Over the past few days I have been watching all of the coverage of President Elect Obama’s victory over Senator McCain. I would like to make it clear from the beginning that I congratulate him on a solid victory. While we can debate over how much was pro-Obama and how much was anti-Bush, the fact remains that it was a clear win.
However, as a student of politics and history, I have to take exception with those who are terming it a landslide. I realize that, after a couple of close races, this one seemed big by comparison but, if you look at history, it is not a victory of landslide proportions.
Just to set the standard, a landslide has several clear requirements. The first would be a popular vote margin of at least double digits, closing in or passing 20 points. Examples of this kind of victory would be 1920, 1932, 1936, 1964, 1972 or 1984. In each of these elections the winning candidate got at least 57% of the vote and in 3 of those races they broke over 60% of the ballots.
These numbers gave them large double digit margins over their opponents, and in the case of 1920, 1936 or 1964 the margin was more than 20%. That is a landslide in terms of popular vote. According to the most current figures Obama won around 53% of the vote to 47% for McCain. A solid win but 6 points is far from 15 or 20.
Similarly the Electoral College also requires a somewhat larger margin that Obama will get. Right now it looks like he will get 364-174 victory over McCain. Again that is a solid win but if you look at more modern landslides like 1964, 1972 or 1984 the winner got at least 450 and in the latter two cases over 500 electoral votes. While Obama gets a roughly 2-1 win over McCain, the landslide victors were 10 or 20 to 1 margins.
In addition if you look at some of the states that Obama won the margins were very close. In 4 or 5 states (depending on how the final numbers come out) he won 51-49 which means a very small shift would take his 360-370 EV’s down to the 280-290 range, much like the Bush 2004 win.
This year more accurately reflects the 1988 win by Bush 41 or the 1992 and 1996 wins by Clinton. Solid wins, clear victories in the Electoral College and comfortable wins in the popular vote. But they were not landslides and neither is this year.
It is for this reason I have coined the term ‘landslip’ to define this kind of victory. I know that from a strict sense the terms landslip and landslide are similar but it sounds a little better to my ear. I don’t expect the media to adopt it or anything (though if you hear it on CNN or Fox News let me know) but I think it is a more accurate term.
And once again a big congratulations to our new President. I hope he succeeds beyond all of our wildest dreams, for his success is our success and that is how we should all look at our President, regardless of party.