Barack Obama’s Victory Could Be Historic For More Than One Reason
By Doug Mataconis | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, General Politics, McCain
An interesting bit of historical trivia drawn from a much-longer post about final poll numbers at my personal blog:
No Democrat has gotten more than 51% of the popular vote in a Presidential Election since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide in 1964. Jimmy Carter got 50.1% in 1976, and Bill Clinton got 43% in 1992 and 49.24% in 1996,
Even before 1964, and leaving out Franklin Roosevelt’s landslides in 1944, 1940, 1936, and 1932, you have to go back to Andrew Jackson and the Election of 1824 to find a Democrat who got more than 51% of the popular vote. Woodrow Wilson didn’t do it in 1916 or 1912. Grover Cleveland didn’t do it in 1892 or 1884. Samuel Tilden got 51% of the vote in 1876, but he lost in the Electoral College. Other than that, most Democratic Presidents have been minority candidates, except for Franklin Pierce who got 50.8% of the vote in 1852 and Martin van Buren, who also got 50.8% of the vote in the Election of 1836
Barack Obama seems likely to do something that Democrats usually only do when they win in a landslide.
Make of it what you will.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, General Politics, McCain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 4th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
[...] Barack Obama’s Victory Could Be Historic For More Than One Reason [...]