Every four years in the United States, the electoral college system is used to determine the winner of the presidential election. In this system, each state has a fixed number of electors based on their population size, and (generally speaking) these electors then vote for their candidate with the most popular votes within their state or district. Since 1964, there have been 538 electoral votes available for presidential candidates, who need a minimum of 270 votes to win the election. Because of this system, candidates do not have to win over fifty percent of the popular votes across the country, but just win in enough states to receive a total of 270 electoral college votes. The use of this system is a source of debate in the U.S.; those in favor claim that it prevents candidates from focusing on the interests of urban populations, and must also appeal to smaller and less-populous states, and they say that this system preserves federalism and the two-party system. However, critics argue that this system does not represent the will of the majority of American voters, and that it encourages candidates to disproportionally focus on winning in swing states, where the outcome is more difficult to predict. Popular results From 1789 until 1820, there was no popular vote, and the President was then chosen only by the electors from each state. George Washington was unanimously voted for by the electorate, receiving one hundred percent of the votes in both elections. From 1824, the popular vote has been conducted among American citizens, to help electors decide who to vote for (although the 1824 winner was chosen by the House of Representatives, as no candidate received over fifty percent of electoral votes). Since 1924, the difference in the share of both votes has varied, with several candidates receiving over ninety percent of the electoral votes while only receiving between fifty and sixty percent of the popular vote. The highest difference was for Ronald Reagan in 1980, where he received just 50.4 percent of the popular vote, but 90.9 percent of the electoral votes. Unpopular winners Since 1824, there have been 49 elections, and in 18 of these the winner did not receive over fifty percent of the popular vote. In the majority of these cases, the winner did receive a plurality of the votes, however there have been five instances where the winner of the electoral college vote lost the popular vote to another candidate. The most recent examples of this were in 2000, when George W. Bush received roughly half a million fewer votes than Al Gore, and in 2016, where Hillary Clinton won approximately three million more votes than Donald Trump.

45 men have served as the President of the United States. Of these 45 men, 31 have had a military background, with ranks ranging from a militia private to five-star generals. There is some correlation between the ages of the presidents and major wars in U.S. history; explaining why none of those in office between 1909 and 1945 had any military background, and why six of the ten veteran presidents since then served in the National Guard or Naval Reserve. Three US presidents have held the highest position in the U.S. military, they were; George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the War of Independence; Ulysses S. Grant, Commanding General of the US Army during the American Civil War; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe in the Second World War. Popular professions In terms of non-military roles, the most common profession for U.S. presidents before taking office was that of a lawyer. 27 U.S. presidents studied and practiced law before entering the world of politics, while Harry S. Truman met all the criteria to become a lawyer, before political and personal circumstances prevented this (although he was posthumously awarded an honorary law license in 1996). Joe Biden is the most recent U.S. president to have held this job; however, the profession was most common in earlier years, as 22 of the first 32 presidents had been lawyers. Eight presidents had also worked in the education sector, with four schoolteachers, three college professors and one university dean being elected to office, and a number went on to teach or serve on university boards after their time in office. More uncommon jobs for U.S. presidents include Hollywood actor (Ronald Reagan), inventor (Thomas Jefferson), peanut farmer (Jimmy Carter) and reality TV host (Donald Trump). Donald Trump was the only U.S. President without any military or political background before assuming office. Political roles A total of 15 vice presidents have ascended to the presidency; eight were due to the death of their respective president, six were elected for their first term, and Gerald R. Ford assumed the presidency following the resignation of Richard Nixon. Of the nine men who assumed the presidency following a death or resignation, five were re-elected to serve a full term. Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon are the only vice presidents to have won two presidential elections, and Jefferson is the only one to have completed both full terms. The most common political background of a U.S. president is that of a Congressman in the House of Representatives, with 18 presidents having served in this role, while 17 also served in the U.S. Congress as Senators. Additionally, 17 U.S. presidents had served as state governors, and William Howard Taft was the Governor-General of the Philippines from 1901 to 1903, when it was a U.S. territory. Six U.S. Presidents had previously served as Secretaries of State, while Taft and Grant had served as Secretaries of War, and Herbert Hoover had been the Secretary of Commerce.

The 1872 US election was contested between incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant of the Republican Party, and the Liberal Republican Party's Horace Greeley. A split in the Republican Party (by those who opposed Grant's Reconstruction policies) led to the formation of the Liberal Republican Party, and with no obvious candidate of their own, the Democratic Party threw their support behind Greeley in an attempt to defeat Grant. Results Greeley, who had managed to unite the Democratic party with anti-Grant Republicans, proved to be an ineffective campaigner, and won only six states. President Grant received more than 55 percent of the popular vote, carrying 29 out of 35 states, and receiving over eighty percent of the electoral votes. Grant also proved popular in many of the southern states, with whom he had fought against in the American Civil War. Grant's popular vote margin of twelve percent was also the largest winning margin of any presidential election between 1852 and 1904. Historical significance The election is mostly remembered as the only occasion where a candidate died during the election process. The popular vote was held on November 5, however, before the electors could convene and submit their electoral votes, Greeley died on November 29. Because of this, electors who had pledged their votes to Greeley eventually split their votes between four other candidates, and this was the last time until 2016 where multiple electors voted for a candidate to whom they were not pledged. The candidate who received the largest share of Greeley's electoral votes was not his running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown, but rather the future Vice President, Thomas A. Hendricks.

Throughout U.S. history, the difference in the proportion of electoral votes has often been several times larger than the difference in the popular vote. For example, in the 1980s Ronald Reagan received roughly nine and eighteen percent more popular votes than his respective candidates, however he then received roughly seventy percent more electoral votes than both candidates. There are many critics of the electoral college system, whose main argument is that the most popular candidate is not always elected president, while its defenders argue that the system gives proportional representation to all Americans, and prevents candidates from ignoring the interests of those in less-populated states.

The United States uses the electoral college system to elect its presidents, which generally means that the most popular candidate in each state is then given that state's allocation of electoral votes (based on the state's population). Since 1968, there have been 538 electoral votes on offer in each election, meaning that he first candidate to reach 270 electoral votes is declared President. Since 1824, a popular vote has been held among the general public in order to determine the most popular candidate in each state (although women were not granted suffrage until 1920, while black and Native American voters faced widespread voter suppression until the 1960s). Because of the electoral college system, the proportion of popular votes won by a candidate may be very different than the proportion of electoral votes, and this has caused some instances where the candidate with the most electoral votes is declared President of the United States, despite losing the popular vote (such as in 2000 and 2016).

The 18th presidential election of the United States was contested in 1856 by James Buchanan of the Democratic Party, John C Frémont of the Republican Party, and former President Millard Fillmore of the Native American (Know Nothing) Party. This was the first time that the Republican Party (founded in 1854) fielded a nominee, and, although unsuccessful here, the Republicans would go on to win 13 of the next 15 US presidential elections. Results No candidate won over half of the popular vote, however Buchanan's plurality did give him 59 percent of the electoral votes, making him the fifteenth President of the United States. With this victory, Buchanan became the only President in US history to be elected despite the incumbent president being from the same party and eligible for re-election. Buchanan won 19 out of 31 states (including all of the south), while Frémont took 11 states (all "free states" and in the north), and Fillmore carried just one state; Maryland. The reason for the Democratic Party's dominance in the south was their emphasis on sovereignty, giving states autonomy on the issue of slavery. The Know Nothing Party The ironically titled Native American Party, which began as a secret society, was an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration and xenophobic organization, that became the largest third party in the US in the 1850s. Although they changed their name to the American Party in 1855, they were most commonly known as the "Know Nothing" Party, as when members were asked about specific details regarding the movement they were obliged to reply with "I know nothing". While the party's existence was short-lived, they were the main alternative to the Democratic Party in the south during this time, as the newly-formed Republican Party's anti-slavery stance made them unpopular in the south.

Florida was admitted to the union in 1845, and has taken part in 43 U.S. presidential elections since this time. In these 43 elections, Florida has voted for the overall winner thirty times, giving a success rate of seventy percent. Since 1928, Florida has voted for the winning candidate in 21 out of 24 elections, and is considered a key battleground state in modern elections. Florida has voted for a major party nominee in every election, backing the Republican nominee 17 times, Democrat 25 times, and the only time it did not vote Republican or Democrat was in 1848 when it voted for the Whig Party's Zachary Taylor. Florida did not take part in the 1864 election due to its secession from the Union in the American Civil War, and like most other southern states it primarily voted Democrat until the mid-twentieth century, when it then started leaning more Republican. No U.S. President has ever been born in Florida, or resided there when taking office; although Donald Trump declared himself a resident of Florida in 2019, therefore making it his official home state during the 2020 election. The 2020 election in Florida proved to be a surprise for many, as Donald Trump won the popular vote by a 3.4 percent margin; most polls had favored Biden going into election day, however intensive campaigning and increased Republican support among Cuban Americans has been cited as the reason for Trump's victory in Florida.

Florida's importance

In 1920, Florida's population was fewer than one million people; however it has grown drastically in the past century to almost 22 million people, making Florida the third most populous state in the country. With this population boom, Florida's allocation of electoral votes has surged, from just six in the 1920s, to 29 in recent elections (this is expected to increase to 31 votes in the 2024 election). Unlike the other most populous states, such as California and New York, which are considered safe Democratic states, or Texas, which is considered a safe Republican state, presidential elections in Florida are much more unpredictable. Florida is a southern state, and its majority-white, rural and suburban districts tend to vote in favor of the Republican Party (Republicans have also dominated state elections in recent decades), although, Florida is also home to substantial Hispanic population, and is a popular destination for young workers in the tourism sector and retirees from across the U.S., with these groups considered more likely to vote Democrat. However, the discrepancy between voters of Cuban (58 percent voted Republican) and Puerto Rican (66 percent voted Democrat) origin in the 2020 election shows that these traditional attitudes towards Hispanic voters may need to be re-evaluated.

2000 controversy The 2000 U.S. presidential election is one of the most famous and controversial elections in U.S. history, due to the results from Florida. The election was contested by the Republican Party's George W. Bush and the Democratic Party's Al Gore; by the end of election day, it became clear that Florida's 25 electoral votes would decide the outcome, as neither candidate had surpassed the 270 vote margin needed to win nationwide. While Florida's early results showed Bush in the lead, Gore's share of the results in urban areas then brought their totals close enough to trigger a recount; after a month of recounts and legal proceedings, Bush was eventually declared the winner of Florida by a margin of 537 popular votes (or 0.009 percent). Although Gore did win a plurality of the votes nationwide, Bush had won 271 electoral votes overall, and was named the 43rd President of the United States; this was just one of five elections where the candidate with the most popular votes did not win the election. In the six most recent U.S. presidential elections in Florida, the difference in the share of popular votes between the Republican and Democratic candidates has been just two percent on average.

In the 1824 U.S presidential election, which was the first where a popular vote was used to determine the overall winner, approximately three percent of the U.S. population voted in the election, while only one percent actually voted for the winner. Over the following decades, restrictions that prevented non-property owning males from voting were gradually repealed, and almost all white men over the age of 21 could vote by the 1856 election. The next major development was the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution following the American Civil War, which granted suffrage to all male citizens of voting age, regardless of race. Turnout then grew to almost twenty percent at the turn of the century, however Jim Crow laws played a large part in keeping these numbers lower than they potentially could have been, by disenfranchising black communities in the south and undoing much of the progress made during the Reconstruction Era. Extension of voting rights Female suffrage, granted to women in 1920, was responsible for the largest participation increase between any two elections in U.S. history. Between the 1916 and 1920 elections, overall turnout increased by almost seven percent, and it continued to grow to 38 percent by the 1940 election; largely due to the growth in female participation over time. Following a slight reduction during the Second World War and 1948 elections, turnout remained at between 36 and forty percent from the 1950s until the 1990s. Between these decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in 1971 respectively re-enfranchised many black voters in the south and reduced the voting age in all states from 21 to 18 years old. Participation among female voters has also exceeded male participation in all elections since 1980. Recent trends The 1992 election was the first where more than forty percent of the total population cast ballots, and turnout has been above forty percent in all presidential elections since 2004. Along with the extension of voting rights, the largest impact on voter turnout has been the increase in life expectancy throughout the centuries, almost doubling in the past 150 years. As the overall average age has risen, so too has the share of the total population who are eligible to vote, and older voters have had the highest turnout rates since the 1980s. Another factor is increased political involvement among ethnic minorities; while white voters have traditionally had the highest turnout rates in presidential elections, black voters turnout has exceeded the national average since 2008. Asian and Hispanic voter turnouts have also increased in the past twenty years, with the growing Hispanic vote in southern and border states expected to cause a major shift in U.S. politics in the coming decades.

In terms of the most popular presidents, in the 1940 election, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first president to have been elected by more than one fifth of the total population. Three presidents were elected by more than 22 percent of the total population, respectively Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Barack Obama in 2008, while Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984 saw him become the only president in U.S. history to win with the support of more than 23 percent of the total population. While the vote count for the 2020 election is still to be finalized, President-elect Joe Biden has already received 81.28 million votes as of December 02, which would also translate to over 24.5 percent of the total population, and will likely near 25 percent by the end of the counting process.

The 1860 election cemented the Republican Party's position as one of the two major parties in U.S. politics, along with the already-established Democratic Party. Since this time, all U.S. presidents have been affiliated with these two parties, and their candidates have generally performed the best in each presidential election. In spite of this two-party dominance, there have always been third-party or independent candidates running on the ballot, either on a nationwide, regional or state level. No third-party candidate has ever won a U.S. election, although there have been several occasions where they have carried states or split the vote with major party candidates. Today, the largest third-party in U.S. politics is the Libertarian Party, who are considered to be socially liberal, but economically conservative; in the 2016 election, their nominee, Gary Johnson, secured just over three percent of the popular vote, while their latest candidate, Jo Jorgenson, received just over one percent of the vote in the 2020 election.

Theodore Roosevelt The most successful third-party nominee was Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election, who was the only third-party candidate to come second in a U.S. election. The former president had become disillusioned with his successor's growing conservatism, and challenged the incumbent President Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912. Roosevelt proved to be the most popular candidate in the primaries, however Taft had already secured enough Republican delegates in the south to seal the nomination. Roosevelt then used this split in the Republican Party to form his own, Progressive Party, and challenged both major party candidates for the presidency (even taking a bullet in the process). In the end, Roosevelt carried six states, and won over 27 percent of the popular vote, while Taft carried just two states with 23 percent of the vote; this split in the Republican Party allowed the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, to win 82 percent of the electoral votes despite only winning 42 percent of the popular vote.

Other notable performances The last third-party candidate to win electoral votes was George Wallace* in the 1968 election. The Democratic Party had been the most popular party in the south since before the Civil War, however their increasingly progressive policies in the civil rights era alienated many of their southern voters. Wallace ran on a white supremacist and pro-segregationist platform and won the popular vote in five states. This was a similar story to that of Storm Thurmond, twenty years earlier.

In the 1992 election, Independent candidate Ross Perot received almost one fifth of the popular vote. Although he did not win any electoral votes, Perot split the vote so much that he prevented either Clinton or Bush Sr. from winning a majority in any state except Arkansas (Clinton's home state). Perot ran again in 1996, but with less than half the share of votes he received four years previously; subsequent studies and polls have shown that Perot took an equal number of votes from both of the major party candidates in each election.

The most common first name for a U.S. president is James, followed by John and then William. Six U.S. presidents have been called James, although Jimmy Carter was the only one who did not serve in the nineteenth century. Five presidents have been called John; most recently John Fitzgerald Kennedy, while John is also the middle name of the incumbent President Donald Trump.

Middle names

Middle names were rarely given in the U.S.' early years, however the practice became more common throughout the nineteenth century. Three U.S. presidents actually went by their middle names in their adulthood, namely Stephen Grover Cleveland, Thomas Woodrow Wilson and David Dwight Eisenhower. Several presidents also shared their middle names with other presidents' surnames, including Ronald Wilson Reagan and William Jefferson Clinton. Coincidentally, there were two U.S. presidents who had just the initial "S." as their middle name, these were; Harry S. Truman, whose S represented his grandfathers (Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young); and Ulysses S. Grant, whose S was added to his name through a clerical error (likely due to his mother's maiden name; Simpson) when being enrolled in West Point Military Academy, but the initial stuck and he kept it throughout the rest of his life.

Family ties

Five surnames have been shared by U.S. presidents, and four of these pairs have been related. Adams and Bush are the names of the two father-son pairs (the Adams pair also share their first name; the Bush pair share a first and a middle name), while William Henry Harrison was the grandfather of Benjamin Harrison. Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt were fifth cousins, however FDR's marriage to Theodore's niece, Eleanor, made him a nephew-in law (Theodore even gave Eleanor away on her wedding day). James Madison and Zachary Taylor were also second cousins. Multiple other presidents are distant cousins from one another, often several times removed (George W. Bush and Barack Obama are technically tenth cousins, twice removed), and a number of presidents have become related by marriage. The only presidents to share a surname and not be related are Andrew Johnson and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The 1876 United States presidential election is remembered as being one of the closest and contentious elections in US history. It was contested between the Republican Party's Rutherford B. Hayes and the Democratic Party's Samuel J. Tilden. Hayes was eventually named as the nineteenth President of the United States, winning by just one electoral vote. Tilden won 51 percent of the popular vote, and this makes him the only presidential candidate to ever win a majority of popular votes, but not be named president, and this was the second of five times where the person with the most votes was not named president. Controversy After the first round of counting, both candidates carried 17 states each, with four states too close to call. At this point, Tilden had 184 electoral votes (one short of a majority) to Hayes' 165. With both parties claiming victory in the final four states, and no official decision being made, an informal deal was agreed upon by both parties. This deal was the Compromise of 1877, and it gave the remaining twenty electoral votes to Hayes in return for the withdrawal of Federal troops from the south; thus establishing Democratic political dominance in the south, and ending the period of Reconstruction following the civil war. Suppression of the black vote Over the next few decades, the Democratic Party was able to use this dominance in the former-Confederate states to establish obstacles for poor-white and black voters when registering to vote. Following the civil war, black voters outnumbered white voters in at least five southern states, and these voters tended to vote Republican (the party of Lincoln, who is regarded as the figure most responsible for breaking down the institution of slavery). White dominance was achieved by introducing measures such as literacy tests and poll taxes, which disproportionately affected black voters, disenfranchising a significant number of them from participating in US politics. Although many of these practices were overturned through the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s, voter suppression continues to this day through the gerrymandering of district lines, as well as ID requirements and controversial computer systems that disproportionately affect ethnic-minorities during the voting process.

The 1948 US presidential election was the first in sixteen years that did not have Franklin D. Roosevelt leading the ticket. The race was contested by incumbent President Harry S. Truman of the Democratic Party, who had ascended to the presidency following FDR's death in 1945, and Thomas E. Dewey of the Republican Party, who had also appeared on the 1944 ballot. Storm Thurmond and Henry A. Wallace made the largest impact out of any third party candidates. Thurmond represented the newly-formed States' Rights Party, which was made up of former Democrats who wanted to protect racial segregation in the South, and were disturbed by Truman's support of civil rights for ethnic minorities. Wallace had recently formed a new Progressive Party (not to be confused with Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party in the 1912 election) which facilitated the former Vice President's election campaign after his dismissal as Secretary of Commerce by President Truman in 1945. The race for Eisenhower Many Republican voters had put forward Dwight D. Eisenhower (the most popular General of the Second World War) as their candidate, and he was the favorite in the early stages of the race, despite the fact that Eisenhower had never shown interest in running for office. When he refused to accept the nomination, a close, three-way race ensued, with Dewey eventually emerging as the Republican candidate. In contrast to the Republicans, it was the Democratic Party's leadership who wished to put Eisenhower forward as their candidate, with President Truman secretly agreeing to run as Eisenhower's vice president. When Eisenhower refused to run, the Democratic leadership failed to find a suitable opponent, and reluctantly supported Truman for a second term. Results Dewey was the firm favorite to win the presidency, due to Truman's low approval ratings, however Truman was re-elected as President of the United States with just under fifty percent of the popular vote, and more than 57 percent of the electoral vote. Dewey receive 45 percent of the popular vote and 36 percent of the electoral votes, while the two most popular third party candidates received 2.4 percent of the popular vote. The difference between these two candidates, however, was that Strom Thurmond carried four states and took 7.3 percent of the the popular vote, and this was also the first time that Mississippi or Alabama did not vote for the Democratic Candidate since 1872, marking the end of the Democratic Party's grip on the southern states.

The Twenty-third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote in U.S. presidential elections; since this came into effect in 1964, the nation's capital has voted for the Democratic Party's nominee in every election, making this the longest ongoing streak in U.S. presidential elections. The record for the longest ever streak in the history of U.S. presidential elections belongs to Vermont (Republican) and Georgia (Democrat), who each voted for the same party's candidate in 27 consecutive elections between 1852 and 1960. The south and west prove loyal There are nine states, mostly across the West and Midwest, that have voted for the Republican candidate in all U.S. presidential elections since Richard Nixon's first victory in 1968. A number of other Republican streaks began in the south with Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980, after briefly turning Democrat for Georgia's Jimmy Carter in 1976; historically the south had been a Democratic stronghold for more than a century, however the Republican Party's "Southern strategy" in the 1960s established them as the dominant party in the region during the civil rights era. Along with the District of Columbia, the only state not won by Reagan in 1984 was Minnesota, as Walter Mondale carried his home state by a very narrow margin. Minnesota's streak is the second-longest for the Democratic Party, while most of the other ongoing Democratic streaks began in either 1988 or 1992.

Recent swing states In the 2016 election, there were six states (with 99 electoral votes combined) that had been won by Barack Obama in 2012, but turned red in 2016. In the 2020 election, Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, managed to win back three of these states, as well as ending a six election Republican streak in Georgia and a five election streak in Arizona. In contrast, Donald Trump failed to flip any further Democratic strongholds, but repeated his victories in Florida, Iowa and Ohio. Going into this election, pollsters had predicted that the races in both Texas and Florida would be tight, with a combined total of 67 electoral votes, however the incumbent president won the popular votes in these states with margins of roughly six and 3.5 percent respectively.

The US presidential election of 1848 was the first US election to be contested on the same day in every state, and it established Tuesday as the statutory day for all future presidential elections in the US. The race was contested by the Whig Party's Zachary Taylor, the Democratic Party's Lewis Cass, and former President Martin van Buren of the newly formed Free Soil Party. Incumbent President James K. Polk did not seek re-election, as he had pledged to serve only one term in his first presidential election campaign (although many historians regard Polk as being among the most effective US presidents of all time). Van Buren wins it for Taylor? The election was won by Zachary Taylor, who became the twelfth President of the United States. Taylor received 47 percent of the popular votes, compared to Cass' 43 percent. Despite this difference, both candidates won fifteen states each, however Taylor's states had larger populations, and he therefore received 56 percent of the electoral votes, compared to Cass' 44 percent. Despite former President Van Buren not winning any electoral votes, he did receive over ten percent of the popular votes, with many historians agreeing that these were mostly taken from the Democratic nominee. Therefore, this was the second election in a row where the third party candidate may have taken a significant number of votes that prevented the runner-up from becoming president. History repeats itself This victory was the second victory for a candidate from the Whig Party, with the first being that of William Henry Harrison in 1840, and just like Harrison, Taylor passed away while in office, making him the second President of the US to do so (although Taylor served as President for over a year, while Harrison died within a month). Taylor was succeeded by his Vice President Millard Fillmore, who became the thirteenth President of the United States.

The 50th United States presidential election took place in 1984, and was contested by the incumbent President Ronald Reagan of the Republican Party, and former Vice President Walter F. Mondale of the Democratic Party. Reagan faced no genuine competition for the Republican nomination, and was re-nominated comfortably, with George H. W. Bush again as his running mate. Mondale, who had been Carter's vice president, was the favorite to win the Democratic nomination when the race began, but faced strong opposition from civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, and Colorado Senator Gary Hart. Jackson was the first African American to launch a nationwide campaign and have a realistic chance at winning; he even won several of the earlier primaries, until some offensive comments he made about the Jewish community were made public and derailed his campaign. The race between Mondale and Hart was officially undecided by the time of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), however Mondale received the support of the majority of superdelegates, and was named as the Democratic candidate. Mondale's running mate was Geraldine Ferraro, who became the first female candidate of a major party to be named on the ballot. Interestingly, this was the first time Joe Biden's name appeared on a ballot (at the DNC), although he received just one vote. Campaign Reagan and Bush campaigned effectively, and used a mixture of metaphorical and on-the-nose messages to great effect in their TV campaigns. When a stream of Reagan's gaffs caused his age to be called into question, Reagan famously said "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," effectively negating the issue. Mondale's campaign enjoyed initial success, and he ran on a liberal platform in favor of ending the Cold War and advocated for the Equal Rights Act (a topic that has re-emerged in recent years following the Me Too movement). It was Mondale's choice of running mate that caused the largest amount of damage to his campaign, as Ferraro proved to be unpopular among female voters, and when allegations of her husband's financial misconduct and involvement in illegal activities came to the fore, this caused irreversible damage to Mondale's campaign (although Ferraro later released evidence disproving these accusations). Results Ronald Reagan won 49 out of fifty states, while Mondale took just his home state of Minnesota (although Reagan did win five of Minnesota's eight congressional districts) and Washington DC; this returned almost 98 percent of the electoral votes for Reagan. In the popular vote, Reagan took under 59 percent, while Mondale took almost 41 percent (there was no significant impact by any third party candidate). This was the largest electoral victory for any Republican candidate in US history, and the second largest contested victory behind the 1932 presidential election. Commentators attribute Reagan's landslide victory to "Reagan Democrats"; the millions of traditionally Democratic voters who became disillusioned by Mondale's extreme liberalism, while being impressed by the Reagan administration's handling of foreign policy and the country's economic recovery.

The 1860 election was one of the most divisive and influential elections in US history, with scholarly consensus citing it as one of the most decisive factors or catalysts that led to the outbreak of the American Civil War. The election saw candidates from four separate parties compete, with candidates not appearing on ballots in multiple states. The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln, and opposed the extension of slavery into new states, while the Democratic Party nominated Stephen A. Douglas and favored popular sovereignty, which allowed states to vote on the legality of slavery. This approach however did not appeal to many Democrats in the south, who feared that this did not protect the status of slavery, and so rather than supporting Douglas, southern Democrats split and nominated John C. Breckenridge as their candidate. The fourth candidate was John Bell of the Constitutional Union, whose party's main focus was to avoid the secession of the south at all costs. Results With a plurality of the popular votes, Abraham Lincoln won almost sixty percent of the electoral votes, and was named the sixteenth President of the United States. Despite winning almost thirty percent of the popular votes (the second highest amount), Douglas carried only one state, and received just four percent of the electoral votes. Breckenridge carried eleven states, however if both Democratic candidates pooled they would have received more popular votes, yet Lincoln would have still won due to the electoral college system. There were also ten southern states where Lincoln's name was not on the ballot, as he was so unpopular in the slave states that his team could not print or distribute ballots for voters to choose him (this issue would be rectified in the 1880s, with the introduction of the secret ballot). Outbreak of the war Political leaders and merchants in the south believed that a President with abolitionist views would implement measures that threatened the institution of slavery. Following Lincoln's victory, seven states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, and elected Jefferson Davis to President of the Confederacy (despite Breckenridge's strong performance in the election). Lincoln did not take any action against the Confederacy, but also refused to surrender federal property in the area. This led to Davis ordering a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, which led to retaliation from the Union, the cessation of four more states into the Confederacy, and the beginning of the deadliest war in US history.

The 1960 US presidential election was the first to take place in all fifty states (although not Washington DC), and the first time where the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution prevented the incumbent president from running for a third term in office. The race was contested between John F. Kennedy of the Democratic Party, and incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon of the Republican Party. Kennedy defeated future-President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Democratic National Convention and asked Johnson to serve as his running mate, while Nixon won the Republican nomination comfortably, despite an early challenge from Nelson Rockefeller. This campaign is also notable for being the first to use televised debates between the candidates, including one that used split-screen technology, allowing the candidates to speak live from opposite sides of the country.

Campaign

Early in the campaign, both candidates were vibrant and charismatic, and garnered a loyal follower base. Kennedy spent most of his campaign criticizing the previous administration for falling behind the Soviet Union in terms of the military, economy and the space race, while Nixon highlighted the achievements made by Eisenhower's administration, and promised to build on them. Most historians agree that Kennedy's campaign was more structured and used better tactics than Nixon's, by canvassing heavily in swing states and districts instead of giving equal attention to all parts of the country (as Nixon did), with Kennedy focusing on metropolitan areas while Johnson canvassed in the south. Nixon's campaign was also more prone to mistakes, such as not preparing and refusing make-up for televised debates (making him look ill), while his running mate promised to elect African-Americans to the cabinet, however this just alienated black voters who were ambivalent in their reaction. Kennedy's connection with Martin Luther King Jr. also helped him to take a much larger share of the black vote than his opponent.

Results and Controversy

The popular vote was split by fewer than 120,000 out of seventy million votes. Kennedy took 49.7 percent of the popular vote, while Nixon took 49.5 percent. Nixon, however took more states than Kennedy, carrying 26 to Kennedy's 22, but Kennedy's tactical campaigning paid off, as his 22 states returned 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219. Unpledged Democratic electors in the south gave 15 electoral votes to Harry F. Byrd, as they opposed Kennedy's stance on civil rights. Due to the close nature of the results, many Republicans called for recounts and accused the Kennedy campaign of cheating or committing voter fraud. For example, they highlighted that more votes were cast in certain districts of Texas (Johnson's home state) than the number of registered voters, and when Nixon lost Illinois despite winning 92 out of 101 counties, many suggested a link between the Kennedy campaign and organized crime syndicates in Chicago. These claims have subsequently been proven to be false, and historians generally agree that Kennedy's campaigning methods and Nixon's wastefulness won Kennedy the election. John F. Kennedy was subsequently named the 35th President of the United States, and is remembered favorably as one of the most popular and charismatic leaders in US history. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, less than three years into his first term, and was succeeded by his Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson.

With Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election, the Republican Party cemented its position as one of the two major political parties in the United States. Since 1860, candidates from both parties have faced one another in 41 elections, with the Republican candidate winning 24 elections, to the Democrats' 17. The share of electoral college votes is often very different from the share of the popular vote received by each candidate in the elections, as the popular vote differences tend to be much smaller. Electoral college system In the U.S., the electoral college system is used to elect the president. For most states, this means that the most popular candidate in each state then receives that state's allocation of electoral votes (which is determined by the state's population). In the majority of elections, the margin of electoral votes has been over thirty percent between the two major party candidates, and there were even some cases where the winner received over ninety percent more electoral votes than the runner-up. Biggest winners The largest margins for the Republican Party occurred in the aftermath of the American Civil War, in the pre-Depression era of the 1920s, with Eisenhower after the Second World War, and then again with the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush campaigns in the 1970s and 80s. For the Democratic Party, the largest victories occurred during the First and Second World Wars, and for Lindon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton in the second half of the 20th century. In the past six elections, the results of the electoral college vote have been relatively close, compared with the preceding hundred years; George W. Bush's victories were by less than seven percent, Obama's victories were larger (by around thirty percent), and in the most recent elections involving Donald Trump he both won and lost by roughly 14 percent.

Based on an evaluation of political advertising spending on Google, the state of California had the highest political expenditure at 200 million U.S. dollars between May 31, 2018, and October 22, 2024. The second-highest spending belonged to Pennsylvania, at 150 million dollars devoted to Google ads during the same period. Political advertising in the U.S. Political advertising allows candidates to promote themselves and convey their message to millions of prospective voters. By running ads on television, radio, print media, or the internet, politicians can reach large audiences and potentially impact the outcome of an election, making advertising an indispensable tool in the political playbook. As for the United States, where political campaigns have been highly publicized in recent years, political advertising spending is forecast to reach a new peak in 2024. Looking at the distribution of spending by region, Florida emerged as the U.S. state with the highest TV advertising spending during the 2020 presidential campaign. This could be explained by the fact that Florida ranks third for the number of Electoral votes alongside New York. Political campaigns adapt to a digitalized world While traditional media formats such as television remain popular platforms for political promotion, digital channels are seeing the sharpest increase in usage. Between the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, U.S. digital ad spend on political campaigns has more than doubled, amounting to an estimated 1.82 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. That year, Biden for President was the largest political advertiser on Google, as well as the leading political advertiser on Facebook as of October. Seeing how political candidates spend larger sums on Facebook ads than ever, there is no debate whether social media has become a game-changer for political advertising or not.

Although it is not a requirement, the concession speech of the losing candidate has become a customary element of each U.S. presidential election. It is seen as a sign of acceptance by the losing candidate, and signals the peaceful transfer of power in cases where the incumbent president has lost re-election. As a courtesy, the winning candidate usually waits for the loser to make their concession speech before claiming victory. In the majority of cases, the concession came on either election day or the day following the election (often in the early hours of the morning); although in 2000 it took 36 days for the loser to concede. Yet, these customs have not been adhered to in recent elections, where the fallout from the 2020 election saw Donald Trump become the first major party candidate to not concede defeat in over ninety years, whereas in 2024, Trump publicly claimed victory before Kamala Harris' concession call. Concession methods change with the times In 1896, William Jennings Bryan began the tradition of publicly conceding the election by sending a courtesy telegram to his opponent, William McKinley. From 1896 until 1972, losing candidates generally sent a private concession telegram to their opponent, before the telegram was replaced by a customary phone call in 1976. In addition to these personal messages, televised speeches also became the norm from 1952 onwards, when Adlai Stevenson conceded to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Between 1928 and 1948, some candidates also conceded via a radio address (Thomas E. Dewey did so without privately conceding in 1944), while Wendell Wilkie's concession speech in 1940 was publicly broadcast in movie theaters. 2000 controversy On election day in 2000, the early results were signaling a victory for George W. Bush, and Al Gore called his opponent and privately conceded the election; however, before Gore could concede publicly, later counts brought the nationwide results closer and he withdrew his concession. Eventually, the electoral college result was to be decided in Florida, where Bush was leading, yet the count was so close that it triggered an automatic recount. Following a month-long process of recounts and court cases, it was declared that Bush won Florida by a margin of just 537 votes with almost six million votes cast. Al Gore officially conceded 36 days after election day. 2020 controversy In contrast to 2000, in the 2020 election, Joe Biden received over seven million more popular votes than his opponent (no individual state was won by a margin of fewer than 10,000 votes), and secured 306 electoral votes, which were cast at each state's meeting of electors in December without irregularities. Despite all of this, President Trump spent the remainder of his term claiming victory, and that the election had been stolen through widespread voter and election fraud. Neither the President nor his legal team provided any evidence of these claims, and all appeals to overturn the results were rejected by the courts. On January 6, Congress convened to certify the election results; at the same time, Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march upon the Capitol building, which led to them storming and vandalizing the building. Five people died in connection with this. After the rioters were dispersed, Congress reconvened and certified the results. The following week, Trump was impeached for the second time. Joe Biden became President on January 20th, while Donald Trump left office without publicly accepting the results of the 2020 election.

Since the 1860 election, U.S. presidential elections have been dominated by candidates affiliated with the Democratic and Republican parties. While the electoral votes decide the winner of the election, these are generally decided by the winner of the popular vote in each state (or district), and the winner of the nationwide popular vote does not always go on to win the electoral vote. Interestingly, there have been a number of occasions where the winner of the popular vote did not go on to win the electoral vote, for example in the 2016 election, or, most famously, in 2000.