For the past week, politicians, pundits and voters alike have been talking about the historic win. Historic not just in the sense of our President-elect’s race, but also the landslide with which he won.

President-elect Obama is heading into the White House with the type of mandate that this country hasn’t seen in years.

Let’s look back the last few elections at the numbers:

2008: Obama - 53% (362 Electoral College Votes) 65,175,487
McCain - 46% (162 Electoral College Votes) 57,286,957
(Facts: CBS News)

2004: Bush - 51% (286 Electoral College Votes) 62,040,606
Kerry - 48% (252 Electoral College votes) 59,028,109
(Data from CNN)

2000: Bush - 48% (271 Electoral College Votes) 50,456,169
Gore - 48% (266 Electoral College Votes) 50,996,116
(Data from CNN)

1996: Clinton - 49% (379 Electoral College Votes) 47,402,357
Dole - 40% (159 Electoral College Votes) 39,198,755
(Facts from FEC)

1992: Clinton - 43% (370 Electoral College Votes) 44,909,806
Bush - 37% (168 Electoral College Votes) 39,104,550
(Facts from USAElectionatlas.org)

1988: Bush - 53% (426 Electoral College Votes) 48,886,597
Dukakis - 45% (Electoral College Votes 111) 41,809,476
(Facts from USAElectionatlas.org)

These numbers get forgotten quickly after their election, but I think it’s always good to look back and get a sense of where the country was at  those points in time.

 We can see that President George H. W. Bush never came into office with the type mandate Obama has been voted in with. 2000 was the court-contested election, and the 2004 popular election numbers were only three million votes apart.

 President Clinton never broke the 50% threshold… so it seems like that last time there was a strong mandate was when President Bush Sr. was elected in to office in 1988.

Wow. Twenty years ago.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 4:41 pm and is filed under campaign. 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.