Not a landslide

Sun., Jan. 29, 2017

Will this be an administration of self-aggrandizing superlatives? A news item showed Mike Pence referring to a landslide election, and that brought me up short. A web search, though, shows that there is even a Facebook page for “Trump/PenceLandslide2016”.

There is a problem, though. The Democratic ticket received the majority of the popular vote, which is scarcely a Republican landslide. For that matter, among the 56 elections determined by the Electoral College, the recent election came in 46th, which again scarcely qualifies as a landslide. Nixon’s second election (sixth on the list) did.

It would be more precise to say that the Republicans won the presidency by a squeaker, not by a landslide. They did, however, win. So we will have four years of Republican rule in the White House. What we have after that will be up to the 2020 American electorate.

Timothy Rolfe

Spokane

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