Landslide Victories?
This year’s presidential election will be close, very close. There have been periods in U.S. history when close elections were the norm and other time frames when landslide victories were common.
There is no clear definition of a landslide victory. It is complicated because the U.S. has a popular vote margin and an electoral college margin. It is possible to win the popular vote narrowly with a substantial electoral college majority. It is also possible, and has occurred several times, to lose the popular vote yet win the electoral college. In this article, I have defined a landslide victory as a 55% popular vote total or 75% electoral vote margin.
Founding Father Period (1789 – 1820)
The first five Presidents of the United States were founding fathers.
Here are the results of the first nine Presidential elections from 1789 - 1820:
Washington ran unopposed for the first two Presidential terms. Two bitterly close contests followed between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, each winning a slight majority of the Electoral College. Those contests marked the start of the two-party system in the United States, with Jefferson and Adams representing opposing viewpoints on the role of the central government.
The remaining elections in this time period were won by comfortable margins, culminating in 1820, when James Monroe ran unopposed in what was known as the ‘Era of Good Feelings.’
1824 – Four Candidate Melee
There was little consensus in the country on Monroe’s successor. The results (note - the popular vote started with this election):
Andrew Jackson had higher popular and electoral college vote totals than Quincy Adams. However, he did not have an absolute electoral college majority. Hence, the House of Representatives selected the winner. Despite lower votes than Jackson, the House selected Quincy Adams. Adams subsequently named Clay Secretary of State. Jackson and his supporters claimed that Adams and Clay had made a ‘corrupt’ bargain, where Clay worked behind the scenes to convert votes from Jackson to Adams
1828 – 1840 – Populist Movement
Jackson easily won the 1828 re-match against Adams and then the 1832 contest against Clay. Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s V.P. and ‘heir apparent’ defeated several candidates. Jackson founded the ‘populist’ movement, believing that the government needed to serve everyone, not just the elite. William Henry Harrison, famous for his campaign slogan, Tippecanoe and Tyler too, won the re-match against Van Buren, winning by a comfortable margin.
Our nation’s first fourteen presidential contests yielded only three tight elections – 1796, 1800, and 1824. The remainder were either landslides or won by comfortable, if not landslide, margins.
1844 – 1900 – Pre and Post-Civil War
The country became increasingly divided in the period leading up to the 1861 Civil War. Every election was tight from 1844 until the outbreak of the war. In 1860, Lincoln won only 39% of the popular vote, the lowest of any winning candidate in our history. But he won enough states to win in the Electoral College.
Lincoln thought he would lose re-election in 1864 due to the length and cost of the Civil War. When General Sherman took Atlanta in September 1864, Lincoln’s prospects improved as the nation saw a path to victory. Lincoln won in 1864 by a landslide. After the war, popular Union General Grant won comfortably in 1868 followed by a landslide re-election in 1872.
The remaining elections in the 19th Century were all close. Except for Grover Cleveland, every President was a veteran of the Civil War. The South was unified behind the Democratic Party and its opposition to Civil Rights, limiting the winning margin available to any Republican candidate. The nation was also divided on economic issues and the growing strength of the Union movement. William McKinley’s victory in 1900 was the last contest featuring a Civil War veteran.
Over these 56 years, covering 15 elections, 13 were close, with only two landslides.
20th Century (1904 – 1988) – World Wars, the Depression and Cold War
Most 20th-century elections were landslides – sometimes for the Republican candidate and sometimes for the Democrat. During this Century, the nation fought two major wars (World War I and World War II), followed by the Cold War. We experienced the Great Depression in the 1930s and stagflation in the 1970s. The country’s electorate gave broad support to the candidate they perceived best able to handle the day’s issues.
In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt was quite popular, winning one of our history’s largest popular vote totals. When he ran as a third-party candidatein 1912, he split the vote with President Taft, resulting in Wilson winning the election. After World War I ended in 1918, Wilson and the Democrats were unpopular with the vo ters for several reasons, including the war’s aftermath and the economy. Warren Harding’s 60% popular vote tally was one of the largest in our nation’s history. He was popular when he died in office, and his VP, Calvin Coolidge, also won in a landslide.
The Great Depression hit in 1932, and FDR won the first of his four victories. In 1940, with another world war looming, he broke precedent, sought a third term, and won again in a landslide. Despite his poor health, he was easily returned to office in 1944, as World War II was nearing its end.
Truman, FDR’s V.P., won a close election in 1948, with Southern Segregationist Strom Thurmond winning 39 electoral votes from Southern states.
As America settled into the prosperous period after World War II, World War II General Eisenhower (IKE) won two landslide victories over Adlai Stevenson, returning Republicans to the White House after twenty years. IKE kept the Cold War cold with the Soviet Union and ended the Korean War. Eisenhower’s VP, Nixon, lost a narrow, disputed election to John F. Kennedy in 1960. His VP, Lyndon B. Johnson, won our history’s highest popular vote against right-wing candidate Barry Goldwater. Due to disenchantment with the Vietnam War, LBJ declined to run for re-election. In a three-way race, Nixon won a narrow victory against LBJ’s VP, Hubert Humphrey, and third-party candidate, southerner George Wallace.
After ending the Vietnam War, Nixon swept both the popular and electoral vote, defeating left-wing candidate McGovern – his popular vote total of 60% and 97% electoral college totals are among the largest electoral margins.
Nixon resigned in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal, where he was accused of covering up the break-in into Democratic headquarters. Jimmy Carter narrowly won the subsequent election. With the country beset by stagflation (a combination of economic recession and high inflation) and foreign policy failures, the nation swept Ronald Reagan into office in 1980. Reagan’s policies addressed economic and foreign policy problems, so the voters re-elected him in 1984 by a huge margin.
Finally, Reagan’s V.P. George Bush won an easy victory in 1988, becoming the first standing V.P. to win an election in his own right since Martin Van Buren back in 1836.
This era saw 16 landslide victories, with the Republicans winning ten and the Democrats winning six.
Three Presidents won multiple landslides - FDR, IKE, Reagan:
Modern Times – 1991 – today
Recent electoral results show the partisan split in the country. The most recent eight elections have all been close, covering a period of over 30 years. Is the country as polarized now as during the Civil War era when landslide victories were rare?
The Future
Will we ever see a landslide victory again? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.