Putting the Election in Historical Context

“This is 1964 territory,” Andrew Sullivan writes. Except…it isn’t. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson received about 16 million more total votes than Barry Goldwater did, relegating Goldwater to a mere 52 electoral college votes (collected solely from the Deep South and his native Arizona). Barack Obama is not going to beat John McCain so dramatically. It’s possibe we could see 1996 territory, when Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in an electoral college landslide 379 to 159. It’s also possible things could tighten considerably between now and November 4. But it’s very, very unlikely — not impossible, but incredibly unlikely — that Obama will break 400 electoral college votes.