Data story · Elections
The biggest presidential landslides, drawn in colour.
A landslide is the easiest election to spot on a Huezle strip: forty-odd bands of nearly the same colour. The interesting part is the few bands that held out, because in every landslide they hold out somewhere different.
Every strip on this page is a real Elections strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Elections.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one election, one band per state from Oregon on the left to Maine on the right. Blue bands went to the Democrat, red to the Republican, and the deeper the colour, the bigger the margin. Forty-five states voted in every election since 1900, so every strip has 45 bands.
A Republican sweep: 1984
- Republican
- Close
- Democratic
Ronald Reagan’s re-election is nearly solid red, and its deepest stretch is the Mountain West: Utah voted Republican by 50 points and Idaho by 46. Only three states were within five points, and two of them, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, still went red. Nixon’s 1972 win is the other 44-to-1 strip on record; there the lone blue band is Massachusetts.
A Democratic sweep: 1936
- Republican
- Close
- Democratic
Franklin Roosevelt’s first re-election is the biggest Democratic sweep since 1900. Only Vermont and Maine voted for Alf Landon, which is where the line “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont” comes from. The holdouts are at the far right, in the old Republican Northeast, while South Carolina voted for Roosevelt by 97 points, the most lopsided band in the whole dataset.
A landslide with a hole in the middle: 1964
- Republican
- Close
- Democratic
Lyndon Johnson’s landslide looks different from the other two, because the states that held out are not at an edge. They sit in the Deep South, which had voted Democratic for a century and now went to Barry Goldwater; Mississippi voted Republican by 74 points. When the South flipped explains why.
Huge margins, two colours: 1920
- Republican
- Close
- Democratic
Warren Harding won by enormous margins — North Dakota by 60 points, Vermont by 53 — yet his strip is anything but one colour, because the South stayed deep blue right through it. Judged by the median state, decided by 32 points against 22 or 23 in the other three, 1920 is the most lopsided of the lot. Judged by states carried, it is not close.
What about 1912? Woodrow Wilson led the Republican in 41 of the 45 states drawn, which would put him near the top. But 1912 was a three-way race: Theodore Roosevelt ran as a Progressive and came second, so a Democrat-versus-Republican strip makes it look more one-sided than it was.
Reading where the holdouts are is usually the fastest way to tell two landslides apart. For the opposite kind of year, see the closest elections.
Can you tell one landslide from another by its holdouts? Try a strip in Huezle.
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What was the biggest landslide in US presidential history?
By states won, 1972 and 1984, when the Republican carried 49 of 50 states. Among the 45 states drawn here, both are 44 to 1. By electoral votes, Reagan’s 1984 total of 525 is the highest ever.
What was the biggest Democratic landslide?
Since 1900, Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 re-election: he carried every state but Vermont and Maine.
Why are there only 45 states?
Only states that voted in every election since 1900 are drawn, so every strip lines up band for band. Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C. are left out.
More guides
- How to read a century of presidential elections in colour.US presidential elections since 1900 drawn as strips of colour, one band per state from west to east. Learn to read the eras from four real strips.
- The closest presidential elections, state by state.The most evenly fought US presidential elections since 1900 as strips of colour, and why the closest national result is not always the palest strip.
- Election night trivia: read the election from its colours.Presidential election trivia for election night: four quick rounds built on real elections drawn as strips of colour, one band per state. How many can you get?
- When did the South flip from Democrat to Republican?The Solid South in colour: how Southern states went from voting Democratic by 90 points to reliably Republican, told in four election strips from 1920 to 2024.
Now try naming one yourself.
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