WASHINGTON–President Barack Obama cruised to victory Tuesday night, winning more than 60 percent of the electoral vote.
But the Electoral College, the organization that officially elects the nation’s president and vice-president, declared a different margin of victory than the American people expressed.
Assuming Obama is awarded Florida’s remaining 29 electoral votes, he will finish the election with 332 electoral votes, beating Gov. Romney by 116 electoral votes.
But what turned out to be a convincing electoral victory appears to be an extremely narrow win by historical standards.
Presidential reelection campaigns since 1956
source: Federal Election Commission
President George W. Bush is the only president to have a closer electoral victory over an opponent in more than half a century.
In 2004, Bush finished with 53 percent of the electoral vote compared to Sen. John Kerry’s 47 percent. And Bush captured 7 percent more of the electoral vote than Kerry, winning election by about 4 million popular votes. President Obama, by comparison, won reelection by less than 3million votes.
Ironically, President Obama’s path to victory captured a convincing 61 percent of the electoral vote. However, American voters only supported the president by a margin of less than 3 percent—50.3 percent compared with Gov. Romney’s 48.1 percent of the popular vote.
*Florida’s remaining 29 electoral votes have not officially been awarded
Still, Bush’s strategy held his opponent to winning in only 19 U.S. states. President Obama’s opponent, however, won a total of 24 states.
With campaigns crafting clever strategies that produce enough electoral votes to win the presidency, time will tell whether the Electoral College produces another president who the majority of Americans do not support.