It appears fewer people supported Obama this year than last time:
The sharp fall in Obama’s vote as he won his second term is virtually unprecedented in the history of American politics. It is in fact exceedingly rare for a president to win a second term with less votes than in the first election. George W. Bush, for example, increased his vote from 50 million in 2000 to 62 million in 2004.
Clinton increased his vote from 45 million in 1992 to 47.5 million in 1996. Reagan increased his vote from 44 million in 1980 to 54.5 million in 1984.
Indeed, the last time that a president won reelection with a decline in his popular vote came in the elections of 1944 and 1940, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw his enormous advantage over his Republican challengers fall somewhat in his bids for third and fourth terms after his landslide election in 1932.
However, a comparison to Roosevelt’s votes is itself instructive in understanding the scale and significance of Obama’s decline. In 1936, Roosevelt was elected to a second term in the midst of the Great Depression, seven years after the Wall Street crash of 1929. In that election, FDR increased his popular vote from 23 million to 28 million, a growth of more than 20 percent. His Republican challenger, Alf Landon, won only 36.5 percent of the popular vote, carrying just two states, Vermont and Maine, for a total of eight electoral votes. In the next two elections, Roosevelt’s total vote fell to 27.3 million and then 25.6 million.
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