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Tonight Will Not Be A Landslide

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Electoral College, History, McCain

Why?

Because there’s no way they’ll match history…

With the final national polls settling around Obama +7, I realized that I lacked a good sense of historical context for that number. Turns out it’s about the margin of George H.W. Bush’s 1988 win against Michael Dukakis: 53.4% to 45.6%.

That’s certainly impressive. It doesn’t, however, really compare to Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide against Walter Mondale. That sucker was 18 points — 58.8% to 40.6%. Incredible. (Reagan beat Carter in 1980 by nearly 10 points.) And it turns out that both LBJ and Richard Nixon (in ‘72) won by roughly 23 points. Times have changed, eh?

Still, if Obama can pull out some surprises (like Georgia, Montana or North Dakota), there’s no doubt that people will be saying that word come tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Electoral College, History, 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.

One Response to “Tonight Will Not Be A Landslide”

Donklephant » Blog Archive » Don’t Miss A Moment Of Donklephant Today - Part 1 Says:
November 4th, 2008 at 9:12 am
[...] Tonight Will Not Be A Landslide [...]

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