Throughout history, we have seen some huge victories for presidential candidates to the point where it is hard not to feel bad for the loser. They spent years of life towards being one of the most important people in the world, only to come up short in a brutal fashion. Perhaps the most obvious of these blowouts is George Washington in 1789. He received 100% of the votes which makes sense because he was running completely unopposed and was the most popular man in the country at the time. Outside of Washington, there have been many other election landslides. Franklin Roosevelt was victorious in a large way multiple times. The best example of this being in 1936 when Roosevelt received 523 electoral votes while Alf Landon only won 8. This was largely due to America being in the middle of the Great Depression and Roosevelt being an already proven leader in the tough times. Landon was also a very under qualified candidate and his campaign was ran very poorly. As we saw in the documentary, the 1984 election was even more of a landslide. Reagan won 525 electoral votes while Mondale only received 13. Once again, the American people had already seen Reagan in office and liked how he performed, so they decided to stick with something that they knew worked. I think it will be a very long time before landslide results like these. Today the country is more divided than it has ever been, and this can be seen in the recent elections. Trump won the election but Hillary won the popular vote. The elections in the future will almost certainly be just as close, if not closer.
Bibliography:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-landslide-victories-in-us-presidential-election-history.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landslide_victory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_United_States_presidential_election
I think that these close elections are indicative of the divided time that we are in. There is a lot of us vs. them mentality in the political parties, causing these elections with razor thin margins. When the country is more united, it appears that the elections are much less close. Like when George Washington was elected, america was very united as they had only recently gotten their freedom from Britain. When there's an economic crisis like with Roosevelt, the country sometimes feels like they need to work together to rise up again. But now, our country is very divided, so these elections will continue to be close
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