Obama's Electoral Vote in Historical Perspective

Let us assume that President Obama ends up winning Florida's 29 electoral votes.  He would then have 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206, or 61.71% of the total.  That percentage may seem very high.  Indeed, some commentators are writing of a "thrashing" or a "rout."  But remember that except in Maine and Nebraska (which use the district system), a candidate wins 100% of a state's electoral vote even if he or she wins by small margin in the popular vote.  The electoral college typically amplifies the popular results.

So how does the president's electoral college margin rate by historical standards?

The 2012 race was the thirtieth presidential contest since 1896, which many scholars use as the beginning of "modern politics."   If we look at those 30 contests, we find that the mean winning percentage of the electoral vote is 73.43% and the median is 71.27%.

In other words, President Obama's share of the electoral vote is below average for winning candidates. It ranks twenty-second out of thirty.

1936		Franklin D. Roosevelt	98.49%
1984		Ronald Reagan	97.58%
1972		Richard Nixon	96.65%
1980		Ronald Reagan	90.89%
1964		Lyndon B. Johnson	90.33%
1932		Franklin D. Roosevelt	88.89%
1956		Dwight D. Eisenhower	86.06%
1940		Franklin D. Roosevelt	84.56%
1928		Herbert Hoover	83.62%
1952		Dwight D. Eisenhower	83.24%
1912		Woodrow Wilson	81.92%
1944		Franklin D. Roosevelt	81.36%
1988		George H. W. Bush	79.18%
1920		Warren G. Harding	76.08%
1924		Calvin Coolidge	71.94%
1904		Theodore Roosevelt	70.59%
1996		Bill Clinton	70.45%
1992		Bill Clinton	68.77%
2008		Barack Obama	67.84%
1908		William Howard Taft	66.46%
1900		William McKinley	65.32%
2012		Barack Obama	61.71%
1896		William McKinley	60.63%
1948		Harry S. Truman	57.06%
1960		John F. Kennedy	56.42%
1968		Richard Nixon	55.95%
1976		Jimmy Carter	55.20%
2004		George W. Bush	53.16%
1916		Woodrow Wilson	52.17%
2000		George W. Bush	50.37%
		Mean	73.43%
		Median	71.27%