Forum… Or Against ’em

By Count Friedrich von Olsen
In recent weeks discussion relating to Hillary Clinton’s capturing of a popular vote victory while actually losing the election because she was outperformed in the Electoral College by Donald Trump has intensified. I will not spend time defending the electoral system as it exists or spend time explaining that it was intended to protect the lesser-populated agrarian states from being dominated by the more heavily populated citified states that existed at the time of our nation’s formation. Nor will I spend time trying to explain that this system continues to protect vast Middle America from being overshadowed by the fewer but more heavily saturated coastal areas. I certainly understand that Ms. Clinton’s edge in the total number of votes cast nationwide – something like 64.4 million to President-elect Trump’s 62.3 million – is a significant statement of faith in her leadership. Under the rules, however, Donald Trump will come to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20…
I offer the following history tutorial so that my readers understand that this is not the first time the winner of the popular vote – by either a plurality or a majority – did not inherit the presidency…
First let us consider the cases where the majority vote leader failed to win…
In the 1876 election Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, garnered 50.92 percent of the popular vote, outdistancing Republican Rutherford Hayes, who polled 47.92 percent, and three other candidates. But Hayes carried 185 electoral votes to Tilden’s 184 and became the 19th President of the United States.
To this day, it is not clear who really won the popular vote in the 1960 election, John Kennedy or Richard Nixon. Officially, Kennedy received 112,827 (0.17%) more votes than Nixon nationwide. But there were major irregularities in the voting in West Virginia and Illinois, with a whole lot of dead people voting. The ballot boxes might have been stuffed in favor of Kennedy, who won a 303 to 219 Electoral College victory. Nevertheless, Nixon won the popular vote contest among more individual states, 26 to 22. Nixon conceded the election and did not contest the outcomes in favor of his rival in West Virginia and Illinois…
In addition to those two contests, there were sixteen others in which the winner did not claim more than a majority of the votes cast…
In 1824, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the popular vote, beating John Quincey Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay. But none of those had prevailed in the Electoral College and under the 12th Amendment, the decision moved to the House of Representatives. The forces behind Adams joined forces with those supporting Clay and gave the presidency to Adams. That was considered to be a “corrupt bargain” by Jackson’s supporters, who came back with vengeance in the 1828 Election, when Adams was voted out of office after a single term…
In the election of 1844, James K. Polk outpolled both of his opponents in the race, Henry Clay and James G. Birney. But Polk did not capture a majority of the vote, but rather 49.6 percent. Polk received 1,339,494 votes, Clay received 1,300,004 votes, and Birney received 62,103 votes…
In the election of 1848, Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate, was up against Lewis Cass and Martin Van Buren, who had been president a decade previously. Taylor received 1,361,393 (47.3%) votes, Cass received 1,223,460 votes, and Van Buren received 291,501 votes…
In the Election of 1856, James Buchanan was elected with 45.3 percent of the vote, capturing 1,836,072 votes to the 1,342,345 votes received by the first Republican to run for president, John Fremont, and 873,053 votes for former president Millard Fillmore…
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln received the lowest percentage of votes of any successful candidate for president in U.S. History when he captured 1,865,908 votes, or 39.8%, to the 1,380,202 votes cast for Stephen A. Douglas, the 848,019 votes for John C. Breckinridged and the 590,901 votes for John Bell…
In 1880, Republcian James Garfield prevailed in the popular vote by fewer than 2,000 votes over the second place finisher, Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock. Garfield received 4,446,158 votes, or 48.3% to Hancock’s 4,444,260 vote total. James Weaver, the Greenback Party candidate, received 305,997 votes. Grover Cleveland ran for president three times, in 1884, 1888 and 1892, winning two of those contests on the way to being the only President to serve non-consecutive terms. In all three of those elections, win or lose, he failed to capture a majority of the vote. In 1884, Cleveland with 4,914,482 votes or 48.9% and 219 electoral votes, narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, former United States Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, who polled 4,856,905 votes or 48.3% and 182 electoral votes. John St. John and Benjamin Franklin Butler captured most of the remaining 1.8 percent…
In 1888, President Cleaveland again won a plurality of the popular vote, 5,534,488 or 48.63%, but lost the electoral vote and the election to Benjamin Harrison, who received 5,443,892 or 47.8% of the popular vote. The other candidates were Clinton Fisk and Alson Streeter. Harrison received 233 votes in the Electoral College to Cleveland’s 168…
In the 1892 rematch between Democrat Cleveland and Republican Harrison, the field was again crowded, with James Weaver, Simon Wing and Jon Bidwell competing. Cleveland received 5,551,883 votes or 46.2%; Harrison received 5,179,244 votes; Weaver received 1,024,280 votes; and Bidwell received 270,770 votes. Cleveland prevailed in the electoral college, with 277 votes over Harrison’s 145 and Weaver’s 22…
In 1912, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, won the election with 41.8 percent of the vote, or 6,293,152 votes, while William Howard Taft, the Republican incumbent, garnered 3,486,333 votes; former president Theodore Roosevelt polled 4,119,207 votes and Socialist Eugene Debs received 900,369 votes.
In 1916, Wilson again prevailed, taking a narrow 277 to 254 victory over Charles Evans Hughes in the Electoral College. Wilson received 49.24 percent of the popular vote in a field that included Allan Benson, Frank Hanly and Arthur Reimer…
The 1948 election featured Harry Truman, Thomas Dewey, Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond. Truman won with 24,179,345 popular votes, or 49.6 percent, and 303 electoral votes, safely outdistancing Dewey and his 21,991,291 popular votes and his 189 electoral votes…
In 1968 Richard Nixon received 43.4 percent of the popular vote in a race that pitted him against Hubert Humphrey, who ran a close second, and George Wallace. Nixon outpointed Humphrey in the Electoral College 301 to 191…
Bill Clinton was elected and then reelected president in 1992 and 1996, outdistancing first incumbent George H.W. Bush and then Bob Dole. The presence of third party candidate Ross Perot in both races prevented Clinton from getting 50 percent in both races…
In the 2000 race, Al Gore captured 50,999,897 votes or 48.38% to George W. Bush’s 50,456,002 votes or 47.87%. Bush prevailed with 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266. The race featured five other candidates, who shared the 3.75 percent of the popular vote that did not go to Bush or Gore…
All this illustrates, I hope, that Hillary Clinton’s loss of the election despite her having captured the lead in the popular vote, while remarkable, is not unique, unprecedented or all that rare. It is not, as some have suggested, a manipulation of the electoral process by Mr. Trump or the Republican Party…

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