Some perspective on elections

You know, it's funny, but we have come to view a polarized America and incredibly close elections as the norm. 2000 and 2004 were so (heartbreakingly) close that they might as well have been tied. In either case, flipping a trivial number of votes in one or two key states would have changed the outcome of the election.

But that seems to be uncommon, compared to most of the elections in our lifetimes:

• 1996: Clinton was never ahead by less than fifteen points in the polls in the last three months of the campaign. He won with 379 EVs.
• 1992: Weird 3-way election, but Clinton was up over 55% after the DNC and never trailed in a national poll. Though he only had a five point win and 43% of the vote, he captured 370 EVs
• 1988: Bush won 426 EVs. 426! Though it was only an eight point win, this was not a closely contested race
• 1984: 525 EVs, closest ever to an electoral sweep. Eighteen point win. 'nuff said.
• 1980: Another electoral blow-out with 489 EVs, though only a 9-point win. However, it had been a very close race till Reagan won the last debate decisively.
• 1976: Very close.
• 1972: Nixon in a walk.

The take-home point here is that there were electoral blow-outs in six out of the seven elections from 1972-1996, and in five of those elections the outcome was not really in doubt prior to election day.

So what's going on? Why are we looking at what seems to be the third nail-biter in a row? America is polarized, for sure, more than ever before -- but is that all there is to it?

I don't know. The thought I have is that in at least two of the last three elections, the intrinsics strongly favored the Democrats (2000 - popular president, peace, prosperity; 2008 - unpopular president, economic troubles), but that was counterbalanced by republican superiority in controlling the media, message discipline and ability to define their opponent. Matt's made this point before, and I think he is right: republicans excel at running for president; Democrats (Bill Clinton excepted) simply have not figured out how to do it.

Though there is good news in the recent polls - the McCain bounce is fading and the race is reverting back to a tie, and Obama has opened up a decent lead in Ohio - I am feeling more and more like Goundhog Day, that unless Obama shakes things up somehow we are going to find ourselves Nov 5 shaking our heads and wondering how on earth this happened. Again.

UPDATE: no sooner did I publish this than Pollster.com published a great article on "convention bounces" with the polling data graphically depicted going all the way back to 1980. Brilliant. Also, I was wondering why the GOP got to go last -- if I read the graphs right, it looks like it is customary that the incumbent party gets to go last. Interesting.