🚀 go-pugleaf

Sandi Fitzgerald <tvlagt@cyberportal.net> wrote in article
<327E9EB0.3CF1@cyberportal.net>...
> > > Just for the record, Einstein, no President has ever been elected by
the
> > > electoral college that didn't win the majority of the popular vote.
> > Is that true?  I don't believe it is. I think there has been at least
one
> > President elected who had less popular votes than his opponent, but I
> > cannot remember who it was.
> There have been several presidents who only won a plurality ---- not a
> majority.  Clinton was one.  Bush and Perot together had a larger
> popular vote

For the record:
Accurate popular vote statistics have only been kept since 1872. Since
that election, two candidates actually won the popular vote but lost
in the Electoral College. In 1876, Samuel J. Tilden beat Rutherford B.
Hayes by over 200,000 votes, but lost in the electoral college, although
the reasons for this are complex.

In 1888, Grover Cleveland had 90,000 more votes than Benjamin Harrison
but lost in the Electoral College. So great was public outcry after this
that
there was a very strong, though unsucessful, movement to abolish the
Electoral College. In the next election, Cleveland beat Harrison soundly
in both the popular and electoral vote.

In addition to these elections, it is widely believed that Andrew Jackson
won the majority of the popular vote in 1824, but did not have enough 
electoral votes to win. Hence the House of Representatives chose the
President, John Quincy Adams, who garnered an astoundingly low 
29.8% of the popular vote.

Just a little trivia to brighten your day, brought to you under the
supervision of Robert A. Daniels, self-appointed god of nh.general.

Matt