Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Politics and Other Controversies > Elections
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 11-26-2008, 12:29 PM
 
31,672 posts, read 40,881,756 times
Reputation: 14418

Advertisements

Obama won by the largest non incumbent margin history and the 6th largest ever. Now thats a significant victory and all should congratulate him for running a campaign for the ages.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right

Here's an impressive-sounding statistic, even if it's mostly an artifact of population growth. Barack Obama's victory margin from November 4th now stands at 9,124,522 votes, and will probably grow a bit more once states like Illinois, New York and California finalize their counts.

This is the 6th largest victory margin of all time, and the largest ever by a non incumbent.

If looked at in percentage terms, however, Obama's 7.0-point margin is really fairly middle of the road, having been bettered 26 times overall and by 12 non-incumbents:

Largest Popular Vote Percentage Margin, Non-Incumbents Only


Even with it being much a result of population growth it is for now the non incumbent record.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 11-26-2008, 01:00 PM
 
Location: Washington state
7,211 posts, read 9,394,118 times
Reputation: 1895
Quote:
Originally Posted by TuborgP View Post
Obama won by the largest non incumbent margin history and the 6th largest ever. Now thats a significant victory and all should congratulate him for running a campaign for the ages.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right

Here's an impressive-sounding statistic, even if it's mostly an artifact of population growth. Barack Obama's victory margin from November 4th now stands at 9,124,522 votes, and will probably grow a bit more once states like Illinois, New York and California finalize their counts.

This is the 6th largest victory margin of all time, and the largest ever by a non incumbent.

If looked at in percentage terms, however, Obama's 7.0-point margin is really fairly middle of the road, having been bettered 26 times overall and by 12 non-incumbents:

Largest Popular Vote Percentage Margin, Non-Incumbents Only


Even with it being much a result of population growth it is for now the non incumbent record.
Without a doubt one of the finest campaigns ever run, his victory was sweet... as was the complete and total humiliation of the Republican Party. Most importantly there is no question in that he has a mandate to deliver some real change from what we've seen the last eight years.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 01:09 PM
 
35,016 posts, read 39,005,901 times
Reputation: 6194
Fantastic. I dont know how much louder a call for change can be.

But change was already on the way. Not just about Obama (and not really represented by him) but a sense that a revolution in thought was taking place - the old guard was dying and something new was coming - was here. In December 2007 Andrew Sullivan published this about it: Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters - The Atlantic (December 2007) At about the same time IIRC Gary Hart published something similar on the same topic in the NYT.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 01:43 PM
 
Location: New Jersey
11,287 posts, read 16,562,181 times
Reputation: 13213
Not really a big deal since the USA population has risen well over 70mm since the late 80's.

Just wait until the election 2048. Now that's going to be a real big voter turnout.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 01:46 PM
 
Location: Orlando, Florida
43,854 posts, read 50,862,909 times
Reputation: 58749
If the Black, Hispanic and college aged voters bothered to get out in record number to vote 8 years ago.....Bush would have never been in office. Instead of feeling all victorious, they should feel a little silly.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 01:53 PM
 
Location: Charlotte
12,642 posts, read 15,531,729 times
Reputation: 1680
Quote:
Originally Posted by MPBsr View Post
Not really a big deal since the USA population has risen well over 70mm since the late 80's.

Just wait until the election 2048. Now that's going to be a real big voter turnout.

Interesting. Don't we look at actual totals as well as percentage?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 01:56 PM
 
Location: Washington state
7,211 posts, read 9,394,118 times
Reputation: 1895
Quote:
Originally Posted by GloryB View Post
If the Black, Hispanic and college aged voters bothered to get out in record number to vote 8 years ago.....Bush would have never been in office. Instead of feeling all victorious, they should feel a little silly.

I think the only folks feeling a "little silly" are the McCain/Palin supporters who up until the day of the election continued to rather foolishly claim that the polls were wrong.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 01:58 PM
 
31,672 posts, read 40,881,756 times
Reputation: 14418
Quote:
Originally Posted by GloryB View Post
If the Black, Hispanic and college aged voters bothered to get out in record number to vote 8 years ago.....Bush would have never been in office. Instead of feeling all victorious, they should feel a little silly.
History can be revisited but not changed. The here and now can be changed and this election was about that change at this time and this place.

Some fret about loves lost while others love their loves realized as being their current here and now.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 02:01 PM
 
31,672 posts, read 40,881,756 times
Reputation: 14418
Quote:
Originally Posted by walidm View Post
Interesting. Don't we look at actual totals as well as percentage?
The article link says all of that. If FiveThirtyEight considers it noteworthy and who are we peons to question their statistical analysis.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 11-26-2008, 02:49 PM
 
Location: Idaho Falls
5,041 posts, read 6,192,253 times
Reputation: 1483
People should factor in a couple of additional points. Obama won despite being black, which is a handicap in this country. Sure it helped him marginally with the smallish black vote - they are traditionally above 90% Dem anyway. But it hurt him greatly among the much larger non-black voting block. Had he not had that barrier to overcome, his victory would have been much larger.

Second, the GOP had the advantage of the corrupted DOJ. The Rove-led attempt to politicize the FEC and the DOJ to ensure a "permanent GOP majority," while not successful, must have had some impact on the vote. We may never know how many voters were removed from the rolls on questionable grounds, but it certainly hurt Obama's total.

Given the horrible GOP record over the last 8 years, the occupations, the economic conditions, the poorly run McCain campaign, the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the GOP base towards McCain, it's actually really amazing that Obama wasn't further ahead. The reasons that he wasn't further ahead are more interesting to me than his vote total.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Politics and Other Controversies > Elections

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top