Alternatively, if no candidate receives an absolute majority of electoral votes, the election is determined by the House of Representatives.
[9][10][11] Additionally, in 15 other presidential elections (1844, 1848, 1856, 1860, 1880, 1884, 1892, 1912, 1916, 1948, 1960, 1968, 1992, 1996, and 2024), the winner received a plurality but not a majority of the total popular votes cast.
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.
[16] This result became a source of great bitterness for Jackson and his supporters, who proclaimed the election of Adams a "corrupt bargain," and were inspired to create the Democratic Party.
There is no question that 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 other sources of disenfranchisement of black predominantly Republican voters 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.
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.
[20][21] 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.
His opposition to Civil War pensions and inflated currency also made enemies among veterans and farmers.
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.
[22][23] 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).
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.
[34] State-level polls "showed a competitive, uncertain contest ... but clearly under-estimated Trump's support in the Upper Midwest.
"[34] Trump exceeded expectations on Election Day by winning the traditionally Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by narrow margins.
[36] 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.
Kennedy is generally considered to have won the popular vote as well, by a narrow margin of 0.17 percent (the second-narrowest winning margin ever, after the 1880 election), but based on the unusual nature of the election in Alabama, political journalists such as John Fund and Sean Trende were able to later argue that Nixon actually won the popular vote.
[43] The five Electoral College votes for Democrat Byrd – who was not a candidate nor did he campaign – provide the fodder for arguing with regard to various scenarios.
According to political scientist Steven Schier, "If one divides the Alabama Democratic votes proportionately between the Kennedy and Byrd slates, Nixon ekes out a 50,000 vote popular plurality"; this margin of 0.07 percent would have been the narrowest margin ever in a presidential election, with no impact on the Electoral College results.