Like every human relationship, employers and employees ultimately rely on one another being good actors. In a democracy, government workers are the employees and the citizens are the employers. Just because you have a bad actor employee does not mean that the entire corporation will collapse, unless the members of the corporation (enough interested parties) can be convinced that the best option is to shutter the doors and file for bankruptcy.
Election campaigns are extended (or abbreviated… someday maybe…) arguments. That does not mean they must devolve into dismemberment of the union. In the United States, despite the best efforts of media pundits, politicians, political hacks, and those who profit by drawing eyes to screens, we, the citizens of this country, have spent the last century and a half not being persuaded to dissolve by those doing the shouting.
As a society, we have also aired an extensive list of grievances over that time. We have argued about them. People have died because of those arguments. While some of those arguments have been transformative and true boons, not everyone agrees which arguments those were (or that everyone has ceded the argument).
Spend any time with any news outlet or aggregator, you will hear how we have never before been as divided as we are now. We have forgotten that same message was propagated during the heydays of the Tea Party, the Moral Majority and the John Birch Society. Don’t get me started on the Know-Nothings. Have we forgotten how the end of the nation was seen with Occupy Wall Street, the Ferguson unrest, or the Cuban Missile Crisis? Wait, that was going to be the end of the world. Just because people will complain if you stick a microphone in their face does not mean their opinion is invalid or that their opinion amounts to anything about which they feel obliged to act unconstitutionally. Just because one side or the other is unhappy and claims that the election was unfair, we have adapted, as a nation, to a wide variety of Presidents over the last hundred years. We, as a people, are better than many (probably most, arguably all) of the occupants of the White house.
A variety of reprehensible acts have been documented regarding disappointment in the election’s outcome. Inarguably, this has been encouraged by state and federal leaders who should be moderating influences. Tragedies may result. Reprehensible behavior by a small group of people does not make for a divided nation.
All of this has happened once again because we held an election and a bunch of people wish it had gone the other way. This is not the first time that has occurred. But the people trying to attract our eyeballs have numbers on their side- though they should try a pair of historical lenses. Let’s consider the latest Presidential outcome in the context of the last century worth of elections.
Electoral Votes: Biden received 306 electoral votes. You would assume that is unusually low (otherwise we’re not so divided). In fact, no President has achieved more than 369 electoral votes since 1988, which are 8 of the 12 lowest winning totals. The other low-ballers were: Truman (1948-303); Kennedy (1960-303); Nixon (1968-301); and Carter (1976-297). Also, the winners in 2000, 2004 and 2016 all received fewer electoral votes than Biden. We stuck it out through their terms with all the usual arguments and agreements.
Percentage of the Electoral Votes: This is just here for those democracy geeks who know that we added electoral votes to the Electoral College when Alaska and Hawaii joined. All this does is make Truman a little more of a winner, but he still did not do that well.
Total Votes: The last ten would-be presidents (winner or loser) received the ten most votes any candidate ever earned. I’m not so sure we should be worried that we have more participation, but really, shouldn’t that be a good thing? Isn’t the counter argument that we should be nervous when so many people get involved for an hour or two every four years? An interesting consideration here is that third party candidates sometimes significantly cut into the popular vote numbers. In 1992, only 80.3% of voters picked a major party candidate. In 1924, 1968 and 1996, mainstream candidates also failed to garner 90% of the popular vote. Lately, Democrat and Republican candidates have appeared to find success drawing those voters into their tents. The draw of third party candidates in 2016 was a recent high at just over 5%.
Percentage of the Total Votes: Biden’s percentage, when the dust clears, will be right ahead of Reagan (1980 -50.7%); Bush (2004-50.7%); and Obama (2012-51.1%). Neither Nixon in 1968 nor Clinton in 1992 even cleared 44%. They still got to sit in the Oval Office for four years. We have had plenty of unrest in the intervening years, but we generally got upset about specific issues- not specific would-be office holders. Yes, we like to blame “that so-and-so” who is ostensibly in charge, but out of office, out of mind. By the by, the only candidate of the last 20 years that Trump has ever surpassed in popular vote percentage was John McCain.
Percentage of Possible Voters Who Actually Voted for the Candidate: This is what matters to me. If people love you so much as President, then you better be able to get half the people that could vote to come out and vote for you. The champion Presidential candidate in this category is Lyndon Johnson in 1966 who achieved a whopping 37.8% of eligible voters. Also, he is well-ahead of all comers. Biden comes in 5th with 34%. Eisenhower did particularly well at this, taking 3rd and 4th places. Nixon also performed well in 1972, though it looks like he tried to cheat, in retrospect…. To give the losers their due, Trump obtained 31.0% of eligible voters in 2020, though that is behind Nixon losing in 1960 with 31.1%. For the record, Trump took office in 2016 after managing to convince 27.3% of eligible voters to pull his lever.
Let’s end with Nixon in 1960. He conceded, though we can all probably agree that he was not happy about it. He lost by only 100,000 votes (.1% of eligible voters) and 84 electoral votes. The world did not end, even when it came close over the next few years. Some candidates (see Barry Goldwater) implied that we would all die in a nuclear holocaust if they lost. The people of the United States have many voices, but we do not have to listen to the ones telling us to be more polarized.