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Obama’s 2008 Victory in Perspective

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 5th, 2008 at 07:39 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

It’s going to happen, and we all know it: after two close elections, some Democrats are going to claim that Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain was a large, overwhelming repudiation of the Republican party, and that it was possibly even a historical turning point of partisan political realignment.

There’s just one problem with that theory: It’s not true.


Presidential Margins of Victory

See the image to the right (and click for the full version): It’s a complicated chart, but it has a lot to say. On it are illustrated the popular vote and electoral vote victory margins of every Presidential election 1900-2008, assuming Obama gets North Carolina and McCain gets Missouri. This also only counts Republicans and Democrats, and third parties are ignored.

Also on the chart are the mean Popular Vote and Electoral Vote margins since World War II, that is, counting the 1948-2008 elections. From that we can see one fact right away: Obama’s victory is below average. We can also look at the tiny bars representing the 2000 and 2004 elections to see that comparing with those races is simply not any kind of standard to use when judging an election.

Eisenhower 1952 and 1956. Johnson 1964. Nixon 1972. Reagan 1980 and 1984. Those elections set the standard for a blowout. Obama? His win doesn’t look like those other Presidents I just listed. He’s just slightly below average, sorry.

So rest at ease, Republicans. Even if this win isn’t a fluke, it’s not a permanent game changer.

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COMMENTS

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  • spainishirish

    This was not a transformative election, let alone a realignment. We must look forward and focus on getting back the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. There was nothing in yesterday’s results that should make us believe either is unlikely.

    The one caveat is that I fully expect the dinosaur media to continue to spew pro-Obama propaganda incessantly. The upside is that even Obama voters at this point know the left-wing media is biased. The faces on the tube saddened last night as it became apparent the filibuster will remain and the House margin would not resemble what had been claimed. Good.

  • Crowe

    Of course this wasn’t a game-changing defeat — he simply did a better job running on a centrist platform than did our guy. Of course, he’s not a centrist while our guy was, but that’s small consolation. Clinton in ’92 and ’96, and now Obama, won in the general election by shifting substantially to the right.

    This is still basically a center-right country.

  • JWhitacre

    America is still a center-right country. If the Dems think otherwise, their reign will not last long.

    How is it that Obama won so convincingly? Well, he won by fairly small margins in a lot of swing states. Second, that he conned a majority of moderate voters into thinking he was center (or even center-right) just shows that the U.S. is still center-right.

    GOP needs to focus on the staples of the conservative brand: strong defense and small government. The country is still polarized on social issues, but an overwhelming majority of the electorate agrees on both counts.

  • bk

    I hate to say it but for God’s sake to argue this was anything other than a blowout is like saying you fought a duel and won a moral victory because the other guy hit you in the stomach instead of the heart and it took you a while to bleed out.

  • SteveLA

    Crowe

    I agree with you that this country is Center Right, but the Republican brand is seen by the public as Right or even Hard Right on social issues, and clueless on fiscal matters.

    The mantra of the 2006 election, “We stink less”, “”you’ll be sorry” led to a Democratic majority, and the ensuing 2 years of Republicans in the minority did little to put forth a conservative alternative on Democrat stupidity that proved that point.

    Did Republicans from 2006 on suddenly stop making and taking earmarks? Did Republicans refuse to vote for any of the bloated spending bills passed sense 2006, hardly. If you offer up no new ideas in times of turmoil why should people vote for your party?

  • Indy

    The media simply COULD NOT accept Bush as the President. I have no idea why, but they did everything they could to destroy him. It’s really unfair, but they did succeed. Something conservatives need to work on is trying to change this. I don’t know how, but something needs to be done. You can’t keep “reacting” to negative and false viewpoints being put out there about you. You need to be proactively telling people who you are what what your view is. The next point is that Obama DID manage to convince people he was the centrist. The media managing to convince people that Palin was a right wing nut job — they had to, given Palin’s immense appeal. Again, if you had control over the image creation, it would be great. Obama is going to shift this country radically left. In addition, he’s going to pull out of Iraq, and precipate some crisis with Israel / Iran. Russia is probably going to take the opportunity to do something nasty AND the dollar will no longer be the world currency (not Obama’s fault, but simply a result of this credit crisis). People are going to be sick of Obama in 2.5 years … and the GOP will be poised to take back the White House … but only if they have a coherent message and can take control fo their image and not allow the media to define them.

  • PatrickMurdock

    when all is said and done, while 63+ million voted for Obama, 56+ million voted for McCain.

    McCain won 56+ million votes in the face of the worst financial collapse in decades, a weak economy, housing market that’s a mess, a war that has been going on for years, and voters looking for change regardless of what that change is. And let’s add that on top of this, an Obama campaign that raised over $600 million dollars (double McCain because he took Fed funds), and received tens of millions more in free advertising, publicity, and support from the MSM.

    If the Dems and the MSM want to call that an overwhelming repudiation and some turning point in our political system, let them.

    We are much stronger than they think.

  • JakePrime

    This was a repudiation of the GOP, but it was not a repudiation of conservatism. The GOP has not governed conservatively, and it has not governed well, yet the principles behind it are still as popular as ever.

  • Brad_Smith

    This is an excellent point – indeed, it is a sign of the strength of center-right thinking that, with an unpopular war and a financial crisis, Obama did not win by more.

    My post here was trying to get at the same point you’re making. This is a big lost battle, but it’s not some conservative Waterloo. We’ll be back.

  • SteveLA

    ‘Tis but a scratch.

  • Joelim

    is lost.

    I am wondering why you are here.

    This is an autopsy that is being run. Saying we lost is normal. We didn’t lose that badly.

    How we lost is important at least to me.

    And seeing comparative figures helps.

    This was not a juggernaut that bowled our candidate over.

    From what I can tell, our side stayed at home in droves. GOTV is a great thing, but they didn’t get out.

  • mbecker908

    The Republican Party has been essentially without leadership for at least the last six years. GWB was doing OK, then he got challenged by Democrats on Iraq and he ran away and hid under his desk. He’s been AWOL since shortly after the war started and he won in 04 ONLY because of the SwiftVets, who both he and McCain told to shut up and go away.

    We are now absolutely without leadership. Nobody in the House or Senate is going to be able to rally the party, and there’s nobody there who deserves the leadership mantle. We are absolutely adrift, politically. The Party stands for nothing because it attempts to stand for everything. The idiots in DC seem to think that they can just buy votes with legislation and everything will be fine. That attitude won’t go away, the Republicans in Congress are simply D-Lite.

    I hold no hope whatsoever for the upcoming Congress. The Ds are going to point to their mandate and the Rs are going to fall into line to “get something done” so they aren’t perceived as a “do nothing” Congress. Socialist express here we come. In 80 years we’ve not rolled back one iota of the New Deal and in 50 years we’ve rolled back so little of the Great Society it’s not worth talking about. Obama is going to be very successful at getting the far left legislative agenda passed and our grandchildren will be living with the results because we won’t roll that back either.

  • NightTwister

    -nt-

  • Swamp_Yankee

    n/t

  • LoseTheHate

    [Bye. - ML]

  • Hermes

    I wholeheartedly agree about the lack of leadership and the utter failure of a sitting President to take it to the enemy (the media) on its own turf.

    On the other hand, I do not agree that the end is nigh for America. Yes, His Holiness, the President-Elect, is going to do some real damage to the country. Yes, no media figure (save, perhaps, Fox and the online types) will dare challenge His Holiness, the President-Elect. And, yes, any Republican candidate in future is going to start any race against any Democrat with a natural handicap (the media). Does this mean we are in for a century of collectivism, though? I don’t think so.

    Part of the GOP’s problem has been its failure to use the Reagan playbook (which is essentially Barry Goldwater’s playbook rehashed for the 1980′s). Another, equally large problem, has been the utter dependence of the GOP on burnt out Washington insiders and pundits for ideas. The National Review, Weekly Standard, David Frum, David Brooks crowd brought us the defeats in 2006 and 2008. Time to start turning to the ideas of non-insiders like, for example, the libertarian conservatives and paleocons. It’s long past time that the current crop of GOP leaders and pundits surrender the reigns of power and give some fresh blood a chance. They certainly can’t do worse than we have done the past two years.

    Finally, a lot of the GOP’s problems have to do with party corruption. Ted Stevens, Duke Cunningham, Don Young, the list goes on. We need to clean house first, then we’ll have a shot at beating the Stalinists who will occupy the Obama-Reid-Pelosi government.

  • neum432

    Time to let the liberal/socialists lead for awhile. Offer a clear conservative message, fight the battles that need to be fought and try again in 2010 and 2012. Sometimes the nation forgets how bad it can get when the D’s are in control of everything. This generation did not vote for the “change we need” but they are getting the “change we deserve”.

  • Achance

    The fat old men will be scrambling licking the Democrats’ hands under the table trying to get a few scraps to take home. It’s going to be ugly. And the only person in the whole Republican leadership cohort who has a pair is a woman! (Jindal may have some, but he hasn’t really stepped on the national stage much yet.)

  • charliej

    While I don’t claim any great political wisdom I have been around for quite a while and have seen quite a lot. I remember the very dark and embarrassing days of Jimmy Carter and the good and bad of the Reagan years.

    Granted I live in a very Red county; but I do have friends who are Democrats (just not the real left-wing nuts) so I?m not completely insulated from the real world by my surroundings.

    This election was about several things but mostly it was about history (electing a black man) and a financial collapse (with the financial collapse taking center stage late in the game.)

    John McCain was behind the 8-ball from the get-go financially; from a PR perspective (he was fighting the Dems and the MSM); and he didn’t have the base.

    He consolidated the base by picking Sarah (I am a big fan of hers and it pains me to see her being destroyed or thrown under the bus by so-called repubs now after the election; as well as the inside-the-beltway idiots during the campaign.) I believe she has a future if we survive as a country; I hope and pray that we do.

    He could never completely overcome the PR and the hate Bush mantra of the MSM; nor could he overcome the financial advantage Obama received when he turned down public financing and allowed his money people to turn off simple credit card security features, which opened up the vast world of cyberspace fraud and gave Obama untold millions of dollars in additional fraudulent contributions.

    I firmly believe he lost the election when Lehman was allowed to go bankrupt; Paulson cried the sky was falling; Paulson?s wall street buddies and world banking associates accommodated that story by freezing credit; and McCain decided to suspend his campaign and return to Washington but yet accomplished nothing. When he did that he needed to take a principled stand against the bailout; explain why he was against it and even though it would be painful offer the alternative; and by all means point out the disgusting pork that was added to the original treasury proposal. He also should?ve pointed out that this was not going to be $700 billion but several trillion dollars; so do you want to take your medicine now or later.. And it was socialist to a degree, which made his later attempts to paint Obama as a socialist rather hypocritical and pointless.

    John McCain flip-flopped and floundered around; while to be honest I believe Obama actually did look somewhat presidential by not rushing to a quick decision and taking his time (not to mention it was politically very savvy to let McCain flop around and tie the whole mess to Bush.)

    In a nutshell it was lost at that point; Obama took the lead in the polls; passed presidential muster; and McCain could never recover.

    This country is center-right; look at Prop 8 in California if you doubt it.. We don?t need to move left but we do need to stand for something that people can and do believe in; articulate those positions positively and eloquently; and not let the beltway insiders keep destroying this party and compromising our principals..

    Respectfully and jmho?.

  • DaBoogieMan

    Jindal was visiting a small Northeast LA town. Here’s what he mentioned.

    Ethics reform legislation, which has vaulted the state to the top of others in an integrity index, and the elimination of certain taxes that makes Louisiana more enticing to business prospects. (This is the key guys!)

    And while the nation continues to grapple with a fluctuating economy, Louisiana is better prepared to deal with the economic situation than any other state. We’re not immune, but better prepared.

    He discussed work force training and the need for the education system to focus more on skills training or dual-track curriculum so students who don’t go to college still are prepared for the workplace. The lack of skilled workers is often cited as a detriment by business leaders.

    Jindal also hit on new laws that give teachers greater control over discipline in their classrooms. The audience applauded when he said parents are not doing their children any favors by not making them accept responsibility for their actions in their classrooms.

    Health care, tough laws on sex offenders and economic development projects rounded out his half-hour speech.

    A local minister asked when funding will be restored to the school-based abstinence program. Jindal said he supports it and funding will be restored as soon as some of the inherited “audit issues” are worked out.

    Jindal mentioned that LA had no Fortune 500 companies when he assumed office. The third Fortune 500 company moving to LA was announced recently.

  • pwest

    normally I agree with you, but this time you nailed it on the head.

    Republicans lost there way, once in poor. They are to blame for the mess the party is in now, and the way to fix it is return to our Conservative roots, while, here is where we disagree, not abandoning our support for traditional values.

  • mom2oneson

    Maybe it’s me but it seems like Bush doesn’t really communicate with us. I don’t know if it’s because I was younger or what but I remember listening to Reagan on TV and it was like we had a leader. I don’t get that seem type of feeling with Bush. Maybe it’s hard for them to coordinate things to make a speech I don’t know??? but I think if possible I think he should talk to us more.

  • liberalrepublican

    It was amazing to be as close as it was considering the financial melt down.

    When the economy is down, the incumbent party is ALWAYS kicked out. Considering how much the election tightened at the end shows me that America is going to give Mr. Obama a short honeymoon.

    However, I do think the party became intellectually lazy – more time spent tearing down Obama than proposing new ideas.

    I hope we get back to ideas and don’t fall into Obama Derangement Syndrome.

  • Nixons_The_One

    Good post Neil, thanks for the historical data.

    Take heart conservatives, in my judgement, this was an election based on the appeal of a bi-racial candidate, and not an ideological shift of the American people. Nothing is permanent here.

    Based on data:

    “McCain wins whites 55-43. Obama wins blacks 96-4 and Latinos 67-31.
    In 2004, Bush won whites 58-41. Kerry won blacks 88-11 and Latinos 53-44.

    Obama only won the Indy vote 51-45 (compare to 2006 when Indies broke more than 60-40 for the Ds).

    Catholics went Obama 53-45. White Catholics went McCain 53-47. Jews went Obama 77-22, about the same as 2004.”

    So there you have it. Looks like to me, the first bi-racial candidate wins based on a decisive change in the vote of non-whites. An interesting way to choose a president. No evidence of ideological re-alignment.

    Take care of yourself, your personal finances, your personal property, your Constitutional freedoms as an American; and all of these as they relate to your family and friends.

    Viva Reagan, viva freedom and American opportunity.

  • sharster

    that Republicans are already examining how to regroup one day after their loss is incredible and bodes well for the future of the party. A few opinion points:

    MCCAIN LOST DUE SOLEY TO THE MARKET CRASH

    I am convinced that the only reason McCain lost was because of the week long stock market crash that occurred in September. I personally know swing voters that were freaked out and voted for Obama based on pure emotion, blaming the incumbent president for the loss in their 401K. THe polls reflect McCains downslide following that weeklong crash. I think it is good for the party to regroup and have a consistent message but it is a waste of time to play the blame game since it was likely this one historic event that changed the tide against us. If the Dems had run the devil himself they would have won.

    WE ARE NOT MOVING TO THE LEFT AS A COUNTRY

    Many swing Obama voters are ill informed and not aware of his socialistic ideas. In fact, some Democrats I know are oblivious. I told an Obama voter today about an interview I saw of Obama during the primary campaign. He said that small businesses would have to pay for their employees health care. The interviewer asked him what if they do not have enough profit. Obama said in that case other small businesses with a stronger profit would pay for the less profitable business employees. The Obama voters are shocked and dismayed when I tell them this, they go into denial and don’t believe me. My point is that only a small proportion of Obama voters like the lefty stuff and many of those who voted for him are not aware.

    HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

    If Obama governs from the left Congress will change over in two years. Even if he governs from the center and the economy is not improved in two years Congress will change over. I hope we have a message at that time but if we don’t, it will still change over. Voters will blame Obama for the state of the economy no matter what he has done or even if not his fault, just like they did Bush.

    ONE LAST OBSERVATION

    I am a psychiatrist and know a little about psychodynamics. People are overidealizing Obama, believing he is their savior. THey are projecting onto him all their hopes and dreams, fantasies of lost childhood and who knows what else. It is called transference==these types of feelings that are so out of whack and unrealistic. We have an old saying about overidealization among psychiatrists, “When you are overidealized, there is no where to go but down”.

  • DavidSage

    Apart from ideas, one cannot overstate the importance of having an effective communicator. We are at such a disadvantage with a liberal MSM that it needs to be a priority when we choose our leaders.

    As conservative activists, we tend to get awfully hung up on ideological purity when we choose candidates.

    Reagan didn’t get a lot accomplished simply because he was a solid conservative, it was his ability to articulate those conservative ideals.

    Even though they aren’t as conservative as I am, individuals like Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee (the best communicator, but my least favorite) were quite good at expressing their message.
    I’m willing to take a “hit” on the conservative ideological scale if we can have an effective leader that can defend and articulate at least some conservative policy goals.

    Bush is the worst communicator in modern politics and I think if Republicans were being honest we never would have nominated him had we known how terrible he was at articulating his vision, even though he has been good on a few conservative issues.

    McCain wasn’t much better as a communicator, but at least he could hold his own in a debate. We made the mistake that his biography would make up for his lack of skills in that department. Even though this was an awful environment for any Republican, I think Obama was beatable had our candidate been a better communicator that could have defined the true Obama.

    If the next Republican Presidential hopeful can’t match the silver-tongue of Obama, they need to be disqualified or else we’re going to keep losing.

  • finaljeopardy

    In 2004, Bush beat Kerry by winning 62.04 million votes. In 2008, Obama won 62.443 million, a gain of only 400,000. In 2004, Kerry garnered 59.028 million votes; John McCain only got 55.386 million. That means this election saw 3.24 million fewer votes than four years ago. Far from being more energized, the nation appeared to be more apathetic.

  • Han_Pritcher

    They’re still counting votes. Obama’s just under 64 million now and McCain’s at 55.5 or so million.

    It’ll wind up being more than 2004, and that will be as low as it is because of depressed turnout among Republicans (I think).

  • Han_Pritcher

    56.5 million. Didn’t mean to underrate his tally.

  • PaRep

    .

  • Han_Pritcher

    Kind of you to say so.

    You guys will be back. We both know that.

  • bk

    These next two years Obama is going to have free rein to pass anything he wants and stack the courts. Any celebration of keeping filibuster possibilities open is sophistry – our best case scenario is for 44 GOP Senators, which would include Hagel, Snowe, Collins, Specter, Smith, Lugar, and Voinovich. I don’t see someone like Ben Nelson or Lieberman joining any filibuster efforts and I’m guessing McCain (and therefore Graham) would be unlikely to do so either.

    And the 2010 lineup is certainly NOT in our favor on paper. Using this Wikipedia piece to get the list for the Senate – even after ignoring all the biased lefty comments there – it seems pretty obvious that we’re going to have a harder time defending the 19 R seats that are up than the Ds will have defending their 15 seats. And I believe the Dems are now back within about 10 seats of their 1994 levels in the House. How likely are we to see a swing in 2010 like we had in 1996? It could happen, but I’m not holding my breath esp since redistricting in 2010 is unlikely to help us as much as it did in 2000 (and beyond here in Texas heh heh) if it even helps us at all.

    If there is any sea change in Washington it seems unlikely to happen until 2012, and that’s only if we can get our act together by then. Obviously a lot can change in two years, but I think we’re stuck with four years of Obama having carte blanche before we have a chance to set things right again.

  • JakePrime

    nt

  • 2006_personoftheyear

    First of all, I agree with you to an extent. The reason that people are talking about a landslide is that it’s been awhile since the last one. 2000 and 2004 were so close, and Clinton’s victories (though I was too young to remember the press coverage) were marred by having a big third party presence, so it’s been 20 years. In 2004, I remember people saying Bush had a mandate, even though that was closer than this…it is because it seemed so wide open after 2000, and because it was the first majority vote anyone had got since ’88.

    Second, a lot of it has to do with non-incumbents winning. Obama is below-average overall but that is partially because the biggest margins go to incumbents (in the 1948-2008 period, if I am counting right there were 7 incumbents re-elected and only 2 weren’t really big). Comparing to elections where it was a new guy, that’s 7 previous victories with an average win of a tad over 4% if my math is right. This was over 6%. This is the third biggest, after Eisenhower and Reagan.

    Third, they say this every time a new guy wins in a non-insane election (like 2000), or even sometimes in the case of an insane election. It has happened 7 times in 60 years, so slightly more than once every 10 years – it is rare. Not counting crazy close elections, or weird third-party elections, and this is the fourth in 60 years.

    Fourth, the Dems also got the biggest House advantage since…well a while probably. Same in the Senate.

    Fifth, this is the fourth Democratic candidate to get >51% of the vote, ever. The others (unless I am missing someone) are LBJ, FDR, and Andrew Jackson.

    Sixth, when a new guy is elected, more often than not it leads to 8 years of one party’s rule, with a big re-election and big legacy. Eisenhower, Kennedy/LBJ, Nixon/Ford, Reagan, Clinton…the only exception really is Carter. And Bush, but I’m not counting him as a new guy ‘cuz he was already veep for eight years preceding.

  • bk

    All I’m saying is we have to be realistic – we got our clocks cleaned. To argue otherwise in my mind is to say that only some minor tweaking was needed and I totally disagree.

    Let me put it this way… Going into Tuesday how many of us thought “Gee we might actually pull this thing out”? Or if not, I bet a lot of us thought “Man if we just had another week we’d win this thing going away.” It’s clear we were dead wrong.

    I don’t get a good feeling when I read in other places that we have some on our side (including a few who worked at high levels of the McCain campaign) who have apparently drunk some leftover koolaid and are joining the Noonan/Powell “blame it on Palin” brigades. What a load of crap! Going into the GOP convention McCain was a dead duck and this blowout would have been a complete massacre in my mind if not for Palin.

    So to get back to my point, if we continue down the path of trying to be the Democratic Lite party and just do a few tweaks here and there we can expect more results like 2006 and 2008. We need some major housecleaning and refocusing if we are going to turn things around.

  • 2006_personoftheyear

    The post above talking about the press in ’92. Probably was something similar in ’80, ’76, ’68, ’60, and ’52. Not all of them landslides, but all a new guy taking office with the prospect of 8 years and a big legacy (which often but not always happened).

  • Rod_Patrick
  • bk

    Smith lost, so we have 43 in the Senate best case. That’s if Coleman hangs on and one way or another we end up with a Republican from AK.

    And the House is basically at the 1994 levels. I believe they had around 258 then and are at 256 now with a couple still not settled, so we need to flip about 40 seats to regain control.

  • PaRep

    If I said things about you that were bad I am Sorry you are a pretty good Guy for A LEFTY !!! LOL!!!

  • Joelim

    This hasn’t been a blowout though. It does have the virtue of exposing some rinos and would-be conservatives. Which is a good thing.

    The Game plan now should be to figure out which are the Stand Out Conservatives. Palin is one. Jindal is another. Who else?

    The housecleaning will go on. Operation Leper is in full swing, but it shouldn’t be our total focus. Our focus should be on 2010, keeping the Current Republicans focused on limiting the Devastaion from the left sure to come on January 20, 2009.

  • Achance

    Stevens looks like he will win but will have to be replaced. Hopefully he’ll resign but the Ds and moderate Rs will be enough to keep him from being seated. Begich almost beat “The Senator” and will be formidable against ANY other Republican, even Sarah herself.