Back in November President Trump became the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote in a US presidential election since George W Bush in 2004. He beat Vice President Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party by 1.48 points.
Ever since then, pundits and social media users on the left have been trying to downplay the size of that victory, while those on the right have been trying to exaggerate it.
The cold, hard, historical facts tell us that his popular vote victory margin is ranked 50th out of 60 (if we take the times when the loser of the popular vote won the Electoral College as a negative value). In that sense, his margin of victory is by no means an outstanding one.
However, by the same token, Joe Biden’s popular vote victory in the 2020 presidential election (4.45 points) is also ranked only 42nd out of 60. Yet that did not stop the mainstream media from referring to it as a decisive victory, or even a landslide on multiple occasions.
It seems the era of bona fide landslides in US presidential elections is behind us. This has been the fourth consecutive election when the popular vote was within five points—this has never happened in American history before. The last time the candidate for either major party posted a double-digit win was in 1984, with Ronald Reagan’s historic, 49-state landslide reelection. He won the popular vote by 18.21 points then. The largest popular vote victory to date in the 21st century in a presidential election is that of Barack Obama from the Democratic Party in 2008, who won by 7.27 points.
‘It seems the era of bona fide landslides in US presidential elections is behind us’
The previous century, on the other hand, was filled with such massive thumpings. Democrat Franklin D Roosevelt won the popular vote by 17.76 points in 1932, as a result of the breakout of the Great Depression under Republican Herbert Hoover’s administration. Four years later, President Roosevelt was reelected with an even greater, 24.26-point victory in the popular vote.
Republican Dwight D Eisenhower won by 10.85 points and 15.40 points in 1952 and 1956, respectively. ‘Landslide Lyndon’ B Johnson (who, interestingly, got that nickname sarcastically after a very close and dubious Democrat primary election decades before) won by 22.58 points in 1964. Just eight years later, Richard Nixon on the Republican side won the national popular vote by even more, 23.15 points.
Republican Warren G Harding, who is now widely considered one of the worst Presidents in US history, won by 26.17 points in 1920. After his death in office, his Vice President Calvin Coolidge triumphed with a 25.22-point victory in 1924. Theodore Roosevelt also had a landslide of his own: he won the popular vote by 18.83 points in 1904.
How come such landslide victories do not happen anymore in US presidential elections?
The obvious answer would be that American society is now a lot more polarized than in the previous century. People have such strong opinions on the divisive issues of the day that there are just fewer voters who can be convinced to vote for a different party than their usual choice, or to ‘sit one out’ and let the other team take the W.
It is certainly reasonable to concede that this is in fact the case. So, instead of proving that thesis, it would be wiser to delve into why that is the case.
One plausible reason is media saturation. Advancements in technology first allowed hundreds of cable TV channels to be accessible for the average American consumer in the 1990s, thus each person could find political content that catered to their worldview 24/7. The widespread adoption of the internet, and then social media in the 2010s, exacerbated the issue.
Political commentary on social media has since become an industry of its own. Thousands of people in the US are now financially incentivized to create engaging or provocative political content. This type of content is so plentiful that it easily satisfies the average voter's daily needs. Thus, they are not incentivized to ‘peek out’ of their media echo chambers.
While remaining in their information bubbles, any new development in the country is readily explained away so that the user (and the voter) can feel they should stay loyal to their political party.
An alternative explanation for the close results of recent US presidential elections is a lot more trivial one: party colours. It was not until the 2000 election that media outlets started consistently using the colour red to denote the Republican Party and the colour blue to denote the Democratic Party. Prior, party colours were chosen arbitrarily for different graphics.
Take this footage of the coverage of the 1992 presidential election results by NBC, for example. There, Democrat candidate (and eventual winner) Bill Clinton's states are marked red, while Republican President George H W Bush's states are marked blue—which was just what the director's choice happened to be for the night.
Having certain colours consistently be affiliated with a political party encourages the tribal instinct in the voter, much like it does with sports teams. Thus, they are more emotionally attached to their own party and more emotionally against the opposing party, evidently making it much less likely to cast a vote in any election for the other side.
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