1824: John Quincy Adams The
1824 presidential election, held on October 26, 1824, was the first election in American history in which the popular vote mattered, as 18 states chose presidential electors by popular vote (six states still left the choice up to their state legislatures). When the final votes were tallied in those 18 states on December 1,
Andrew Jackson polled 152,901 popular votes to
John Quincy Adams' 114,023;
Henry Clay won 47,217, and
William H. Crawford won 46,979. However, the electoral college returns gave Jackson only 99 votes, 32 fewer than he needed for a majority of the total votes cast. Adams won 84 electoral votes, followed by 41 for Crawford, and 37 for Clay when the Electoral College met on December 1, 1824. All four candidates in the election identified with the
Democratic-Republican Party. As no candidate secured the required number of votes (131 total) from the Electoral College, the
House of Representatives decided the election under the provisions of the
Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution. As the 12th Amendment states that the top three candidates in the electoral vote are candidates in the
contingent election, Henry Clay, who finished fourth, was eliminated. However, as
Speaker of the House, Clay was still the most important player in determining the election outcome. The contingent election was held on February 9, 1825, with each state having one vote, as determined by the wishes of the majority of each state's congressional representatives. Adams narrowly emerged as the winner, with majorities of the Representatives from 13 out of 24 states voting in his favor. Most of Clay's supporters, joined by several old
Federalists, switched their votes to Adams in enough states to give him the election. Soon after his inauguration as president, Adams appointed Henry Clay as his
secretary of state.
1876: Rutherford B. Hayes The
1876 presidential election, held on November 7, 1876, was one of the most contentious and controversial
presidential elections in American history. The result of the election remains among the most disputed ever.
Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York outpolled Ohio's
Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote, with Tilden winning 4,288,546 votes and Hayes winning 4,034,311; however, widespread allegations of electoral fraud, election violence and
voter intimidation by paramilitary groups like the
Red Shirts, and other sources of
disenfranchisement of Black (predominantly Republican) citizens in the South, tainted the results. Tilden was, and remains, the only candidate in American history who lost a presidential election despite receiving a majority (not just a plurality) of the popular vote. After a first count of votes, Tilden won 184
electoral votes to Hayes' 165, with 20 votes unresolved. These 20 electoral votes were in dispute in four states; in the case of Florida (4 votes), Louisiana (8 votes), and South Carolina (7 votes), each party reported its candidate had won the state. In Oregon, one elector was declared illegal (as an "elected or appointed official") and replaced. The question of who should have been awarded these 20 electoral votes is at the heart of the ongoing debate about the election of 1876. An
Electoral Commission, consisting of 15 men, was formed on January 29, 1877, to debate about the 20 electoral votes that were in dispute. The Commission consisted of five men from the House and the Senate each, plus five Supreme Court justices. Eight members were Republicans; seven were Democrats. The voter returns accepted by the Commission put Hayes' margin of victory in Oregon at 1,057 votes, Florida at 922 votes, Louisiana at 4,807 votes, and South Carolina at 889 votes; the closest popular vote margin in a decisive state in U.S. history until the presidential election of 2000. In late February, the Commission voted along party lines by a vote of 8 to 7 to award all 20 of the disputed electoral votes to Hayes, thus assuring his electoral victory by a margin of 185–184. On March 2, an informal deal was struck to resolve the dispute: the
Compromise of 1877. In return for the Democrats' acquiescence in Hayes' election (who agreed to serve only one four-year term as president and not to seek reelection as a provision of the deal), the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, ending
Reconstruction. The Compromise effectively ceded power in the Southern states to the Democratic
Redeemers, who went on to pursue their agenda of returning the South to a political economy resembling that of its pre-war condition, including the disenfranchisement of black voters and setting the groundwork for what would be known as the
Jim Crow era.
1888: Benjamin Harrison In the
1888 election, held on November 6, 1888,
Grover Cleveland of
New York, the incumbent president and a Democrat, tried to secure a second term against the Republican nominee
Benjamin Harrison, a former
U.S. Senator from
Indiana. The economy was prosperous and the nation was at peace, but although Cleveland received 5,534,488 popular votes against 5,443,892 votes for Harrison, a 90,596 vote lead, he lost in the
Electoral College. Harrison won 233 electoral votes, Cleveland only 168.
Tariff policy was the principal issue in the election. Harrison took the side of industrialists and factory workers who wanted to keep tariffs high, while Cleveland strenuously denounced high tariffs as unfair to consumers. His opposition to
Civil War pensions and inflated currency also made enemies among veterans and farmers. On the other hand, he held a strong hand in the South and border states and appealed to former Republican
Mugwumps. Harrison swept almost the entire North and Midwest states, losing the popular vote only in Connecticut (by 336 votes) and New Jersey (by 7,148 votes), and narrowly carried the swing states of New York (by 14,373 votes) and Indiana (by 2,348 votes) (Cleveland and Harrison's respective home states) by a margin of 1% or less to achieve a majority of the
electoral vote (New York with 36 electoral votes and Indiana with 15 electoral votes). Unlike the election of 1884, the power of the
Tammany Hall political machine in
New York City helped deny Cleveland the 36 electoral votes of his home state. Cleveland's narrow popular vote lead was made possible in large part by massive
disenfranchisement, intimidation, and
voter suppression of hundreds of thousands of Black citizens in the South, who predominantly supported Harrison, as was noted by Republican politicians at the time.
2000: George W. Bush The
2000 presidential election, held on November 7, 2000, pitted Republican candidate
George W. Bush (the incumbent
governor of Texas and son of former president
George H. W. Bush) against Democratic candidate
Al Gore (the incumbent
vice president of the United States under
Bill Clinton). Despite Gore having received 543,895 more votes (a lead of 0.51 percent of all votes cast), it was effectively determined by the US Supreme Court, in a controversial 5–4 decision that halted a recount in Florida, that the Electoral College had chosen Bush as president by a vote of 271 to 266. In the primaries, Vice President Gore had secured the Democratic nomination with relative ease. He defeated
Bill Bradley in the primaries and other contests. Bush had been seen as the early favorite for the Republican nomination, and despite a contentious primary battle with Senator
John McCain and other candidates, secured the nomination by
Super Tuesday. Many third-party candidates also ran, most prominently
Ralph Nader. Bush chose former
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his running mate, and Gore chose Senator
Joe Lieberman as his. Both major-party candidates focused primarily on domestic issues, such as the budget, tax relief, and reforms for federal
social-insurance programs, though foreign policy was not ignored. The result of the election hinged on
voting in Florida, where Bush's narrow official margin of victory of just 537 votes out of almost six million votes cast on
election night triggered a mandatory recount, with mechanical failure by the machines used to cast votes a key issue. Litigation in select counties started additional recounts. This litigation ultimately reached the
United States Supreme Court. The Court's contentious decision in
Bush v. Gore, announced on December 12, 2000, ended the recounts, effectively awarding Florida's 25 Electoral College votes to Bush and granting him the victory. Later studies have reached conflicting opinions on who would have won the recount had it been allowed to proceed. Nationwide, George Bush received 50,456,002 votes (47.87%) and Gore received 50,999,897 (48.38%). from
New York City. Both nominees had turbulent journeys in primary races, and were viewed unfavorably by the general public. The election saw multiple third-party candidates, and there were over a million
write-in votes cast. During the 2016 election, "pre-election polls fueled high-profile predictions that Hillary Clinton's likelihood of winning the presidency was about 90 percent, with estimates ranging from 71 to over 99 percent." National polls were generally accurate, showing a Clinton lead of about 3% in the national popular vote (she ultimately won the two-party national popular vote by 2.1%). Clinton recorded large margins in large states such as
California,
Illinois, and
New York, winning California by a margin of nearly 4.3 million votes, while coming closer to winning
Texas,
Arizona, and
Georgia than any Democratic nominee since the turn of the millennium, but still losing by a significant margin. Clinton also won the Democratic medium-sized states such as
Maryland,
Massachusetts,
New Jersey, and
Washington with vast margins. Clinton managed to edge out Trump in Virginia, a swing state where her running mate
Tim Kaine had served as Governor. Trump also won the traditional bellwether state of
Florida, as well as the recent battleground state of
North Carolina, further contributing to the electoral flip of the popular vote. Trump won by a large margin in
Indiana,
Missouri,
Ohio, and
Tennessee. When the
Electoral College cast its votes on December 19, 2016, Trump received 304 votes to Clinton's 227 with seven electors defecting to other choices, the most
faithless electors (2 from Trump, 5 from Clinton) in any presidential election in over a hundred years. Clinton had nonetheless received almost three million more votes in the
general election than Trump, giving Clinton a popular vote lead of 2.1% over Trump. ==Comparative table of elections==