[1][2] In order to be elected to office, a candidate must win an absolute majority of electoral votes.
The exception occurs if no candidate receives an absolute majority of votes in the Electoral College.
As prescribed by the Constitution, the House chooses from among the three candidates who received the most electoral votes.
Thus, the two elections must be normalized to each other to compare them: Nixon's margin of victory is calculated by dividing 32 by 269 to get 0.119.
Of the four elections prior to the 12th Amendment, 1792 and 1800 both involved two candidates receiving above 50% of the electoral votes.
Thus, we divide the absolute margin of victory by c/2 to get a normalized margin of victory that ranges from 0 to 1: Under the procedure provided in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the Constitution, by which the Electoral College functioned during the first four presidential elections (prior to ratification of the Twelfth Amendment), each elector cast two votes, one for president and one for vice president, but did not distinguish between them.
The table's "runner-up" column shows the number of electoral votes for the candidate receiving the second highest number of combined electoral votes, and thus was elected vice president, for each of these elections except for the 1800 United States presidential election, which ended in a tie between two candidates – the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the same party.