Democracy and politics are about ideas and passion. Passion in anything will usually engender a strong reaction and in politics, this is traditionally marked by a landslide victory of one side over another. Victories like that of Roosevelt over Landon in 1936 or the victory of Jacques Chirac over Jean Marie Le-Pen in 2002. These elections are the result of a population who demonstrate their wishes in the most vociferous manner. In the case of Chirac for example, the French did anything possible to vote against Le-Pen simply because he was, and still is, essentially an ultra-right wing wannabe fascist and Chirac, even though not enormously popular, was the insurance policy the gently conservative French wanted to counter the threat of a hard-line nationalist leader.
Close run elections are entirely different. I believe strongly that even though the media portray these polls and elections as "hard fought" and exciting, in reality they show nothing more than the total apathy of the electorate for one candidate or another. Close run elections amount to what is essentially a coin-toss result for the winner. Prime examples of this sort of election is George Bush's victory over Al Gore which was too close to call and Bush only won by forcing a change to the numerical system and increasing the number of votes to more than he was actually given. The current French presidential election which will take place this coming Sunday is another example of electoral apathy at work. Sarkozy and Hollande will be France's coin-toss election. One cannot say "May the best man win" but should probably say "May the most widely beneficial candidate have sufficient good luck to gain the upper hand".
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