Talk:List of United States presidential elections by Electoral College margin

Wikify and confusing

This is a great page, so I hope the creator doesn't take offense to the tags (wikify and confusing) being added, but the explanation of the calculation of closeness is definitely is beyond the comprehension of most people. The exact and mathematical explanation is definitely a good and necessary thing, but could someone maybe start off with a "dumbed down" explanation?--Hraefen 17:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Have attempted to clarify and Wikify. My first attempt on a Wikipedia page, so would like some opinion before removing tabs. 81.182.95.147 18:41, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

On June 16, 2006, I did a major rewrite of the opening portion of the article to clarify the article. After waiting for close to three months for an editor to remove the {{confusing}} tag or to further modify the explanation or to write to the talk page, I posted a request on Hraefen's talk page on September 15, asking him to tell me how the article is still confusing or to remove the tag. It is now September 25, and I have gotten no response. I am therefore going to presume that my rewrite worked and remove the tag.

— DLJessup (talk) 22:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

1792 election - Unanimous yet 0.833

Mucho thanks for the explanation rewrite, DLJessup!

I don't understand, though, how Washington's 1789 and 1792 elections can have him winning all the electoral votes, and yet his margin of victory is 1.000 in the first instance and 0.833 in the second.

I noticed that because of the following passage in United States presidential election, 1936, which made me look back and find Roosevelt's 1936 victory in 3rd place from the "bottom" rather than 4th.

“ Roosevelt's 60.8% of the popular vote is the second-largest percentage in U.S. history after Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and his 98.5% of the electoral vote is the fourth-largest in U.S. history after George Washington's two unanimous wins in 1789 and 1792 and James Monroe's unopposed race in 1820. ”

TransUtopian 12:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The key to understanding this issue is found in an misstatement in your posting. You write, “…how Washington's 1789 and 1792 elections can have him winning all the electoral votes….” But Washington didn't win all of the electoral votes; rather, he won the votes of all the electors. Under the screwy rules of pre-12th Amendment presidential elections, each elector cast two presidential votes. Among other things, this meant that a candidate could receive the vote of every single elector and still lose the Presidency, if his primary opponent also got the vote of every single elector; the tie would throw the election into the House of Representatives. It was a (non-unanimous) tie in the election of 1800 that got the 12th Amendment passed.

In 1789, Washington received the votes of all of the electors, and no other candidate received the votes of a majority of electors, so his margin of victory is spaced from the 50% majority needed to avoid a runoff in the House. In 1792, however, John Adams received a majority of the vote as well, so Washington's margin of victory is cut down however much Adams exceeded a majority.

— DLJessup (talk) 14:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I got it. In the 1792 election, 264 electoral votes were cast, meaning there were 132 electors and anyone who received at least 67 votes (half of 132, add 1) could become President or VP. If there was a tie for first or second place, there would be a runoff election in the House, where there could be a maximum of three condenters with at least 67 votes. I see now that the last paragraph in the Informal section lays it out. "because each elector cast two presidential votes" and "above 50% of the electors".

I'd like to reword that to explain that even more clearly, because I (think I) got it, but I'd like to avoid the misunderstanding I had for future readers. I got as far as However, prior to the passage of the 12th Amendment, electors cast two votes for president, with the vice president simply being the runner-up who received votes from over 50% of the number of electors but so far I've failed to articulate the rest in a way that's relevant in the context of the article's title. Alternatively, I tried to amend the Unaminous asterisk at the bottom, but realized (Unanimous. The 0.833 margin of victory in the 1792 election is due to John Adams getting over 50% of the electoral votes, which would have required the House of Representatives to decide in the event of a tie) that I was restating too much stuff from the intro.

What were the Founders thinking when they had electors cast two votes for president? And the mandatory Lame Duck session in Article One, prior to the 20th amendment that had the outgoing Congress supervise the counting in 1800. Were they things that worked fine in theory, but not in practice, or situations which changed in the years between the Constitution and the 12th and 20th Amendments? TransUtopian 21:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, the mandatory Lame Duck session was mostly a failure of imagination. The Founders never actually specified that the term of the President and Congress would start on the same day; they simply didn't address the issue, and thus never thought through the implications. (In fairness to the Constitutional Convention, the term of the President could be said to have been set by the Second Congress when they passed 1 Stat. 239, the first law governing presidential elections. If the Second Congress had thought about it, they could have set the presidential term to start on April 6, when they counted the votes for President, or April 30, when Washington actually took the oath of office for the first time.)

As to the two votes for President: one of the Founders' serious concerns was that electors would vote for men from their own states rather than national figures. The Founders figured that if they gave each elector two votes, they could then require that at least one of those votes not be for a candidate from the same state as the elector. They expected that an elector would cast one vote for a “favorite son” candidate and one for a national figure, so that they could get a sufficient pool of national figures for the House of Representatives to choose a decent President. (The Vice Presidency, it turns out, was created as a mechanism to keep electors from casting a blank ballot for one of their two votes.)

In short, the Founders were human, and they made some serious errors in their design. They still did remarkably well, especially when you compare their work to that of many other Western nations.

— DLJessup (talk) 02:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

What does "1 Stat. 239" mean? I presume stat means statute. Google reveals it's aka the "Act of March 1, 1792".

I remember the "Favorite son" reason from the article on the 12th Amendment, which makes sense in that way, though it created a bit of math confusion in my head. Fascinating reason for the Vice Presidency. The 1800 election mentions some states casting blank ballots, but only in the contingent election due to the Representatives of several states being evenly split on their choice. Also interesting in the VP article, "While [the 12th Amendment solved the problem we've been discussing], it ultimately had the effect of lowering the prestige of the Vice Presidency, as the Vice President was no longer the second choice for President."

I'm developing a continuing interest in this. My other political interests stem from researching stuff after The West Wing, but it's usually short-lived. Any recommendations on laymen's guides (books or sites) to late 1700's/early 1800's Constitutional/election stuff besides WP & its refdesk? I next want to sit down with the US Electoral College article. TransUtopian 14:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

“1 Stat. 239” means Statutes at Large, volume 1, page 239. The Library of Congress has the early volumes online.

I can recommend a few books for you to read on the development of the constitutional/election stuff:

• Ackerman, Bruce (2005). The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01866-4.
• Amar, Akhil Reed (2005). America's Constitution: A Biography. Random House. ISBN 0-812-97272-4.
• Wilentz, Sean (2005). The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: W.W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-32921-6.

All are written for the layman, but have scholarly endnotes. — DLJessup (talk) 20:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much. The local library system has the latter two, so I'm getting The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. I'm kind of excited. I've never read a book like that for pleasure rather than an assignment before. And no problem about the delay. We all have to visit Real Life sometimes, myself included. TransUtopian 12:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand how the election was unanimous even though John Adams got some electoral votes, but I don't understand how the margin of victory was 0.833. Could someone show the math that was used to get this number? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashertg (talk • contribs) 14:28, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Gendered Language

“ In modern presidential elections, the margin of victory does not depend on the margin between the winner and his main rival. If the “winner” doesn't get a majority of the electoral vote, the election is thrown into the House of Representatives where his rival may very well be chosen. On the other hand, if a candidate does get a majority, he is guaranteed to have more votes than his rivals. ”

This is a bit problematic, especially considering that this election may include a female candidate, so I'm going to go ahead and make this gender-neutral. Tyharvey313 02:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

This gender-neutral hysteria has to have an end: Yes, if WP policy prefers that "he" not be used, then by all means change it. Do not, however, make a big deal out of it. Read-up on how language and grammar works instead, and ignore the propaganda from the gender-feminist and politically correct camps. You are just being a "useful idiot". 94.220.242.124 (talk) 12:19, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Original research

While the contents are not without interest and the topic perfectly valid, the article positively scream original research at the moment. I have added the corresponding tag.94.220.242.124 (talk) 12:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

• I absolutely agree with this. While the subject is interesting, unless we can find credible, third-party sourcing for these formulas and such, this isn't a proper article for Wikipedia. Lithistman (talk) 04:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
• I have no problem with the existence of the article. Numbers are facts, not research. Collecting numbers and putting them in a table is not OR. I also don't think a simple percentage (e.g., votes gotten/total votes) is OR. However, there appears to be some interpretation of the facts and the article says "we" several times. Who is "we"? If there is more than one way to interpret some facts, the article should simply present both interpretations, with no bias toward either one. Also, it appears the article should have two tables -- one for the first four elections, and one for the remaining elections, reflecting the two different systems under which those elections were run. 50.170.122.31 (talk) 00:31, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Why are there two "number 1" entries?

Assuming, as the text says that the table is ordered based on normalized percent in the electoral college why would there be two number 1? One could argue that since neither election yeilded a winner in the EC that neither belongs on the list at all. But if they are going to be there (which I prefer for completelness) either carry through with the ordering formula (percent of EC vote) or perhaps include them but rank them as N/A. (Neither candidate gained a victory in the electoral college).

To most people two #1s imply a tie, but the numbers don't show that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.76.12 (talk) 22:32, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Question on Table of Election Results

I am using the data from this table for some election research, and I believe that the column "Winner (c)" should really be "Winner" and that "Total number of electors" should be "Total number of electors (c)". Basically, c should represent the variable for the total number of electors. Could someone double-check me on this? I have not modified anything.blacksheep (talk) 19:09, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

It is ridiculous that the main table does not include the simple raw margin of the winner over the runner-up

It is ridiculous that the main table does not include the simple raw margin of the winner over the runner-up.

That is what most people seek when they consult a table like this.

"Raw margin" should be the title of a column immediately to the right of the "winner" and "runner-up" column, and should be nothing but the difference between those two numbers.

And, it should be possible to choose to rank the data by the raw margin where applicable (i.e., for cases that did not involve two candidates tied for first place).

It almost seems as though someone was hoping this article would be confusing. I certainly hope not.Daqu (talk) 04:55, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that column should be added: Electoral votes for winner minus electoral votes for runner up. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 03:05, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Thirded Orser67 (talk) 01:18, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Popular vote

I suggest adding the popular vote to the column. It may be an interesting way to compare individual elections since EC does not always mirror this. -- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 01:55, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Nixon vote Fraction

Nothing much, I just think the little math lesson in the "landslide" section is unnecessary. Just include the percentage. 023I17572llO173740 (talk) 23:59, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

When would it be appropriate to update Bidens total to the projected amount of votes

The AP and state of Georgia appear to have decided Biden has a total of 306 electoral votes as of today I believe. Is it appropriate to update the total or should we wait until this disputing business is over? PhoenixJCC (talk) 01:37, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Question moved from article page

I have moved the following subsection from the article page - Arjayay (talk) 13:24, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

"Lopsided vs. "Landslide"

Is there any particular reason that Reagan's 1984 re-election victory is referred to as "one of the most lopsided victories in American history" as opposed to "one of the biggest landslide victories in American history?" For what it's worth it is referred to in the section of the article as a "landslide." Basil the Bat Lord (talk) 04:55, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

John Adams (pere) lifetime total

He's described as having won the least, 136, but he didn't run only in 1796 and 1800: he also ran in 1788 and 1792. He won 247 total electoral votes (34 in the first election [won VP], 77 in the second [also VP], 71 in his successful run, and 65 in his loss to Jefferson). ~ MD Otley (talk) 14:09, 2 May 2024 (UTC)