President Bush’s margin last year over Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, 2.4 percentage points, was the smallest of any victorious presidential incumbent in history. He won a very close election.
But in most of the country, the 2004 race wasn’t even close to being close. A Pew Research Center analysis shows that in the majority of the nation’s 3,153 counties, the election was a landslide — with either Mr. Bush or Mr. Kerry winning by a margin of at least 20 percentage points.
