Sometimes You Must Lose to Win Quiz

Answer: 538

You may have been able to deduce the answer if you remembered a simple majority of votes is needed. Twice 270 is 540, but since we want a majority, the answer couldn't be more than 539, and we want an even number (my hint), so it must be 538.

When you read of U.S. Presidential elections, you will read things like "Candidate Y got 58% of the popular vote." That really means that the Electors of Y's party got 58% of the popular vote, and in most states that means that all the states' Electors will be of that party and vote for the appropriate candidate. In a nutshell, that is how it is possible for Presidents to lose the popular vote but win the Electoral vote.

Answer: The election is thrown to House of Representatives.

According to the Twelfth Amendment of the US Constitution, ratified in 1804, the House of Representatives must choose from the three candidates with the highest number of votes. According to this amendment, the House must elect someone by March 4, or else the Vice President assumes the office of the President.

This part of the amendment was never tested from the time of its ratification through 2012.

Answer: John Quincy Adams

Neither John Quincy Adams nor Andrew Jackson won the popular vote in 1824. More precisely, neither candidate had a majority, though Jackson had a plurality, about 38,000 more votes than Adams. More importantly, neither gentleman had a majority (131 votes) in the Electoral College either. The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, as per the U.S. Constitution. Adams won.

Answer: Rutherford B. Hayes

The strife over the election nearly caused a second Civil War. Peace was achieved when Hayes promised to remove armed forces from the South and end Reconstruction, to the dismay of Black southerners. Colorado had been just been admitted to the Union and decided to appoint electors instead of holding elections. So, Hayes won Colorado's three electoral votes with zero popular votes.

Tilden was the first Presidential candidate to lose despite having a majority of the popular vote, 50.9% to Hayes' 47.9%. Tilden remained the only candidate not to win the election despite receiving an absolute majority of popular votes, through 2012.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson & Aaron Burr

Strangely enough, Jefferson and Burr were running mates! At the time, Electors cast two votes for President, the runner-up winning the vice-presidency, as the Founding Fathers had not conceived of political parties in their new nation. Jefferson and Burr of the Democratic-Republican party tied, while Adams of the Federalist party was third.

The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, which after thirty-six rounds of voting selected Jefferson as President and Burr as Vice President. The Twelfth Amendment prevents this from happening again, by permitting exactly one vote for President and one for Vice-President.

Answer: False

Jimmy Carter won a majority in 1976. Some sources will state that Jimmy Carter did not win the majority of the popular vote in the 1976 election, but in fact it was a *very* slight majority, at 50.1% to Gerald Ford's 48%.

I include this fact because I saw at least one online source claim that until Obama no Democratic President had won the majority popular vote since Franklin Roosevelt, and I investigated and found that claim to be erroneous.

Answer: Richard Nixon (1968)

Nixon received 43.7% of the popular vote and Hubert Humphrey received 42.7%, while spoiler George Wallace of the American Independent Party received 13.5%.

Despite the remarkable performance of 3rd-partiers, the rest of the candidates carried popular majorities. In 1980 John Anderson won 7% of the vote and Jimmy Carter 41%, but Ronald Reagan got 51%.

La Follette of the Progressive Party took 17% and John W. Davis 29%, but Republican Coolidge still managed to pull off 54% of the popular vote.

Martin Van Buren eked out a majority with 50.8% of the popular vote against William Henry Harrison's 36.6% and Hugh L. White's 9.7%.

Answer: Andrew Jackson (1832)

Despite the noticeable performance of Henry Clay (37.4%) of the National Republicans and William Wirt of the Anti-Masonics (7.8%), Jackson carried a popular majority in his election (54.2%).

Lincoln received a stunningly small 39.8% of the popular vote in his four-way race against Stephen Douglas of the Democratic Party (29.5%), J.C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democratic Party (28.2%), and John Bell of the Constitutional Union (12.6%).

The other candidates received pluralities but not majorities. In 1848, Zachary Taylor won 47.3%% to W.O. Butler's 42.5% and Martin Van Buren's 10.1%. In 1856, Millard Fillmore of the Know-Nothing Party took a whopping 21.6% and almost spoiled it for J.C. Fremont (33.1%) and Buchanan (45%).

All of these Presidents won clear majorities in the Electoral College, even though in each case a majority of the people did NOT vote for them.

Answer: George Bush (1988)

Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush was essentially running as a surrogate for Ronald Reagan, who could not be re-elected after his second term, thanks to the 22nd Amendment. He won 53.4% of the popular vote to Michael Dukakis's 45.7%.

The remaining three choices were very close races. Grover Cleveland won a plurality of votes against James G. Blaine, 49% to 48%, but not a majority. This was the first of three elections that Cleveland would participate in.

Garfield and Winfield S. Hancock nearly tied at 48.3% to 48.2% (a plurality but not a majority).

Did you pick Kennedy? Even though Kennedy became an enormously popular, indeed beloved President, on Election Day he barely got a plurality of the popular vote, 49.7%, against Richard Nixon's 49.6%.

A plurality is still a form of loss because a majority of the American population indicated they did NOT want to see that particular candidate elected! All of these won clear majorities in the Electoral College, however, so their elections were never in dispute.

Answer: True

Grover Cleveland was running for re-election against Benjamin Harrison. He had a slight popular plurality, 49% vs. 48%. But in the Electoral College, which is where it counts, Harrison defeated him, and became the 23rd President. (So another "lose to win").

Answer: Franklin Pierce (1852)

Franklin Pierce barely won a majority (50.8%) against Winfield Scott of the Whigs (43.9%) and John P. Hale of the Free Soil Party (4.9%).

In 1892, Cleveland defeated both Harrison and James Weaver, to become the 24th President, after having been the 22nd President (he won the election of 1884 but lost in 1888). He only got a plurality of the popular vote, however, at 46% to Harrison's 43% and Weaver's 8.5%, but with the Electoral College you can win even when the majority of the people vote against you.

Truman was very close to achieving a majority at 49.6%, holding his own in a three-way against Republican Thomas Dewey (45.1%) and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond (2.4%). (The full name of Thurmond's party was States' Rights Democratic Party).

In both these cases, the victor received an unequivocal majority of the Electoral votes, so these elections were never disputed. Nevertheless, they lost the majority popular vote but won the Presidency.

George Washington ran unopposed in 1792 and was re-elected unanimously to a second term. (Not a three-way race as stated in the question.)**

**One may argue there were four other candidates: John Adams, George Clinton, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr. But they had no expectation of defeating Washington were vying for Vice President back when Electors cast two votes, and the runner-up to the Presidential election was awarded that office. So in this case, Adams lost to Washington in the Electoral College, but won the second-highest office in the land.

Also, it is difficult to say that Washington got *any* percentage of the popular vote, majority or not, because in many states at the time, Electors were not chosen by popular vote. The Electors, however, did elect him unanimously.

Answer: Al Gore vs. George W. Bush (2000)

Here's another example of a three-way race causing problems. The candidates were Al Gore, George Bush, and spoiler Ralph Nader of the Green Party. This was an enormously controversial election regarding the confusing way that the ballots were designed in the state of Florida, which some claim skewed the results toward the Republican candidate Bush. The Supreme Court, however, intervened and would not let a recount proceed, and Al Gore decided not to fight the issue and conceded - even though had he won Florida, he would have secured enough Electoral votes to win the Presidency.

Ultimately, the popular vote breakdown was George Bush 47.9%, Al Gore 48.4%, and Ralph Nader 2.7%. Despite Gore's plurality, Bush had a majority in the Electoral College, and became the 43rd President.

Answer: Ross Perot

In 1992, Ross Perot ran as an Independent against Republican incumbent Geroge H. W. Bush an Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. Perot took 18.9% of the popular vote, but not enough votes in any state to gain an Electoral vote. Bush had 37.5% of the vote, and Clinton took 43% -- not a majority.

The political bug had still bitten Perot, and he ran again in 1996, this time as a Reform Party candidate against incumbent Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole. The results were Perot 8.4%, Dole 40.7%, and Clinton 49.2% - again, not a majority, but in America, you may lose the popular battle and win the the Electoral war.

Answer: Woodrow Wilson (1912, 1916)

In 1912, Wilson ran a four-way race against Teddy Roosevelt of the Progressive Party, William H. Taft of the Republican Party, and Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party. Of the popular vote, Wilson took 41.8%, Roosevelt 27.4%, Taft 23.2%, and Debs 6%. Wilson had a plurality, but not a majority.

In 1916, Wilson ran only against Charles E. Hughes, 49.2% to 46.1% (again, a plurality but not a majority).

The other Presidents listed won clear popular majorities in each election they won. Roosevelt got a majority against Republicans Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, Wendell Wilkie, and Thomas Dewey. Eisenhower, a war hero, won a majority against Adlai Stevenson in both of his races. Barack Obama likewise won simple majorities over John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Answer: False

November 5, 2012 was a tense night. At one point, the popular vote grew so close that some pundits speculated that one candidate might win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote. As it turned out, however, the popular vote was close (as it usually is in the USA), but decisive. Barack Obama received 65,464,068 votes and opponent Mitt Romney received 60,781,275 votes.

The electors cast their votes on December 17, 2012 and Obama began his second term in 2013.