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mspayer@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:

>When you combine the votes for Bush and Perot 57% of the American people
>voted against Bill Clinton.
>
>Question has any other President since, say FDR, ever won the Presidency 
>when more than 50% of the electorate voted against him?
>
I think:

Reagan 1980 (Anderson had 7%)

Nixon 1968 (George Wallace had 13%)

 -Steve
--
  The opinions expressed above are those of the author and not SPSS, Inc.
                         -------------------
   adams@spss.com                                  Phone: (312) 329-3522
   Steve Adams        "Space-age cybernomad"       Fax:   (312) 329-3558

In article <1992Nov4.174420.9483@pbhya.PacBell.COM>, mspayer@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:
 > When you combine the votes for Bush and Perot 57% of the American people
 > voted against Bill Clinton.
 > 
 > Question has any other President since, say FDR, ever won the Presidency 
 > when more than 50% of the electorate voted against him?
 > 
 > It would seem to me that Mr Clinton will have a problem in that he does
 > not come to Washington with a mandate to govern. ( comments )


My memory may be faulty, but I seem to recall that Nixon received
44% in 1968.

Also, by your logic above, somewhere around 60% voted against Bush and
better than 80% voted against Perot.

						Andrew MacRae
						

thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>Kennedy 1960 (lost popular vote to Nixon)

Bzzzt. Kennedy got 100,000 more votes than Nixon.

---
Joe Knapp   jmk@cbvox.att.com

In article <1992Nov4.212445.27963@cbnews.cb.att.com>, jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com (joseph.m.knapp) writes:
> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
> >Kennedy 1960 (lost popular vote to Nixon)
> 
> Bzzzt. Kennedy got 100,000 more votes than Nixon.

  ...from graveyards in Chicago...
-- 

		Michael Thomas	(mike@gordian.com)
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In article <1992Nov4.192243.29377@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <adams.720902918@spssig> adams@spss.com (Steve Adams) writes:
>>mspayer@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:
>>
>>>Question has any other President since, say FDR, ever won the Presidency 
>>>when more than 50% of the electorate voted against him?
>>>
>>I think:
>>
>>Reagan 1980 (Anderson had 7%)

but you are incorrect.  reagan had ~51% of the popular vote.
mj

In article <1992Nov4.174420.9483@pbhya.PacBell.COM> mspayer@PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:
>When you combine the votes for Bush and Perot 57% of the American people
>voted against Bill Clinton.
>
>Question has any other President since, say FDR, ever won the Presidency 
>when more than 50% of the electorate voted against him?
>
>It would seem to me that Mr Clinton will have a problem in that he does
>not come to Washington with a mandate to govern. ( comments )
>
>
>	MSP - mspayer.pacbell.com
>	
>				......SOMETIMES THE DRAGON WINS

So give it up already, if you use that logic then 61% of the country
voted against Bush, pretty bad for a sitting President and 81% voted
against Perot.  So what Bush didn't have a mandate to govern either
because the number of people voting was much lower.

Caryn

>


--
Nolite te bastardes carborunodorum
       Author unknown :-)

jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com (joseph.m.knapp) writes:

>thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>>Kennedy 1960 (lost popular vote to Nixon)

>Bzzzt. Kennedy got 100,000 more votes than Nixon.

>---
>Joe Knapp   jmk@cbvox.att.com

the last time a president was elected that lost the popular vote was in
1888.  

Todd Lane

 

In article <1992Nov4.174420.9483@pbhya.PacBell.COM> mspayer@PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:
>When you combine the votes for Bush and Perot 57% of the American people
>voted against Bill Clinton.

This is true (>50% voted against) for all three candidates.  Look at
it this way, fewer people voted against Clinton than against the other
two.  (This is actually a pretty accurate way to describe it, since
most voters were voting *against* someone rather than *for* someone.)

They call it a landslide for the same reason they called Reagan's
victory a landslide -- the electoral vote came out that way.

		-ed falk, sun microsystems
		 sun!falk, falk@sun.com
To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags 
-- that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal (Mark Twain).

In article <1992Nov4.174420.9483@pbhya.PacBell.COM> mspayer@PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:
>When you combine the votes for Bush and Perot 57% of the American people
>voted against Bill Clinton.

Just because you didn't vote FOR a candidate, you cannot conclude
that you voted against him.  The polls I have read indicate that
Perot voters were pretty evenly split over who they would have
voted for if Perot wasn't in the race.  So, perhaps half of the
Perot voters were really voting against Clinton.  I didn't vote
FOR Clinton, but the only candidate I voted AGAINST was George
Bush.  It isn't nearly as simple as adding up the votes FOR and
assuming the rest are against.

>Question has any other President since, say FDR, ever won the Presidency 
>when more than 50% of the electorate voted against him?

Nixon won in '68 with less than 50% of the electorate.  Don't
remember the exact figures, but George Wallace got more than 10%
of the vote and the election was quite close.  That year, I think
that most of those Wallace voters would have probably stayed home
if Wallace hadn't run.

>It would seem to me that Mr Clinton will have a problem in that he does
>not come to Washington with a mandate to govern. ( comments )

In many ways, his "mandate" is greater than Bush's was.  He is coming
to Washington with a Congress which is controlled by the Democrats.
They even have enough votes to stop filibusters in the Senate.  For
the first few months, I would think that Clinton will be able to have
just about any legislation he wants.

Guido

In article <1992Nov5.175048.3527@island.COM>, guido@island.COM (Guido Marx) writes...
> 
>They even have enough votes to stop filibusters in the Senate.  For

Wrong.  To stop filibusters requires 60 out of 100 Senate seats to be Democratic.  There are now 57, I
believe (or will be after inauguration...)

mspayer@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:

>When you combine the votes for Bush and Perot 57% of the American people
>voted against Bill Clinton.

>Question has any other President since, say FDR, ever won the Presidency 
>when more than 50% of the electorate voted against him?

Yes, Richard Nixon received only 44% of the popular vote in 1968.
Reagan received a majority in 1980, but barely.  (50.7%)  JFK did
not get a majority either.  It's actually very common when a strong
3rd candidate is in the race.  

There are a few positives for Clinton:

1) According to polls, he would have received 53% of the popular
vote if Perot hadn't been in the race

2) His support was strong in all regions of the country


>It would seem to me that Mr Clinton will have a problem in that he does
>not come to Washington with a mandate to govern. ( comments )

A "mandate" is what you make it.  Not getting a majority did not
bother Wilson, JFK, or Nixon.


-- 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Randall Rhea                                        Informix Software, Inc. 
Project Manager, MIS Sales/Marketing Systems    uunet!pyramid!infmx!randall

In article <1992Nov5.203238.19847@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> miller@quiver.enet.dec.com (Brian A. Miller) writes:
>
>In article <1992Nov5.175048.3527@island.COM>, guido@island.COM (Guido Marx) writes...
>> 
>>They even have enough votes to stop filibusters in the Senate.  For
>
>Wrong.  To stop filibusters requires 60 out of 100 Senate seats to be Democratic.  
>There are now 57, I
>believe (or will be after inauguration...)

I made that statement based on an analysis done by Tom Campbell on election
night.  Evidently, he thought the democrats would have 60 seats based
on the current projections.  Obviously, two republicans must have won
some races they were projected to lose.  According to yesterday's 
Chronicle, the democrats will have 58 seats in the new Senate.  That is
two short of the vote needed for cloture.  I still think that for many
of the votes coming up, the republicans won't have enough votes to
filibuster.  For example, Family leave, Freedom of Choice act, and now
a Capital gains tax cut and an increase in taxes on incomes over $200,000.

Guido

In article <Bx7GxD.A9C@apollo.hp.com>, holbrook@apollo.HP.COM (Alan R.
Holbrook) wrote:
> 
> ...I have been wondering all day how a man who
> got only a plurality of the vote and who beat the next man in line by only 5%
> can be said to have been elected by a landslide or won by a blow-out.  But I
> have heard both of those things said.

Those things are always said when the victory shows a large margin anywhere
-- in the popular vote, in the Electoral College, whatever.  It doesn't
mean anything.  Everyone said Nixon and Reagan and Bush won by landslides,
too.  It didn't mean anything then, and it doesn't mean anything now.

On the other hand, it is clear that Bush LOST by a landslide, and so did
Perot.  It's also clear that Clinton won EASILY, because Bush threw it all
away and Perot never had a chance to begin with.

> Actually, Mike, what I'm waiting for is for all the "The U.S. is so evil/Throw
> Another Conspiracy on the Fire" group to start gloating about Bush's defeat,
> as I'm sure we can count on them to do.  Then those of us who understand some
> simple mathematics can have fun pointing out to them that the majority of the
> people indeed did NOT throw the bums out.

Oh yes, we sure as hell did.  Between now and the inauguration we will all
be watching Bush -- together with his thieving buddies and the far-right
goofballs he tried to sell out to -- go sliding in slow motion across the
pavement, some on their faces, some on their asses, hats falling off,
clothes getting dirtier and more raggedy all the way until they finally
skid into the gutter all in a dirty, smelly heap, just like the bums they
are, having been thrown out good and proper by the American Voter.  The
math is indeed simple: when it came down to voting time, they could no
longer scare, bribe, or bully very many people into voting for them.  They
lost big.

Conspiracies?  Hell, the conspiracies are always there.  With the Bush
League, it was just that the conspiracies were so cheap and cheesy and
obvious, like what you'd expect from some lame ex-CIA hack who no longer
has the CIA apparatus exactly working for him, 'cause they know a loser
when they see one.

Gloat?  You bet your bruised little Republican ass, Alan, we're gonna gloat
some.  Get used to it.

--

David Casseres
Exclaimer: Wow!

In article <randall.721002617@woof> randall@informix.com (Randall Rhea) writes:
>mspayer@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Mike Payer) writes:
>
>>When you combine the votes for Bush and Perot 57% of the American people
>>voted against Bill Clinton.

When you combine the votes appropriately, 61% of the American people voted
against George Bush and 81% of the American people voted against Ross Perot.
They and the minor party candidates, against whom even higher percentages of
people voted, are clearly less entitled to be called the winner than Bill
Clinton is.

>2) [Clinton's] support was strong in all regions of the country
>
>>It would seem to me that Mr Clinton will have a problem in that he does
>>not come to Washington with a mandate to govern. ( comments )
>
>A "mandate" is what you make it.  Not getting a majority did not
>bother Wilson, JFK, or Nixon.

Clinton's strong support in all regions of the country, including the South,
recently a strongly Republican block, and the West, also a strongly Republi-
can block, gives him the mandate.  A narrow squeek in the electoral college
would be a sign of no mandate.  Clinton did not win by a narrow margin in
the electoral college, and Congress is aware of that.


Carrie		ceb@rechenau.unify.com		x 6244  ----------------+
|  I don't belong to any organized political party:  I'm a Democrat.	|
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