Cecil’s column on whether Reagan won one of the biggest landslide’s in American political history is accurate as far as it goes, but it only addresses Reagan’s victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980. When Reagan ran for re-election against Walter Mondale in 1984, he did win in one of the biggest landslides ever. Reagan carried 49 of 50 states, won the electoral vote by 525-13, and won 59% of the popular vote. Any way you add it up, this election goes down with LBJ in 1964 and FDR in 1936 as one of the biggest landslides of all time.
A link to the column is appreciated. Providing one can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_135.html
Note that this column was first published in June 1984, several months before Reagan’s re-election.
Well, that would certainly explain his omission of Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984, wouldn’t it! My apologies for not reading the column more closely.:o
Didn’t this column just run about three weeks ago?
That is why I was confused. It is listed under “Recent Additions”, but the date on the column is June 1, 1984.
USually you have to wait until Friday to get a contemporary columns, the others are just staff reports and reruns (sometimes on Friday too!) It was probably simply one of those times they rerun a column on Fridays as well (I’m sure Chronos knew this, basically because he could and often does write some of the staff reports.)
Which bring up the question, “Doesn’t anyone read these before re-posting decades old columns to see if there is an update, so they don’t look silly?”
The worst turnout since 1824 occurred, interestingly enough, in 1824,
Can someone explain that one? The definition of since is “from that time or event until now or the time being considered”. That line doesn’t make a lot of sense, the way it is phrased.
I realize that this is a classic column, and it ran as a “new column” nearly two decades ago. What I’m saying is that it was run as a “classic column” just a couple of weeks ago, and now is being run as a “classic column” again.
I think.
Unless I’m going crazy.
It looks to me like there may be a typo in the column, and the first “1824” should be “1924,” since Cecil previously mentioned this as the worst turnout in the 20th century.
So you think it should be “The worst turnout since 1924 occurred, interestingly enough, in 1824”? That wouldn’t make much sense, since 1824 isn’t after 1924.
It seems evident to me what Cecil is saying: he’s taking “since” to be inclusive, so that “since 1824” means “at or after 1824”, not “after 1824”. I can see how less ambiguos wording would be less concise, and since the context makes his meaning clear, why not go with “since”? 1824 is singled out, of course, because it’s the earliest year for which we have reliable popular vote records, as mentioned in the article.
So, of all the elections in 1824 - 1980, 1824’s had the worst turnout.
Clear now?
UncleBill - once in a while Cecil will update an old column with more recent information. You can always send him a note asking if his information has been superseded by more recent events, and he might take up your question.
Colibri, he had previously been talking about the 20th century, but in that paragraph he says “of all times”, so clearly the 1824 was supposed to be 1824 and not the 20th century.