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

[Stebenne, David]

Agreed.  To a political historian, the most significant comparison is to the last time an incumbent president was re-elected after presiding over four years of what all would agree was a period of high unemployment  that didn't go down much - which was 1940.  After that, the most important comparison would be to Democrats who have won two consecutive terms with a popular majority each time; Obama is the third, with Jackson and FDR as the only two others.  In short, it's an unusual re-election victory, but not for the reason most commonly cited.



David Stebenne

Professor of History and Law

Ohio State University

________________________________
From: Derek Muller [derek.muller at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2012 10:29 AM
To: Stebenne, David
Cc: richardwinger at yahoo.com; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Obama is not first president to be re-elected with decreased support

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<mailto: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<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>] on behalf of Richard Winger [richardwinger at yahoo.com<mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com>]
Sent: Friday, November 23, 2012 10:29 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu<mailto: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<tel:415-922-9779>
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

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