest percentage of the popular vote; that was Johnson in 1964.  He didn't win the largest percentage of the electoral vote; that was Roosevelt in 1936.  He didn't win the largest combination of popular vote and electoral vote; that was Roosevelt in 1936.  He didn't win the most unbreakable victory; that's a tie between Johnson in 1964 and Nixon in 1972.  He did win the most states, but he's tied with Roosevelt in 1936 if you count DC as a state for election purposes (which is not an unreasonable thing to do, given that it has the same number of electoral votes as Wyoming and a higher population).  What makes Reagan's landslide the greatest in history?

I'm not trying to downplay Reagan's landslide; it was indeed phenominal.  I'm not being partisan about this matter; I'm indifferent over Johnson and I put Nixon as #2.  I simply don't see what makes Reagan's landslide the greatest in history.  Every criteria I can think of has Reagan at least at #2.