Neo-Con Mind Trick?

Karl Rove: "This is a mandate for the President."

US Press: "This is a mandate for the President."

51% of America: "This is a mandate for the President."

49% of America: "Don't be foolish fat man, your neo-con mind tricks will not work here."

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A 51 Percent Mandate?

By Brian FalerThursday, November 11, 2004; Page A06

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When is a mandate a mandate?

President Bush won more than 59 million votes last week -- more than any other presidential candidate in history and enough, his supporters have said, to claim a mandate. But other comparisons between this year's election results and those of previous contests suggest his win was somewhat less decisive.

Bush's unofficial three-percentage-point margin of victory, for example, was the fifth smallest since 1920. John F. Kennedy won in 1960 with 0.2 percent more votes than Richard M. Nixon. Nixon, in turn, won in 1968 with a slim 0.7 percent advantage over Hubert H. Humphrey. In 1976, Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald R. Ford by 2.1 percent. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral one. Conversely, 10 of the previous 21 presidential races were won by at least 10 percentage points -- and five of them were decided by more than 20 points.