Is it just me or does Death Blows with swords trigger more often than with a axe or mace? (Both one handed and two handed)

Swords swing faster than axes or maces so it could be.
I use a an axe myself so I don't really know for sure.

Daggers trigger pretty quick too

I dual wield war axes. I've actually only swung a sword probably three times in all my Skyrim playing time. And I can't recall ever using a mace in combat. It's nice to see my followers using two handed weapons and getting the final blow. Watching Lydia split some bear skull with the Deadric battleaxe is especially cool.

Also are you duel weilding?That may have something to do with it.

I was all set to build a dual wield mace warrior, but it's really, really slow paced, so I went with swords instead. Not only are maces slow, I don't think they really induce faltering in the NPCs any more than swords, which is pretty lame, actually. I wanted to knock people around and [censored]. Unfortunately, I haven't even seen a cool mace yet. I guess the elven one and daedric look cool. I like spiked maces, like the steel mace in Oblivion. Finally, a killing blow with a mace will behead people, and it doesn't look right, not to mention the God of War dragon kill move..

I am very much disappointed.

At first, I was dual wielding maces, cause they did more damage than the other weapons I had, but have since switched to two swords, or a sword and dagger. I was scoring death blows with them. Some times I would spin around and hit them in the torso, others it would slam into their face.

They sure do. In my Skyrim Battles youtube series I have my character finish off the victor of a match with one of the animated finishers. I can trigger the finishers quite easily with swords and daggers, everything else is a headache. There's even a console command to set the occurence of the finishers to 100% (as long as there is only one enemy left) and axes and maces are still a pain to trigger. Hopefully when the CK is out someone creates a mod to allow axes and maces to trigger more often, maybe even when there are still multiple enemies left but time just slows down for them like in Fallout 3's VATS.

I seem to get more death animations, regardless of weapon, if the target is staggered when the final blow is struck. Using my sword I can almost guarantee a beheading on wimpy townsfolk if I use Fus on them first then immediately follow up with a power attack

Could be that you dual-wielding and/or the crit perk allows you to do a finishing move on mobs with more hp left than normal.

i've gotten them with all my characters i've played.

i've got to assume its based purely on enemy hp, my stamina level and some die-roll chance mechanic.

Well I've never used 1 handed axes or maces, but The only 2 handed weapons I have been using so far are battle axes. I always get a finisher on the last enemy. I just do a standing power attack, either decapitating or cutting down into their body. I have noticed NPCs using 1 handed swords and getting finishers on me ALOT though.