2006personoftheyear & HanPritcher:

I see both of your points and appreciate you folks sharing your thoughts. It’s always helpful to get different angles, especially with data.

Yes, Obama’s vote margin was healthy, but I still think it falls far short of the expectations surrounding his campaign. Several outlier polls even put him ahead by up to 15 points. And, in no small part due to his messianic image, some thought this would be the mother of all blow-outs, and thus, an indication that he’s got a resounding mandate for a sea change far to the left.

In my post, I also wanted to stress the 1932 election of FDR. He too was not the incumbent and the US was experiencing an economic crisis at the time. FDR’s margin of 17.7% in the popular vote was far more impressive than Obama’s 6%. The media has hammered away at the idea that the 2008 crisis is just about as bad as the Great Depression (as an aside, my local paper in Wisconsin featured a picture from the Great Depression of two children eating salted lard sandwiches issued by the government . . . this was the weekend before the election and in context to the 2008 financial crisis. Thank God, we are not reduced to eating salted lard sandwiches and hopefully we won’t be. As I write this, you can still buy, at a very reasonble price, a Cheese Mountain Pizza at QuickTrip Gas Stations and wash it down with a mind boggling choice of beverages.). This was the pre-election message the media pushed because it was harmful to the incumbent party. Obama was to be the cool headed savior, already compared to the likes of Lincoln and Kennedy, that was supposed to sweep in and save us with a new New Deal. In my humble opinion, the vote margin of 6% doesn’t indicate that the public looked at it in quite the same way.

Again, thank you for your excellent comments and for reading my post.

Take Care,
mailloux

A landslide usually means nearly all the land is sliding, doesn’t it? Not 54%-56% of the land. If the Packers win 21-14 against the Vikings, nobody calls it a “blowout.” Let’s save terms like “mandate” and “landslide” for times when it really warrants it.