US President Trivia

[sotzo]

I need some help on this from you US history buffs...

What is the biggest upset in US presidential election history? By "upset", I mean where the underdog (incumbent or not) won with the most gap between him and his opponent(s). I imagine this definition of "upset" would exclude many elections that were prior to pre-election polling, but let me know your thoughts regardless of time in history the election transpired.

 

[VictorBravo]

A couple of biggies:

1972 Nixon-McGovern

Nixon: 520 Electoral votes, 47,169,911 popular vote
McGovern: 17 Electoral votes, 29,170,383 popular vote

1936 FDR-Landon

Roosevelt 523 Electoral, 27,757,333 popular
Landon 8 Electoral, 16,684,231 popular

I think the most dramatic "upset" was pretty close. Truman and Dewey in 1948. Dewey was the media-announced winner, but Truman ended up with the most votes.

There may be others, but I haven't looked them up. A useful site:

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/votes/index.html