landslide elections

Donald Trump clearly enjoyed an unexpected and decisive victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Indeed, many journalists and pundits have described the results as nothing less than a “landslide.”  In truth, it came nowhere near that standing. Although the final vote count is not yet in, it likes like Trump will have something like a popular-vote margin of around 2.7 percent. His margin in the electoral college is more substantial – 312 to 226 – but that is hardly an electoral blowout.

To put matters in perspective, in 1984 Ronald Reagan took 525 electoral votes to Walter Mondale’s 13, while in 1936 Franklin Roosevelt took 523 electoral votes to Alf Landon’s 8. Between 1920 and 1936, every presidential election was a landslide, with popular-vote margins ranging from 17.2% to 26.3. 1920, 1924, and 1928 were Republican landslides while 1932 and 1936 were Democratic landslides; in the electoral college, the Democratic scored additional landslides in 1940 and 1944. Two of these elections are illustrated in the figures posted below.)

Two possible reasons for the wildly inaccurate use of the term “landslide” come to mind. The first is that no blowout presidential election have occurred for some time; the most recent popular-vote landslide was in 1984, and the most recent electoral-college landslide was in 1988. As both the electorate and the two main political parties have become more ideological polarized – and as the nation has become more evenly divided – the chance of a genuine landslide election has plummeted. The second possible reason is the widespread embrace of hyperbole in political discourse. When it comes to rhetoric, we live in an age of extremes. Accurate depictions are apparently too dull for many viewers and are thus less likely to generate clicks than over-the-top reporting.