Issues : Elections (www.newsaic.com)

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Issues : Elections

Examining today's biggest issues from a broader perspective. More info here.

Electoral college (a look at how the United States determines its leader, historical results, proposals for change)
Voter turnout by race, age and sex
Presidential debates (negotiations, third-party candidates)
Candidates' Deaths Before Elections (Wellstone, Carnahan, Mink)
The 2000 Election and Subsequent Reforms
- Florida's reforms in the wake of the disputed 2000 presidential election
- Maps of the 2000 electoral results (showing the gap between Bush and Gore in each state, as well as who won each state overall)
- How did Ralph Nader affect the 2000 election?
- How Al Gore could have beaten the U.S. Supreme Court, an essay I wrote just hours after the decision in Bush v Gore came out
Election Results
- Results and trends since World War II (electoral and popular votes nationwide)
- How states voted since World War II (tracking whether a state provided electoral votes for the Republican or Democratic candidate)

Electoral College (last updated August 12, 2002) (back to top)

The electoral college - the two-part system by which the United States determines its president - was a controversial subject in the aftermath of the 2000 election, but debate over how the president should be elected goes back to the very foundation of the United States.

Under the electoral college, presidential elections involve two phases. First, people vote for a presidential candidate, but their votes actually elect a slate of electors who are in most states obligated to vote for that specific candidate. Second, in a move that was originally supposed to be substantive but has now become largely formalistic, those electors vote and officially elect the next President of the United States by majority vote.

There are 538 electoral votes in total, and states are allotted such votes based on the number of seats they have in the House and Senate, a decision by the Framers of the Constitution that honored some of the compromises they made elsewhere such as counting 3/5 of a state's slaves as population, and giving each state two senators, regardless of the state's actual size. Accordingly, each state now has at least three electoral votes (two for each senator, and one minimum for the House) and the allotment of votes changes after each census. The following chart shows the distribution of votes following the 1990 and 2000 censuses, and helps explain why California, Texas and New York are such great prizes.

Today's supporters of the electoral college note that it encourages presidential candidates to appeal to all states, and not just to particular groups spanning states, that it pushes candidates to the political center where they can secure the most votes, and that it magnifies the results of a popular election to ensure some kind of political mandate even when the winner does not have a popular majority (compare the charts here). Supporters also note that logistically, the electoral college focuses attention on specific states (imagine the Florida recount occurring in many states, not just one). They compare the electoral college to the World Series; it doesn't matter how many runs you scored over the course of the series, just how many games you won in the end.

Opponents, however, say that it does not encourage voter turnout, that it gives too much weight to small states and less weight to those in more populated states, and that it can result in a president without a public mandate. The electoral college also makes it much tougher for third-party candidates to win enough electoral votes to have a real chance at becoming president; third-party candidates are thus typically seen as spoilers for one candidate or another and do not secure electoral votes unless they have particular regional support (the last third-party candidate to get any electoral votes was George Wallace in 1968).

Historical Roots of the Electoral College

For better or worse, the electoral college has evolved at the federal and state levels very differently from what the Framers intended.

In 1776, when the Framers met to craft a governing document for what would become the United States, one of the many issues was how to determine who would hold executive power. The Framers rejected the idea of a direct popular-vote election, worried that people would simply vote for the regional favorite and that no candidate would ever get sufficient national support to win such an election. They also rejected having the legislature select the president, worried that Congress would then hold too much power. They thus settled on the electoral college as a compromise.

The Framers ultimately wanted a system that was like Congress, but which was independent of that body and which could not be corrupted, since it was convened for only one vote before dissipating forever. The Framers wanted electors who would use their sound judgment and vote for someone who would be a good president for the entire country, and not just for their home regions. The candidate with the most electoral votes would be president, the one with the second-highest would be vice-president, and ties or situations where no candidate got enough votes would go to the House.

In Federalist Paper No. 68, Alexander Hamilton praised this version of the electoral college as ensuring that, while the American people as a whole played a part in electing the president, "the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."

But the Framers did not account for the rapid rise of political parties, and how states would come to select electors based on their commitment to vote for a specific candidate. These developments resulted in the United States' first electoral crisis. In 1800, Republican candidates Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr won the same number of electoral votes, which meant the election was actually a tie between the two running mates. The election then deadlocked in the House of Representatives, where Federalists threw their support to Burr in order to prevent Jefferson's election, and the House did not produce Jefferson as president until the 36th ballot. Soon after, the Twelfth Amendment altered the electoral college so that electors would vote specifically for a president and a vice-president, preventing such a situation from recurring.

Since the Twelfth Amendment, the electoral college has withstood calls for substantial change, except for adding three votes to account for the District of Columbia. Changes have thus occurred in the states, which can set the procedures for selecting electors however they wish. States quickly allowed popular vote to decide their slate of electors, rather than state legislatures. Most states now require their electors to vote for the candidate they originally agreed to vote for (although there have occasionally been "rogue" electors who cast their electoral votes for another candidate, such as a Democrat who voted in the 1988 election for Lloyd Bentsen as president instead of for Michael Dukakis), and all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) allot their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis.

Historical Results of the Electoral College

Most of the time, the electoral-college system produces a winner who also won the majority of popular votes cast (although, due to lower than 100 percent voter turnout, not necessarily a majority of the votes that could have been cast). This has happened in 34 of the 54 elections conducted as of the beginning of the 21st century.

However, there have been three (arguably four) elections in which the electoral college produced a winner who did not win the most popular votes, 14 more elections in which the electoral college produced a winner who did not win a majority of votes, and two elections that had to be decided by the House of Representatives.

The three (arguably four) elections in which the electoral college resulted in a different president who did not receive the most popular votes are:

1876: Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes trailed Tilden in popular vote but won in electoral college by one vote. Voter fraud on all sides. Competing sets of electors in three southern states and Oregon. Special national commission awarded Hayes all the contested electors on a party-line vote (8 republicans, seven democrats).
1888: Benjamin Harrison had most electoral votes but fewer popular votes. Harrison lost popular vote to Cleveland but won electoral vote. No outcry.
1960: If Alabama's votes were counted a different way, Richard Nixon would have had more votes than John F. Kennedy.
2000: George W. Bush beats Al Gore. Bush has 47.9 percent of popular vote, Gore had 48.4 percent.

In addition to those, there have been 14 elections in which the candidate who won the electoral college did not receive a majority of the popular votes cast, only a plurality of them. Those 14 are:

1844: Polk (49.6 percent).
1848: Taylor (47.3 percent).
1856: Buchanan (45.6 percent).
1860: Lincoln (39.8 percent).
1880: Garfield (48.3 percent).
1884: Cleveland (48.5 percent).
1892: Cleveland (46.0 percent).
1912: Wilson (41.9 percent).
1916: Wilson (49.3 percent).
1948: Truman (49.6 percent).
1960: Kennedy (49.5 percent).
1968: Nixon (43.4 percent).
1992: Clinton (43.0 percent).
1996: Clinton (49.2 percent).

As for the two elections that could not even be decided by the electoral college but had to be decided by the House, the first was the 1800 election that inspired the Twelfth Amendment. The only other election decided by the House was in 1824, when four candidates split the popular and electoral votes so evenly that none received majority. Andrew Jackson had the most popular and electoral votes, outpacing Adams, but the House elected Adams after Henry Clay, another presidential candidate who won 13 percent of the vote himself, threw his support to Adams, for which Adams made him Secretary of State.

Proposals for Change

In part because of such results, there have been hundreds of proposals over the years to replace the electoral college system with one by which the president is elected by direct popular vote. As a constitutional matter, such a change would require a constitutional amendment, and no major proposals have made it past Congress since the Twelfth Amendment.

In the 1960s, the American Bar Association condemned the electoral college as "archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous, indirect, and dangerous," and instead proposed a direct-vote election which would provide for a run-off election if no candidate got more than 40 percent of the vote. This proposal - which would have encouraged third-party candidates - was endorsed by the House but did not make it out of the Senate for full consideration as a constitutional amendment. This proposal has occasionally been revived, such as in the late 1990s, but has not matched even the partial success of the 1960s.

Another proposal was made in the late 1970s by the Twentieth Century Fund. In this proposal, the winner of the popular vote would receive an additional 102 electoral votes (two for each state, and two for the District of Columbia). The electoral college system would still remain, but candidates would have an incentive for encouraging widespread voter turnout in order to win the bonus. This proposal did not go far, and was criticized for encouraging voter fraud.

Sources: The National Archives and Records Administration has much information about the electoral college on-line here; tables and charts were developed from the data therein. Lawrence D. Longley & Neal R. Peirce, Electoral College Primer 2000 (Yale University Press 1999). Gary L. Gregg, editor, Securing Democracy: why we have an electoral college (ISI Books 2001). House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Proposals for Electoral College Reform (held on September 4, 1997).

Voter turnout (last updated November 5, 2002) (back to top)

Who votes? About 60 percent of men and women voted in the 1996 presidential election. About 55 percent of whites, 50 percent of blacks, and 30 percent of Hispanics voted in the 1996 presidential election. About 30 percent of those aged 18-24 voted, while about 70 percent of those 65 or older did.

Voter turnout in non-presidential elections is much lower. In the 1998 mid-term election, about 42 percent voted, with decreases across the board.

Sources: Data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau, available here.

Presidential Debates (last updated September 26, 2002) (back to top)

Beginning with the 1988 election, debates between presidential candidates have been sponsored by the non-profit, bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which aims to institutionalize such debates as a regular part of the election season. However, candidates have still argued every four years over the format and timing of such debates, and third-party candidates have had even more difficulty participating; Ross Perot, for example, was not invited to participate in the Commission-sponsored 1996 debates and then tried to force his way in via a legal challenge.

Presidential debates are not required by law, and the most recent streak of continuous elections with debates only began in 1976. There were no debates in the 1952, 1956, 1964, 1968, or 1972 elections, in part because sitting presidents then felt they had little to gain by going head-to-head with their challengers; Vice-President Spiro Agnew once told reporters that debating was "poor tactics when you're running so far ahead."

Debate over Debates

Despite the Commission's efforts to set up debates more easily and regularly, each presidential election it has been involved with, from 1988 to 2000, has seen some public disputes long before the candidates take their rostrums. Candidates and their campaigns have argued over how many debates, what days, what kind of format (one moderator, a panel of moderators, or a town-hall format), whether the candidates should stand or sit, and even how tall each candidate's rostrum should be (in 1988, Dukakis wanted the much taller George Bush to use a lower lectern; Bush agreed to use one lower than he normally would, but not as low as Dukakis wanted).

In recent years, the most vociferous fights over debates probably were those in 1992 and 2000, the first involving Bill Clinton and George H. Bush, the second involving Al Gore and George W. Bush. (The 1996 debates raised a different kind of controversy as to whether Ross Perot was properly excluded from them.)

In 1992, the Commission proposed three televised debates in prime time, each lasting 90 minutes and each with a single moderator. Clinton accepted the proposal, but Bush, who preferred the panel format, refused to accept the proposal and let the Commission's first scheduled debate pass without accepting. Clinton accused Bush of cowardice, and Bush then countered with his own proposal for four debates on the four consecutive Sundays leading up to the election, with two before a panel and two before a single moderator.

Finally, the two campaigns negotiated independent of the Commission and finally reached agreement on three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate within a tight nine-day period. One debate was before a panel of journalists, one before half-moderator, half-panel, and the third followed a "town hall" format; the one vice-presidential debate had a single moderator. All three debates included independent candidate Ross Perot.

Eight years later, George W. Bush followed his father's precedent and initially rejected the Commission's proposal for three 90-minute debates which would be broadcast on all major networks in prime-time. Instead, George W. Bush made a Sept. 3 proposal to have two of the three debates be only 60 minutes long and sponsored not by the Commission but by specific networks, namely, NBC and CNN. Al Gore criticized Bush's proposal for trying to reduce the debates' prominence, saying that networks would not air a debate specifically hosted by another, and that viewers would watch more popular shows instead of the debates if they had counter-programming available.

As in the 1992 situation, campaign officials from the Bush and Gore campaigns met to negotiate a resolution. But unlike 1992, the result this time was that Bush, who faced criticism from his own party for his handling of the debates, withdrew all his objections and accepted the Commission's schedule without any change.

Third-Party Candidates

Third-party candidates have often had difficulty getting the major-party candidates to debate them. President Jimmy Carter refused to debate Independent candidate John Anderson in the 1980 campaign, though Ronald Reagan did debate Anderson with some success. More recently, Ross Perot was invited by the major-party candidates to participate in the three presidential debates in 1992, but not to the Commission's 1996 debates.

Now that it does have some formal role in the process and does extend invitations to the debates, the Commission has tried formulating criteria for which presidential candidates should be invited to participate in its debates. There were at least 23 candidates in the 1996 election and at least 17 candidates in the 2000 election (though none but the major-party candidates, Ross Perot and Ralph Nader ever got more than 1 percent of the popular vote), which would make for unwieldy - and probably useless - debates if all were to participate.

For the 1996 election, the Commission used a combination of objective and subjective criteria such as evidence of national organization, national newsworthiness and competitiveness, and indicators of national public enthusiasm or concern in order to invite only those candidates who it deemed had a "realistic (i.e. more than theoretical) chance of being elected." It thus invited only Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, the two major-party candidates that year.

Perot (along with John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party) challenged the Commission's selection criteria and petitioned a federal judge to allow them to participate, arguing that the Federal Election Commission had wrongly delegated its authority to the bipartisan Commission. The judge rejected the third-party candidates' challenge as non-judicial; there was no legal right for any candidate to participate in the debates, the FEC had no authority over setting up the debates, and there was no need to hold up the debates or require Perot's participation since any harm he might suffer by not participating could be rectified by holding more debates later.

Neither Perot nor Hagelin ended up debating and neither ultimately had much success at the polls. Perot ultimately took third-place with 8.40 percent of the popular vote, and Hagelin won 0.12 percent of the vote, coming in seventh.

In any event, the Commission adopted new selection criteria for the 2000 election, this time looking to whether a candidate met the Constitution's eligibility requirements (see here), whether the candidate was on enough states' ballots to have a "mathematical" chance of winning the electoral college, and whether the candidate had at least 15 percent support according to an average of five national polls at the time of determination.

Although the Commission had dropped subjective criteria this time, some still challenged its criteria as unfair. Some noted that the Presidential Public Funding Program only requires a third-party presidential candidate to win five percent of the popular vote in order to receive some post-election reimbursement as well as some public funding for his party in the next election (which is what Ralph Nader of the Green Party was aiming for in the 2000 election, though he ultimately won only 2.74 percent of the popular vote).

On a separate but related issue, both Perot in 1996 and Nader in 2000 challenged the Federal Election Commission's regulations that permit the Commission on Presidential Debates to receive corporate contributions to help cover the costs of the debates. Perot did not long pursue the argument in 1996, but Nader pressed it through several courts, arguing that that the FEC's regulation improperly allowed corporate money to aid the major parties at the expense of minor parties and should be struck down. The First Circuit Court of Appeals noted in November 2000 that Nader's argument was not "unreasonable," but upheld the Federal Election Commission's regulation as a different, also reasonable choice that warranted deference.

For more on elections, go here. For more on third-party candidates, go here.

Sources: The Commission on Presidential Debates is on-line here. Stephen Bates, The Future of Presidential Debates (The Annenberg Washington Program in Communication Policy Studies of Northwestern University, 1993), is on-line here. The Federal Election Commission, on-line here, has information on all the presidential candidates in the 1996 and 2000 elections, and has information on the presidential public funding program here. Richard L. Berke, Bush shifts stand, saying he's ready to hold 4 debates, New York Times, September 30, 1992. Richard L. Berke, Bush and Clinton agree on debates; plan to ask Perot, New York Times, October 3, 1992. Peter Marks, Dropping all of his objections, Bush agrees to panel's debates, September 15, 2000. An appellate court decision regarding Perot's 1996 challenge is on-line here and one regarding Nader's 2000 challenge to the FEC regulations is on-line here.

A Candidate's Death or Withdrawal before an Election (last updated October 29, 2002) (back to top)

Each state has its own laws and procedures on how to deal with the relatively unusual situation where a candidate dies or withdraws from the race shortly before an election. Some states allow a candidate to be replaced on the ballot before the election, and some simply have procedures for replacing the candidate or holding special elections if the candidate is elected posthumously.

This relatively unusual situation has come up three times in the past two years. In 2000, Missouri Democrat Mel Carnahan, a former Governor and then-current Senate candidate, died in a small plane crash just weeks before the Senate election. In 2002, Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii) died of viral pneumonia on September 28 and Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) died in another small plane crash on October 25.

Each situation was handled differently. In Missouri, Carnahan's name remained on the ballot, and he still was elected over incumbent Republican Senator John Ashcroft in part because Carnahan's widow publicly agreed to be appointed to her husband's post. In Hawaii, Mink's name stayed on the ballot, and a special election will be held in 2003 if she wins posthumously.

And in Minnesota, former Vice-President Walter Mondale agreed to fill Wellstone's place on the ballot.

Also in 2002, Democratic Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey announced his withdrawal as the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. The Democrats then nominated retired Senator Frank R. Lautenberg to fill Torricelli's spot on the ballot. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled on October 2, 2002 that the state election laws permitted such a change, and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Gov. Mel Carnahan was reportedly the first person to be elected posthumously to the Senate. Republicans considered filing a court challenge against the election, but Ashcroft decided against it. His political future in doubt, he was then nominated as Attorney General and became a central figure in the Bush administration, especially after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

At least three dead people reportedly have been elected to the House. Democrats Clement Miller of California, Nick Begich of Alaska, and Hale Boggs of Louisiana were incumbents who died in plane crashes weeks before Election Day. Miller died before the 1962 election. Begich and Boggs were in a small plane that disappeared in Alaska in October 1972, and were both presumed dead.

Sources: New Jersey Democratic Party, Inc. v. Samson (A-24-02) (N.J. Supreme Court, October 2, 2002), on-line here. John W. Fountain, Senator refuses to challenge loss, New York Times, November 9, 2000. B.J. Reyes, Politicians clash over Mink honors, Associated Press, September 30, 2002. California's election code is on-line here, with the relevant sections at 8800-8811.

Voting-Equipment Technology and Other Reforms Post-2000 (last updated September 15, 2002) (back to top)

Voting-equipment technology and ballot design are just two of many areas that drew attention in the wake of the 2000 presidential election and the confused results in Florida. Other areas include how to handle eligibility questions, whether Election Day should be a nationwide holiday with more uniform polling hours, and whether states should wait longer before certifying their results.

Florida began requiring more advanced technology that allowed for immediate review and for voters to redo an incorrectly processed vote through the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001. Among other things, the act encouraged and helped finance the use of new voting-equipment technology, including touch-screen systems that, unfortunately, caused problems during the September 2002 primary between Bill McBride and former Attorney General Janet Reno. Florida Governor Jeb Bush extended polling hours due to the problems, and McBride ultimately won by a narrow margin (44.5 percent to 43.9 percent).

Voting-Equipment Technology

There are several systems of voting equipment used throughout the United States. The systems used in the 1996 presidential election are:

Punchcard systems (used by 37.3 percent of registered voters). Voters use machines to punch holes in cards; these cards serve as ballots which can be reviewed.
Optical scan systems (used by 24.6 percent of registered voters). As in standardized tests, voters fill in the rectangle or circle corresponding to their choice of candidate, and a computer records the darkest mark within a given set as the correct choice or vote; these cards serve as ballots which can be reviewed.
Mechanical lever systems (used by 20.7 percent). Voters pull down selected levers to indicate choices; the machine records the votes but there is no actual ballot. These machines are no longer made and are being replaced by computer-based optical scan systems or direct-recording electronic systems.
Direct recording electronic (used by 7.7 percent). As with a ATM screen, voters enter their choices into electronic storage; there is no actual ballot.
Paper ballot systems (used by 1.7 percent). Voters record their choices by marking the boxes next to the choice; these cards serve as ballots which can be reviewed.

In Florida's 2000 elections, optical scan systems were used in 41 counties, with 25 having the ballots reviewed for errors and tabulated immediately at the particular precinct and 16 having the ballots tabulated at a central location later. Punch cards were used in 24 counties. One county used paper ballots, and one county used lever machines.

The infamous "butterfly ballot" was used in Palm Beach County, which used punch cards and where the local election supervisor struggled to fit an unusually high number of presidential candidates (12 compared to the usual three or four) into a small space and thus came up with a two-column approach. The design led to some problems; Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan got far more votes than was expected and probably votes that would have gone to Democratic candidate Al Gore, and more than 19,000 voters spoiled their ballots by punching two separate holes when voting for president.

Post-election reviews of the ballots showed that the rate of votes lost or uncounted due to uncertainty over whom the votes were for varied by equipment system. According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' June 2001 report, the spoilage rates were more than 6 percent of paper ballots, 5.68 percent of optical ballots that were only scanned centrally and not at the individual precinct, and 3.93 percent of punch cards that were reviewed centrally. The problem is not limited to Florida; a July 2001 report by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that 1.5 million to 2 million votes were lost nationwide due to poor technology.

Among other things, the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001 disallowed further use of the punch-card machines used in the 2000 election, allowed the use of touch-screen systems, and required the use of second-chance technology which would allow voters to correct their vote immediately. The act also authorized the distribution of $7,500 precinct for smaller counties and $3,740 for larger counties.

There have also been more calls for new standards for voting equipment. As of early 2001, about 37 states required electronic voting equipment to comply with performance and test standards developed by the Federal Election Commission, which first developed standards in the 1970s and then published a revised version of the standards in early 2002.

Other Reforms and Eligibility Issues

Another change made by Florida since the 2000 election authorizes the use of provisional ballots in some circumstances, so that a voter whose eligibility to vote is questioned can still submit a ballot which can be counted later. The 2001 reform act also requires the creation of a statewide registration database which could be checked from individual precincts; many voters' names were not on the lists of registered voters in 2000 and local election officials could not reach the centralized office to check. The Caltech/MIT study estimated that making such voter registration data available to individual precincts and allowing for provisional ballots would rescue up to 2 million votes nationwide.

Some of the many other issues raised by the Florida election include:

Whether Election Day should be a national holiday, such as Veterans Day, and whether uniform nationwide voting hours should be established. Such measures arguably would make it easier for states to easily hire poll workers and hold elections in accessible buildings.
Whether states should have mandatory waiting periods before they can certify election results. This would allow for more time to count ballots and to resolve disputes, though the media probably could and would still report probable winners.
Whether felons' voting rights should be restored, in part to re-enfranchise a significant portion of the African-American population. Felons' eligibility to vote is up to state discretion, and only nine states (Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming) denied the right to vote to convicted felons even after they have completed their sentences (Delaware does so for five years afterwards). All states except Maine and Vermont deny the right to vote to offenders serving a prison sentence, and most deny the right to vote to individuals on parole or probation.

For more on elections and on the 2000 election, go here.

Sources: The Federal Election Commission has information about its voting system standards here and about the prevalence of systems used in the 1996 presidential election here. The United States Office for Civil Rights Evaluation's November 2001 report on election reform proposals is on-line here. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' June 2001 report on voting irregularities in Florida during the 2000 presidential election is on-line here, with its epilogue on the Florida Election Reform Act of 2001 here. The joint report by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was published in July 2001 and is on-line here.

Maps of the 2000 electoral results (back to top)

This map shows the gap between Bush and Gore in each state. The deeper the color, the stronger the support for Bush (red) or Gore (blue). The only states where one candidate had popular votes doubling his opponent were Alaska, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming for Bush, and the District of Columbia for Gore. Overall, most states provided small margins of victory for the winning candidate.

This next map shows which candidate took each state and its electoral votes. Bush won more states (30 to Gore's 20), but Gore's wins were in big states, which is how the election became so close.

Sources: Data comes from the Federal Election Commission, available here.

Did Ralph Nader Spoil the 2000 Election? (last updated February 22, 2004) (back to top)

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, February 22 that he would run again as an independent candidate for president in 2004.

In 2000, Nader only won 2.7 percent of the general election, but the election results were so close in Florida and in New Hampshire that, had Nader's supporters largely supported Al Gore instead, Al Gore would have been elected president instead of George W. Bush.

Sources: The Federal Election Commission has 2000 election results here.

Electoral Results Nationwide (last updated November 20, 2005) (back to top)

Electoral College Results, by State (1948-2000) (last updated 2005) (back to top)

State

Electoral Votes in 2000

1948

1952

1956

1960

1964

1968

1972

1976

1980

1984

1988

1992

1996

2000

2004

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

N. H.

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas