[EL] Obama is not first president to be re-elected with decreased support

[Derek Muller]

I think the more accurate (but exceedingly technical) articulation is that
President Obama is the first president to be re-elected to a *second *term
(this excludes Roosevelt's third and fourth terms, which are, in a sense, *sui
generis*, now constitutionally so) with *both *fewer popular votes *and *fewer
electoral votes (this excludes both Madison and Wilson). Another version of
this I read was that President Obama is the first president to be
re-elected to a second term with fewer popular votes, a lower percentage of
the popular vote, fewer electoral votes, and fewer states won. But, as
Richard notes, the Madison example is misleading due to the 1810
apportionment. And, regardless, these kinds of "unprecedented" statistics
may be of little<http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/07/my-least-favorite-argument.html>
value <http://xkcd.com/1122/>.

Derek

Derek T. Muller

Associate Professor of Law

Pepperdine University School of Law

24255 Pacific Coast Hwy.

Malibu, CA 90263

+1 310-506-7058

SSRN Author Page: http://ssrn.com/author=464341


On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 5:14 AM, Stebenne, David <stebenne.1 at osu.edu> wrote:

>  And let's not forget FDR, whose support decreased in 1940 and still more
> in 1944, when he was re-elected to his 3rd and 4th terms.
>
>
>
> David Stebenne
>
> Professor of History and Law
>
> Ohio State University
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [
> law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Richard
> Winger [richardwinger at yahoo.com]
> *Sent:* Friday, November 23, 2012 10:29 PM
> *To:* law-election at uci.edu
> *Subject:* [EL] Obama is not first president to be re-elected with
> decreased support
>
>
> http://www.ballot-access.org/2012/11/23/president-obama-is-not-the-first-president-re-elected-with-a-smaller-share-of-either-the-popular-vote-or-the-electoral-college-vote/
>
> Richard Winger
> 415-922-9779
> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
>
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> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
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>
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