Landslide Got you Down?

We're getting far enough away from the election that we are starting to see reporters frame it as a past event, for example this story in the Boston Globe about the Republican Governors' Association meeting which is filled with backward looking references to the "Obama Landslide."

Of course there are news outlets and 'pub bloggers arguing the landslide is pure fiction, because the popular vote was 52-46, and that's reasonably close. It is interesting, after the politics of a "deeply divided country" over the past ten years (how many times did we have to sit through anchors telling us with great portent how divided we were?)

But the reality is, as the GOP could not wait to remind America in 2000, we elect the president not through one-person-one-vote, but through 50 separate statewide elections, most of which are winner-take-all, for selection of a slate of electors from that state. And in 2008, there was an electoral college landslide. The current tally is 365-162 with the single Nebraska electoral vote going to Obama. (Was really just a case of free association in which Omaha and Obama looked too much alike to be a coincidence.) MO is the only state still not called.

So, Obama pulled more than 67 percent of the electoral votes, leaving McCain with a maximum of 33 percent in the only tally that matters. Okay fine it doesnt look as impressive as the butt-waxings issued to Democrats by the unindicted co-conspirator Nixon and the Gipper:

In 1972, Republican Richard Nixon raked in 520 votes compared with 17 for George McGovern, who won Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts, and lost even his home state, South Dakota.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 489 electoral votes to incumbent President Jimmy Carter’s 49. Carter, a Democrat, pulled out wins in D.C., Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota.
Four years later, Reagan, won re-election with 525 votes, leaving Walter Mondale with only 13. Mondale won his home state, Minnesota, and reliaby blue Washington, D.C.

Still, the AP did a nice piece before the election setting the table for what a landslide would be. Obama met EVERY ONE of the tests: over 320 electoral votes, and "overwhelming" win, a distinct shift in electoral behavior of states.

It is a loose concept, but the definition of "landslide" I had walking out of college with a B.A. in Political Science was anytime one candidate is above 60 percent of the vote. In the electoral college, Obama hit that mark too.

So, when you're in those tricky holiday table conversations and the know-it-all conservatives come with their downplaying of the Obama landslide, consider yourself armed.