Well we made it through another election.
Of course the dust will take a while to settle.
In more than a few cases, victory comes down to just a few votes.
49 to 51 percent is more often than not the final percentages.
Landslides do happen, especially when a candidate runs unopposed.
The percentages always make me wonder.
I am not a math guy, far from it.
I am at heart a skeptic.
Percentages are often presented as news without context.
So candidate X won with 51 percent of the vote.
The average person sees that bit of information and assumes that 51 percent of the population made that choice.
Not so much.
These days a mid term election may have an average 40-45 percent of eligible voters casting votes.
As much as 60 percent for a presidential election.
To be fair, some voting districts have very high turnouts and some have much lower.
For purposes of this exercise let’s just work with 45 percent.
In that case, the winning candidate receives 51 percent of the 45 percent.
That is approximately 23 percent of the total potential, eligible votes.
In a landslide, potentially 45 – 60 percent of the eligible votes will be cast for the winner.
I guess the point is that even in the most favorable situation, barely 60 percent of eligible votes decide the election, in most perhaps no more than 25 percent decide.
Based on the victory a ‘mandate’ may be claimed.
I suppose these numbers have sustained the nation for a couple of hundred years, so what’s the fuss.
We could do so much better.
These are a couple of references I looked at, after the fact.
I am pretty good ballpark wise for the mid-term years, a bit low for the Presidential years.
This from IDEA ( International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance )
http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?CountryCode=US
The U.S. Election Administration report for 2010, Table 29 http://www.eac.goc
http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/990-281_EAC_EAVS_508_revised.pdf