What would constitute a "landslide"?

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I hope you aren't an engineer for anything important. :roll:

As I said, anything 400+ would be a landslide.

This from a guy who called Bush's win by the skin of his teeth in 2004 a "mandate"?

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
I'm not looking for a landslide. I'm looking for a tidal wave.

If you want a tidal wave, go swim in the ocean.

 

[ProfJohn]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I hope you aren't an engineer for anything important. :roll:

As I said, anything 400+ would be a landslide.

This from a guy who called Bush's win by the skin of his teeth in 2004 a "mandate"?

Resorting to making things up now?

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I hope you aren't an engineer for anything important. :roll:

As I said, anything 400+ would be a landslide.

This from a guy who called Bush's win by the skin of his teeth in 2004 a "mandate"?

Resorting to making things up now?

My bad, I was confusing you with some of our other conservative posters here. You weren't even around during the 2004 election. My mistake.

Edit: Although you might take into consideration that such comments were EXTREMELY common among Republicans after the 2004 elections. The distance between their "mandate" definition and your "landslide" definition (which ultimately means the same thing) is a pretty big gulf.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I hope you aren't an engineer for anything important. :roll:

As I said, anything 400+ would be a landslide.

This from a guy who called Bush's win by the skin of his teeth in 2004 a "mandate"?

Resorting to making things up now?

No he's not. Not only you but Hannity said the same thing.

Look what your mandate has resulted in, a good chance the country does not survive your kind.

 

[Farang]

Originally posted by: shira
The electoral vote is an artificial construct. It's possible to construct scenarios in which one candidate gets more than 400 electoral votes while pulling less than 40% of the popular vote (versus the losing candidate's more than 60%). Yet people in this thread would claim that the winner in such scenarios has achieved a landslide.

Really, a "landslide" exists only if a win in the electoral college (regardless of size) is combined with a popular-vote margin of at least 9 or 10%.

I think the 9-10% figure is true for other races, but we haven't seen that margin for what--20, 24 years? Possibly it was just the candidates we've seen in those past elections weren't strong enough, but it seems more likely that the political makeup of the country just won't allow that kind of margin. Also unlike other elections where the goal is solely to get as many votes as possible (thus driving up differences in straight vote totals), in Presidential politics the game is played on the electoral level so it is harder to get 9-10% nationally when you are spending all of your time in just a few states.

I'm not saying your argument is completely without merit but I think the electoral count is more relevant than you make it out to be.