More Electoral Vote Historical Analysis

I was kind of intrigued by the electoral vote analysis I did last week, and so I tried to do some more to try to find some baseline for interpreting the results. Using the same data source, I determined the percentage of the electoral vote obtained by the winner of every presidential election. I also categorized each election into one of three categories:

1. Incumbent win. This is where the incumbent president is the election victor.
   
2. Incumbent lose. This is where the incumbent president loses the election.
3. First time. This is where the incumbent president is not involved in the election.

These data are shown elsewhere.

The most interesting result found in these numbers is a breakdown of average electoral vote percentage by election category. The results are

Average Electoral Winning Vote by Election Type Election Type Average Winning Percentage Corrected Average Incumbent win 79.7% (15.9%) 78.7% (15.6%) Incumbent lose 70.7% (13.9%) 70.7% (13.9%) First time 65.2% (15.3%) 65.8% (12.0%)

(Standard deviation is shown in parentheses.) The "corrected" average is obtained by removing Washington's two unanimous victories and John Q. Adams' peculiar victory in 1824 (with only 32% of the electoral vote). The primary impact of removing these two extremes is seen in the standard deviation.

So, typically, elections involving incumbents result in the most lopsided electoral victories, especially when the incumbent wins.

With these averages as baselines, we see that both of Bush's victories fall well below the historical average for the election type (50.4% in 2000, 53.2% in 2004), though the 2000 win is at the far lower end of the uncorrected first time range defined by the standard deviation. In contrast, Bill Clinton's first victory (68.8% in an incumbent lose election) is well in line with the historical data, though his 1996 re-election (70.4%) is somewhat below the historical average, though well within the standard deviation.

Previously, it was noted that the 2004 re-election is the second smallest such electoral college victory in US history. We also find Bush's 2000 election is the smallest "traditional" electoral college victory. (I define traditional as an election decided outright in the electoral college. The only smaller victories were those of John Q. Adams in 1824 and Hayes in 1876, both of which required intervention from Congress to decide.)