59,459,765 = not THAT good…..

Stop it. Please stop it. Just stop.

I’m tired of a good chunk of people feeling the need to run around waving the popular vote numbers like it’s a damn trophy. Everywhere I turn it’s “Bush got the most votes ever”, “Bush got the most votes ever”, “Bush got the most votes ever”…..

arghhh.

The only reason that this was originally brought up is to point out that he had technically received more votes than Reagan did in the 1984 election. In fact, I’m going to take the guess that the reason this is spreading is because everybody heard one of the news networks spit that stat out after Bush first reached 54.5 million votes on Tuesday night. They then ignored everything else and started gloating.

Reagan won by a landslide in 1984, 58%-40%, with 54,451,521 votes. Now I’m not a Reagan fan, but that’s impressive. Keep in mind that in 1984, 92,641,042 votes were placed overall. Adjust these numbers for inflation and Reagan kicked Bush’s ass with 67,620,908 votes. Also be aware that Mondale only carried 2 states for a total of 13 electoral votes. Yeah, he lost.

Kerry ended up with 55,949,407 votes, also surpassing the total that Reagan pulled in. That doesn’t matter either. It’s been 20 years, account for population increase, forget about thinking it’s similar, and then pay attention to the real stats. 51%-49%, that was the popular vote difference. That means the President was only good at one thing, convincing at least half of the country that he wasn’t helping anything. Oh, and he’s going to get the “big bad terrorists“.