Can you win the popular vote and lose the election?

On By Pranco

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When presidents are elected, we consider it the will of the people.

But sometimes that is not the case. Sometimes the person elected does not receive the most votes, but still wins the Electoral College.

Here’s a look at the moments when the popular vote and the electoral vote didn’t match.

What is the Electoral College?

In the United States, the winner of the presidential race is determined by the Electoral College.

According to the National Archivesthe Electoral College was a compromise between the election of a president by Congress and a popular vote.

The Electoral College has 538 voters – a majority of 270 electoral votes is needed to become president. Each state has a number of electors. The number is determined by taking the number of senators a state has (2) and adding one for each member in the House of Representatives.

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Simply put, the candidate who wins the state, except Nebraska and Maine, wins all the electoral votes for the state. In Maine and Nebraska, they allocate two electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, and then one electoral vote to the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district.

The United States has held 58 presidential elections and, for the most part, the results followed the popular vote. Here’s a look at the five elections where the winner of the popular vote didn’t enter the White House.

Presidential election of 1824

There were four candidates – Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay – on the presidential ballot, and they were all in the Democratic-Republican party. Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, but he did not receive a majority of the Electoral College votes. Although Jackson had several electoral votes, he fell short by 32 electoral votes.

The vote went to the House of Representatives. The top three candidates advanced to the House of Representatives, eliminating Clay, who was also Speaker of the House. According to History.com, Clay allegedly used his influence as speaker to get Adams elected. Clay then became Adams’ Secretary of State. The results infuriated Jackson, who accused his opponents of stealing the election.

Presidential election of 1876

Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden won the popular vote over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, but Congress had to resolve a near-constitutional crisis.

Tilden won 184 electoral votes, while Hayes won 165, but Tilden still fell one vote short of a majority. However, according to History.com, there were 20 electoral votes that were disputed.

Republicans objected to the results from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. Both candidates claimed victory in the United States. Because the Constitution did not provide a solution to this situation, Congress established a bipartisan Federal Election Commission consisting of representatives of the House of Representatives, senators, and Supreme Court justices.

The committee gave the votes to Hayes, who won 185-184. According to History.com, historians believe that Democrats, whose stronghold was the South, agreed to let Hayes become president in exchange for ending Reconstruction.

Presidential election of 1888

In a rather nasty battle between Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland and Republican Benjamin Harrison, the 1888 race included accusations that votes were being sold to the highest bidder and that black votes were being suppressed in the South. Cleveland won the popular vote by more than 90,000 votes by defeating the southern states. Harrison won the Northern and Western states and achieved a 233–168 victory in the Electoral College.

2000 presidential election

Democratic candidate and Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote over Republican candidate George Bush by more than 500,000 votes, but Gore was stuck at 266 electoral votes with one state in play: Florida. After a recount, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris declared Bush the winner with 537 votes. The Gore campaign filed a lawsuit claiming that not all votes were counted due to issues such as pregnant chads or dimpled chads (votes where the punch did not go all the way through) and hanging chads (votes that were not read because the punch was dangling from the left part of the card .

The Florida Supreme Court sided with Gore, but Bush took the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Bush’s favor. Bush won the election 271-266.

2016 presidential election

Democratic candidate and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular vote over famed real estate mogul Donald Trump by 2.8 million votes. Clinton did well in big cities and populous states like New York and California, but the Democrats’ “Blue Wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin collapsed on election night.

Trump swept the battleground states, claiming an Electoral College victory of 304-227.