July 7, 2006 9:21AM # Mexico’s Thin Margin By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE [NPR keeps reporting](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5539102) that conservative Felipe Calderon seems to have won the Mexican presidential election “by the thinnest of margins.” Thin, yes. But I wouldn’t call it “the thinnest.” At this writing, [Calderon leads by 243,000 votes](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/world/americas/07mexico.html?hp&ex=1152331200&en=c57f83afc0064d1d&ei=5094&partner=homepage), about 0.5 percent in an electorate of 40 million. [John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1960) in 1960 by about 118,000 votes out of 69 million cast, or 0.15 percent. (And that’s if you give Kennedy about 320,000 Democratic votes in Alabama, even though [only five of Alabama’s 11 Democratic electors](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpledged_elector#1960_election) intended to vote for Kennedy. If you don’t credit the Alabama votes to Kennedy, then he would win the electoral college vote while losing the popular vote.) [Nixon got his revenge eight years later](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1968), defeating Hubert Humphrey by about 500,000 votes, or 0.70 percent in an electorate of 73 million. And then of course there was George W. Bush, [whose popular vote margin was about minus 500,000 in 2000](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2000). Calderon’s margin is thin, but it is “the thinnest” only by Mexican standards, not when compared to U.S. presidential elections. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).