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UPDATED Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012 at 11:45 am ET: President Obama ranks ninth among candidates for president in electoral-vote averages since 1896, according to a First Read analysis.
Mitt Romney's 203 EVs puts him 22nd of the 44 candidates who have gotten at least one electoral vote in that 116-year history.
First Read averaged the electoral-vote score of each of the runs for president for each candidate (who got at least one electoral vote).
Ronald Reagan takes the top spot with his average EV score of 507, followed by Lyndon B. Johnson's 486 in 1964 following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is third with his average of 469 across four successful presidential runs. Dwight Eisenhower follows with an average 449.5 across his two campaigns in the 1950s.
Bill Clinton, who comes in at No. 7, edges Obama 374.5 to 348.5.
George W. Bush is 15th with his 278.5, two spots behind his father's average of 297.
Al Gore's 266 lands him at 16; John Kerry's 251 puts him at 19.
John McCain's 173 EVs in 2008 put him at No. 24, tied with Jimmy Carter's average between 1976 and 1980.
Note: Prior to the 1908 election, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Washington, DC, did not yet count. Oklahoma was first counted in in 1908. In 1912, Arizona and New Mexico were added. Hawaii and Alaska began being counted in 1960. DC came into play for the first time in 1964. In addition, California began getting at least 40 electoral votes in 1964. In the early part of the 1900s, up until the 1930s, California was below 20 EVs. States like New York have been on a steady decline in electoral votes, while states like Florida and Texas have seen a steady increase.
Presidential candidates, ranked by average Electoral College votes
1. Reagan 507
2. LBJ 486
3. FDR 469
4. Eisenhower 449.5
5. Harding 404
6. Coolidge 382
7. Clinton 374.5
8. Wilson 356
9. Obama 348.5
10. Nixon 346.7
11. Truman 303
11. Kennedy 303
13. H.W. Bush 297
14. McKinley 281.5
15. W. Bush 278.5
16. Gore 266
17. Hughes 254
18. Hoover 251.5
19. Kerry 251
20. Ford 240
21. T. Roosevelt 212
22. Romney 203
23. Humphrey 191
24. McCain 173
24. Carter 173
26. Taft 164.5
27. Bryan 164.3
28. Dole 159
29. Dewey 144
30. Parker 140
31. Davis 136
32. Cox 127
33. Dukakis 111
34. Smith 87
35. Wilkie 82
36. Stevenson 81
37. Goldwater 52
38. Wallace 46
39. Thurmond 39
40. McGovern 17
41. Byrd 15
42. Mondale 13
43. LaFollette 13
44. Landon 8
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly noted Harry Truman's Electoral College score. It should be 303 and is corrected above.
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Intersting but really kind of a worthless bit of trivia
oh I dont know Terry, there is a significant number of Americans who say Obama is one of the worst Presidents ever and this shows that electorial college does not believe that and niether does the majority of Americans
obama is the worst ever...
When you get into the alternate reality that republicans live in, Obama has done some really bad things. He would be one of the worst presidents ever if he had done any of those things in the real world.
McPaddywackoff...
Get over it, he won re-election!
A mandate none the less. Good Job Bronco!!
Republican dictionary:
Mandate - two men go to the movies
Blackmail - African American man.
No mandate. Only 50% of the vote. Not a mandate at all.
Floridamom...
He won the election, that is a mandate
Good grief. Merely winning an election - of itself - is not a mandate. If Obama wiped the board like Reagan did, you could argue the nation had a strong sentiment of a mandate for a certain platform.
That clearly is not the case once again since 2000.
Get over it...he won.. mandate
This vine is not as partisan as before the election. Could it be that the paid Republican trolls have dried up along with Rove's funding?
obstruct and block anything supported by or proposed by obama.....obama is bad news even though he won the election.....forward my ass......
The republicans are looking for the reason they've lost to president obama ??? let me help you guys , first thing , drop MORONI , and turn back to JESUS CHRIST !!! drop the GREED , drop the LYING , drop the HIPOCRICY , drop the SELFISHNESS , drop the SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS , drop the WELFARE ENTITLEMENT FOR THE RICH , drop the ARROGANCE , drop the OFFSHORE TAX DODGING , drop the OBSTUCTIONIST. IN OTHER WORDS , '' DROP THE TEA PARTY '' , AND IT WILL GIVE YA'LL A FIGHTING CHANCE !!!!!!!
That's your problem....your a$$ is forward...
on a lighter note.....HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL.......i have much to be thankful for.......as we all do i hope.......
From the looks of it Mittens is going to take a while to heal his fragile narcissist attitude....now that he has twice failed miserably to become the 'most powerful man in the world', what job will he try for next???
Car elevator operator.
Why does this article give Romney 203 electoral votes when every other count gives him 206? Did he really lose Alaska or did MSNBC mess up?
Does it matter?
President Obama is the best President we've had since FDR.
Those in the right-wing media bubble just can't stand it!
Obama is the worst president we have ever had. He couldn't fix in 4 years anything he said he would fix and he said if he didn't fix it he shouldn't be president again. Unfortunately, everyone wants to elect charismatic people as if they actually have any really know how.
Floridamom....
Put away the sour grape kool-aid, Obama is the President, get over it
Electoral college must be made up of 15 kindergarden students that have had the liberal school of indocturination!!!! They are complete fools.... Just like the rest of Obama's "SHEEPLES"
you sound like a SHEEPLE. lol. you've got 4 more years to whine. :)
Boy, those grapes are sour, aren't tjey?
The repubs are still trying to figure out why they lost so big. There are so many reasons why they lost, they will fill a three hundred page book without spacing. I got to be honest, I don't think rumney got as many votes as was shown.....talk about the wrong stuff!!! Oh and, GOOD BYE ALLEN KEYS.....ya big stupid!!!!
Romney won big in the deep south. Basically, every state where marrying outside the family is frowned upon.
The Republicans did not lose big, they lost small. Look again at the numbers. Obama won 50% of the vote, the other 50% did not vote for him. 48% went to Romney and 2% went to other people. No winning large here.
The fact remains, the GOP lost. Nuff said
How about 51% to 48% with 1% going to somebody else. I know floridamom that this is the real world so you would have different numbers. And there are still some votes from the west coast to count so I have heard that this will drop Romney to 47% as he is actually just over 47.5% now.
i notice the media doesn't want to tell you the REAL numbers of how the election was won. ------ would you believe only 500,000 votes determined the winner ??? ----- that's not what i would call a mandate. ---- in fact, if you take away 250,000 votes from obama and give them to romney ( in the only 4 states which mattered ), the election has a different outcome. ----- regardless..... certainly no mandate. ---------- and of course, the media ignores the little fact that the republicans gained 2 states they lost in 2008..... yet another reason why there is no mandate.
Maybe because nobody gives a rat's azz. Romney lost by 4 points.
The media also doesn't tell us that it there weren't so many hillbillies and rednecks in the deep south, Obama would have won by 20 points.
the point is, there is no way for anyone to claim that the voters gave obama a mandate.
I officially claim and go on record that the voters gave Obama a mandate.
My hope is that as republicans evolve and get closer to being human, that democrats and republicans will be able to communicate. Until that day, we can continue to argue about stuff here.
No mandate for Obama. He only received 50% of the vote. Romney 48% with 2% voting otherwise, which means 50% of the people did not want Obama. Just because he won the most electoral votes does not mean he has a mandate from the people. The electoral college is outdated and should be revisited, no matter who has won.
obama received 4 million fewer votes than in 2008, and romney received .8 million more votes than did mccain in 2008 ------ there is NO mandate.
Obama won the election...that is a mandate
Whether you call if a mandate or not does not matter....Obama won, that is a mandate.
John McCain got 59,948,240 in 2008 and Romney got 59,142,004 so far. ronpal - Is it true that 59,142,004 is a larger number in republican math than 59,948,240? Obama did a lot better in the deep south in 2008. I guess some people there weren't enjoying the worst economic crisis in 80 years so they thought a sane president might be a good idea for a change.
I've never taken a course in republican math or in republican economics. I'm amazed that republicans think that if you lower your income (20% tax cut) and increase your expenses (2 trillion more for defense), you will reduce your debt.
Jimmy Carter won 297 electoral votes when he was elected which was a one election cycle. If you gonna do averages. You have to keep the same time frames for all. It is inaccurate to have one candidate with a two cycle average versus a candidate with a one cycle count. A one cycle count is not an average. The arithmetic mean is the value obtained by dividing the sum of a set of quantities by the number of quantities in the set. Your data and ranking should reflect either one cycle electoral counts or two cycle electoral counts.
Out of 53 presidential elections since 1804, President Obama's mandate in 2012 ranks 35th, judged by percentage of electoral votes received.
The ranking:
Rank, Year, Winner, Pct.
1, 1820, Monroe, 99.57
2, 1936, F. Roosevelt, 98.49
3, 1984, Reagan, 97.58
4, 1972, Nixon, 96.83
5, 1804, Jefferson, 92.05
6, 1864, Lincoln, 90.99
7, 1980, Reagan, 90.89
8, 1964, Johnson, 90.33
9, 1932, F. Roosevelt, 88.89
10, 1956, Eisenhower, 86.23
11, 1852, Pierce, 85.81
12, 1940, F. Roosevelt, 84.56
13, 1816, Monroe, 84.33
14, 1928, Hoover, 83.62
15, 1952, Eisenhower, 83.24
16, 1872, Grant, 81.95
17, 1912, Wilson, 81.92
18, 1944, F. Roosevelt, 81.36
19, 1840, Harrison, 79.59
20, 1988, Bush, 79.33
21, 1832, Jackson, 76.57
22, 1920, Harding, 76.08
23, 1924, Coolidge, 71.94
24, 1904, T. Roosevelt, 70.59
25, 1996, Clinton, 70.45
26, 1808, Madison, 69.71
27, 1992, Clinton, 68.77
28, 1828, Jackson, 68.2
29, 2008, Obama, 67.84
30, 1868, Grant, 67.51
31, 1908, Taft, 66.46
32, 1900, McKinley, 65.32
33, 1892, Cleveland, 62.39
34, 1844, Polk, 61.82
35, 2012, Obama, 61.71
36, 1896, McKinley, 60.63
37, 1860, Lincoln, 59.41
38, 1812, Madison, 58.99
39, 1856, Buchanan, 58.78
40, 1888, Harrison, 58.1
41, 1960, Kennedy, 58.05
42, 1880, Garfield, 57.99
43, 1836, Van Buren, 57.82
44, 1948, Truman, 57.06
45, 1848, Taylor, 56.21
46, 1968, Nixon, 55.95
47, 1976, Carter, 55.31
48, 1884, Cleveland, 54.61
49, 2004, Bush, 53.26
50, 1916, Wilson, 52.17
51, 2000, Bush, 50.47
52, 1876, Hayes, 50.14
53, 1824, Adams, 32.18
N/A, 1789, Washington, N/A
N/A, 1792, Washington, N/A
N/A, 1796, Adams, N/A
N/A, 1800, Jefferson, N/A
I appreciate the additional information. I do not appreciate your biased statement that Obama has a mandate. If you simply misspoke, that's fine, or if you're insinuating that everybody on your list had/has a mandate, then that's also fine. But for an employee, an objective journalist to simply state that Obama has a mandate, given the election was fairly average compared to all others, that's just biased, ignorant, (because you'd be ignoring the facts) or plain dishonest.
For all others, I'd like to interject that the Congressional elections are a better indicator of how America feels about its politics. If the Democrats had taken the House, then I'd say the Democrats would have had a mandate, even if Romney won.
The house is a tough one. We had lots of republican governors redrawing districts that were leaning democrat to solid republican. Rural areas will have lots of low or no information voters who will pretty much all vote republican. Look at the details of Washington State. A few small blue areas (cities) and massive red areas (the sticks). Yet Obama won the state by 14 points. Not surprising that republicans want to cut funding for education. The top 10 states in education all went for Obama by big margins. The bottom 10 all went for Romney except Nevada. For republicans to get back in power, dumbing down the country is imperative.
Ruckus, I'm ranking the president by amount of the vote, a fair equivalent for mandate. It's not a biased statement at all. I did not mistake. Every president has a mandate. The question is, how much? President Hayes had a mandate (a small one, you'll see him at the bottom of the chart). President Monroe had the largest mandate, judged by percentage of the Electoral College vote. President Obama's mandates were below the middle of this ranking. That's the entire point of this chart.
To recap: I've presented facts to you, and you got your dander up, paid no attention to what I've posted, and said I'm ignoring the facts or being dishonest, and pointed out that President Obama's figures were middling, which was the exact point of what I posted. Sheesh.
Ruckus, I'm ranking the president by amount of the vote, a fair equivalent for mandate.
Logical fallacy, sweeping generalization (you state that winning a vote is a mandate, by that logic one could say Morsi has a mandate, and that the Republicans in the House have a continued mandate, as well as the Democrat controlled Senate, let's not also forget that in the UK, the Majority party usually only needs 34% of the vote, so even though 66% of voters wanted something different, by your logic, a minority of the populace's vote EQUALS a mandate) and an appeal to emotion. (the word 'fair', it's either equivilent or not, emotion has nothing to do with whether or not it is 'fair', a very subjective term)
It's not a biased statement at all.
You stated flat out that Obama has a mandate, as if it were fact. It is not fact, it is a subjective Opinion relative to one's own perspective. So, yes, it is biased. Which is fine, just admit that's your Opinion and file it under editorial.
I did not mistake. Every president has a mandate.
If you had started your statement of "fact" with this Opinion, then I wouldn't have a problem with your comment. But to start off a list of actual facts and lump an Opinion on top of it with the delusion that it is fact is dishonest to everybody that reads that comment as well as being dishonest with yourself. Especially after pages of other commentors debating on just what constitutes a mandate, then you just state it is a mandate...fact...according to your Opinion.
The question is, how much? President Hayes had a mandate (a small one, you'll see him at the bottom of the chart). President Monroe had the largest mandate, judged by percentage of the Electoral College vote. President Obama's mandates were below the middle of this ranking. That's the entire point of this chart.
Now you want to quantify your personal Opinion...and reiterate the falsehood that something as subjective as a mandate is a fact. Even by your quantifications the mandates of each President is subjective. The Monroe Doctrine is very similar to both Hayes' mandate (to conquer and industrialize the western US) and Lincoln's mandate to keep the nation unified. All three are about the security of the nation, I'd say Lincoln's was the biggest threat.
To recap: I've presented facts to you, and you got your dander up, paid no attention to what I've posted, and said I'm ignoring the facts or being dishonest, and pointed out that President Obama's figures were middling, which was the exact point of what I posted. Sheesh.
This is a textbook example of the logical fallacy of a Straw Man Attack. You exagerrate and just plain falsify my comment. Also you pull an Ad Hominem on me, accusing me of getting my dander up and claiming I paid no attention to what you wrote???!!! What you wrote was one sentence declaring with finality that Obama has a mandate claiming it to be fact. Then you copy and pasted a bunch of factual stastistics. It's kind of like a reverse Poisoning the Well logical fallacy. Apparently I paid closer attention to what you wrote then you did.
Oh dear, how can you stand it? Reagan had the most electoral votes of them all! A Republican!
So what?
Could Reagan win the republican nomination today? He was a good republican for back then. He tripled the national debt and wanted to get rid of Medicare. But, he wasn’t into all the crazy stuff that republicans need to believe in today to get the parties support.
Watching Republicans and Democrats bash each other makes it painfully obvious why this country will be stuck in a rut. So long as two parties, who care only for beating each other, run the government, nothing will get done unless it's beneficial only for politicians.
Technically, if you're a partisan for one party or the other, your loyalty lies with the party, not the nation. Both parties have items in their platforms which are bad for the citizens.
I say abolish parties and make everyone run on their own merits. Voter participation might go down from the brain-dead zombies who vote along party lines and up from those who actually inform themselves on the candidates.
Then we could get rid of party primaries and the big soirees called conventions and instead have a single primary in which all candidates lay out their positions. The top two candidates would then go on to compete in the general election.
Considering how much effort the two-parties fight to keep other parties off the ballots, abolishing them would open up the electoral process back to the citizens, the way it was meant to be. Sure, you'll get a few more crazies running for office, but that wouldn't be much different than what I've seen the two parties offer up.
i agree.
Obamas not my president.
If you live in the United States, like it or not, he is THE president, and therefore, YOUR president.
Many people in states in the deep south signed a petition to secede because Obama won. While this will never happen, I'm all for it. These states are sucking the life out of this country. They take far more from the federal government than they contribute. Allowing about 9 states including Texas, Alabama, Mississippi etc to form their own country would solve all of our economic problems. The down side would be that there would be a 3rd world country adjacent to the United States. And securing our borders from the rednecks and hillbillies would be a bigger problem than we are having now with Mexico.
Jamie, then who IS your President if not President Obama?
If you live in the US - it's President Obama dude!
It's preposterous to conclude, and even scandalously arrogant to state that you have a "mandate" when the popular vote in any election is within the 60-40 range.
In recent history, the only ones who could dare to legitimately state they "had a mandate" is Bill Clinton's second term, and Reagan in both terms.
This Bush Jr. and Obama "mandate" stuff is pure bullsh*t.
Like it matters?
911 was an inside job. An innocent man was killed.
Are you talking about this PAST 9/11?
2012?
4 Americans were killed, not just one. Diplomacy, especially in certain regions, entails an amount of risk. But, be careful what insinuations and accusations you wish to make. It's just as easy to say, and more accurately, that 9/11/01 was an inside job, and there's an actual, not FOX delusional, paper trail that implies that conspiracy, and over 3,000 people lost their lives over that one, you hypocritical ASS.
As a numbers kind of a guy, I am eager to see the ROIs (returns on investments) – ratios of targeted votes received (both popular and electoral) to respective campaign dollars spent by each party and affiliated superPAC. Anybody seen such an analysis yet?
This list is screwy, for instance Carter beat Ford in '76 with 297 and yet he is listed below Ford? NBC you need to check your work!
Poopus, you missed the point. The key word in the text is "average." Didn't Carter run twice? Once he beat Ford, and once he lost to Reagan. The chart you're commenting on is an average of his Electoral Vote in two elections. That's why he ranks below Ford, whom he beat in 1976. (His poor showing in 1980 brought down his average, below Ford's.)
Sorry Bill, I guess I should have read more carefully.
The Electoral College should be dropped; it is one of the dumb things the framers did. It was a compromise for having Congress elect the president and having a true, popular election. A popular election would force candidates to play in most states, rather than spend $2 billion (actually more) in 7 states and take the traditional Democratic and Republican states for granted. The outcome in a given election would not necessarily be the same because people would feel their votes really counted and more people would likely vote. If I were a Republican in CA or NY, I wouldn't bother to vote since the states almost always vote Democratic. The alternatives have been debated in political science for years; at minimal the Electoral College should be changed for proportional distribution of the electoral votes rather than "winner takes all" even when a candidate wins by less than 1 percent of the vote. It is a very dumb way to elect a president, but the parties like it (both parties) because the election is won or lost in a handful of states.
Dropping the electoral college would have saved us from the war, torture and economic disaster of the last republican administration but it might not be a great idea in the long run. How about this - the top 25 states in education get to elect the president and congress? The bottom 25 states vote only for their local government.
You wanna know WHY our President's re-election was a mandate? It's very easily provable with the quickest of trips over to the "youtubes". Right up to election day, all of the FOX pundits and commentators were predicting a LANDSLIDE for Romney. Tell me they didn't say it was going to be a 334 electoral vote landslide for the Right. Those same numbers are what Obama was re-elected by. By FOX's OWN numbers, the President received his landslide victory, and his mandate.
And, just to ditch the short-term voter's memory, W won 2004 by a margin of 2.45%. 3,000,176 votes, and an electoral college split of 286/252. He IMMEDIATELY and repeatedly CLAIMED a mandate by the people. Remember his "Spending political capital" statements? We do.
President Obama won re-election by 2.3%, 3,476,725 votes, and an electoral split of 332/206. According to YOUR OWN rules, this margin implies a mandate by the people.
Oh, and, with all due respect, you guys that are attempting to challenge Bill Dedman? Please stop, you're making yourselves look like Doofenshmertzes.
The electoral college system is ancient and archaic bullsh!t.
This system was set up decades ago for farmers who could not get out of the fields to vote.
We live in a modern age now.
VOTE OUT THE ELECTORAL, VOTE IN A PRESIDENT
If we cannot elect a president solely by popular vote, then we are not a United States.