As we find ourselves in yet another cliffhanger of an election, the negative partisanship that has developed over the last three decades should not be underestimated. The high floors under each party and the low ceilings over each now mean that all national wins are on the margins. Between 1900 and 1984, 14 of the 22 presidential elections were landslides, with margins of 10 points or more. Since 1988, there have been no landslides.
In 2000, Vice President Al Gore won the national popular vote by a half-percentage point, but lost the decisive Florida electoral votes to George W. Bush by 537 votes. Four years later, Bush, seeking reelection, won the national vote by 2.5 percentage points, but the decider was a 118,601-vote margin in Ohio (out of 5.6 million cast statewide). Barack Obama’s two election wins were a bit wider. He beat Sen. John McCain by 7.3 percentage points, but four years later he took down Mitt Romney by just 3.9 percentage points. In 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the national vote by 2 percentage points
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