Election Results - Historical Review

Time to step back and take a look at how this election looks against the others of the past 70 years or so (roughly a lifetime). Bush won by 3%. Kerry lost because he didn't get enough votes. Beyond that, it's just speculation. As a win, 3% isn't all that great. The landslides of my lifetime were 1964, when Johnson beat Goldwater by 23 percentage points, and 1972, when Nixon beat McGovern by 23 percentage points (Roosevelt was before my time). Now that's when the losing side presented an inadequate opponent. Kerry was entirely adequate as a candidate; he just didn't get enough votes. And while I'm at it, the youth vote was terrific--just think what the margin would be without it. And gay marriage--more about that later--is not to blame. Republicans are perceived as more "hawkish" and Democrats as more "dove-ish," and I believe this pulled many wavering Republican votes toward Bush, despite strong disapproval of his fiscal recklessness and his performance as commander-in-chief of the Iraq war.

The following table provides figures from wikipedia.org on election results. As we know all too well, there are many different ways to interpret figures. But aside from the landslides described in the preceding paragraph, the table shows that Bush's 2004 victory was the weakest result for an incumbent in the 72 years shown, and Bush's 2000 victory is the only win with a negative percent of the popular vote. An interesting factor that the table format shows is the influence of a strong third party candidate (I didn't show third-party candidates with less than 3% of the vote).

Note that both Eisenhower and Reagan had double digit wins for both terms. Note that H.W. Bush and both Clinton terms were won by twice the lead that W. claimed over Kerry.

Election year	Percentage of popular vote (winner : loser)	Margin of difference (percentage points)	Candidates (winner / loser)	Third party influence (percentage points)
2004	51 : 48	+ 3	Bush/Kerry
2000	47.9 : 48.3	- 0.4	Bush/Gore	3% Nader
1996	49 : 41	+ 8	Clinton/Dole	8% Perot
1992	43 : 37	+ 6	Clinton/Bush	19% Perot
1988	53 : 46	+ 7	Bush/Dukakis
1984	59 : 41	+ 18	Reagan/Mondale
1980	51 :41	+ 10	Reagan/Carter	7% Anderson
1976	50 : 48	+ 2	Carter/Ford
1972	61 : 38	+ 23	Nixon/McGovern
1968	43.2 : 42.6	+ 0.6	Nixon/Humphrey	13% Wallace
1964	61 : 38	+ 23	Johnson/Goldwater
1960	49.7 : 49.6	+ 0.1	Kennedy/Nixon
1956	57 : 42	+ 15	Eisenhower/Stevenson
1952	55 : 45	+ 10	Eisenhower/Stevenson
1948	48 : 45	+ 3	Truman/Dewey
1944	54 : 46	+ 8	Roosevelt/Dewey
1940	55 : 45	+ 10	Roosevelt/Wilke
1936	61 : 37	+ 24	Roosevelt/Landon
1932	58 : 40	+ 18	Roosevelt/Hoover