# Bush's Win by Widest Margin in History? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 9, 2005, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bushs-win-by-widest-margin-in-history/283856 "2005-01-09T06:00:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bushs-win-by-widest-margin-in-history/283856/21 "2005-01-10T06:17:30Z")
**cmkeller** wrote > [@](#): > > A potentially interesting footnote to this analysis of “popular vote victory by incumbent presidents” - where does Cleveland’s popular vote win/electoral vote loss to Benjamin Harrison rank? Cleveland lost the popular vote, so he didn’t have a “margin of victory” in votes. And… When Cleveland won against Harrison in their second run-off in 1892, he lost the popular vote as well. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bushs-win-by-widest-margin-in-history/283856/22 "2005-01-10T06:20:22Z")
Um to be clear about that last, in both elections, both winners won less than 50% of the votes. However, in 1888, Harrison got more votes than Cleveland. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bushs-win-by-widest-margin-in-history/283856/23 "2005-01-10T06:25:39Z")
Eek. I mean in 1888, Harrison (the winner) got **fewer** votes than Cleveland. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bushs-win-by-widest-margin-in-history/283856/24 "2005-01-10T06:35:48Z")
**AskNott** wrote > [@](#): > > If you can find a ballot from anywhere in the US where one option was “against George W. Bush,” then your wacky math might make sense. I’m not quite sure what the insult is for. You’re the one who brought up a hypothetical, namely comparing popular votes for candidates, when it has nothing to do with who wins. I’d hardly call you whacky for wanting to examine it though. > [@](#): > > If a horse wins by a nose, you don’t average in the other horses and say, “he won by fifteen feet.” And when a tennis player wins, they say 15-love. Does that play in here somewhere too? Should we be counting the par value of each state as if it were a round of golf? I’m confused. When do the strikes and spares come into this? I guess I thought we were talking about the margin of votes for an incumbent president. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2005, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bushs-win-by-widest-margin-in-history/283856/25 "2005-01-10T18:00:56Z")
**Bill H.,** I didn’t call you wacky. I said “your wacky math” because of your unique concept of lumping together all the losing candidates when you figure margin of victory. I say unique because I did a little research. I googled Bush margin of victory, and I sampled articles from FoxNews, MSNBC, The New York Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Baltimore Sun, and the Boston Globe. None of them figured margin of victory the way you do. They all used the difference between the winner and the nearest opponent. In addition, here’s a cite for my original claim. [http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/8618.html](http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/8618.html) It’s an article from Ronald Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times. “Measured as a share of the popular vote, Bush beat Kerry by just 2.9 percentage points: 51% to 48.1%. That’s the smallest margin of victory for a reelected president since 1828.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bushs-win-by-widest-margin-in-history/283856.md?page=1)