Pointless Presidential Pfacts #12 - "The Popular Candidates"

In 2008, Barack Obama received the most popular votes in a single election with 69.5 million votes. The second most number of votes in a single election went to George W. Bush in 2004 with 62 million. The person with the next most after Bush 43 went to John McCain in 2008 with 60 million, followed next by John Kerry in 2004 with 59 million. Ronald Reagan is next in 1984 with 54.5 million, a number that made him the person with the most popular votes in a single election until Bush 43's reelection. Before 2004, the closest any presidential candidate came to Reagan's 54.5 million was Al Gore in 2000 with 51 million votes. All numbers rounded.

Pointless Presidential Pfacts #11 - "Popular Vote Losing Presidents"

Four times in our nation's history the person that lost the popular vote became president. The first one was in 1824, but not all the States counted the popular votes. In that election, 4 candidates spread out the popular votes cast and the electoral votes won. However, Andrew Jackson had a plurality of both the popular and electoral votes, but since there was no majority the House of Representatives decided the winner and they chose John Quincy Adams.

The next time the person with more popular votes would lose the Electoral College was in 1876. By then all the States in the Union were casting popular votes. Democrat Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes by one electoral vote. In this election, the electoral votes of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina were in question, both parties claimed victory in those States with electors ready to vote for each candidate. To determine which candidate received the votes, a commission was set up and just days before the March 4th inauguration the Compromise of 1877 took place giving Hayes the votes to win if he promised to remove federal troops from the South, thus ending Reconstruction.

12 years after that election, the outcome had the popular vote winner losing the presidency. President Grover Cleveland was defeated by Benjamin Harrison. Unlike 1876, there was no confusion just a clear victor in the popular vote and and Electoral College, just two different people. No problems like in '76 or in the next election with a similar outcome.

The country wouldn't experience an election like 1876 or 1888 again until the year 2000. But this election was more like 1876 and 1824 than 1888. This time one State, Florida brought about the chaos. The vote count in Florida was so close that Vice President Al Gore rescinded his concession because a recount was possible since it was so close. The Florida Supreme Court allowed the recounts, but the Bush campaign appealed to the United States Supreme Court which then stopped the recount, thus awarding the State's electoral votes to Bush.

Some pointless similarities...All the popular vote winners in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000 lost the Electoral College and were Democrats (Andrew Jackson would eventually go on to form the party by the next election). Jackson and Grover Cleveland ran four years after losing the Electoral College and defeated the incumbent presidents, Samuel Tilden and Al Gore never attempted a rematch. With the exception of 1876, all the Electoral College winners were ancestors of a president. 1824, John Quincy Adams' father was the 2nd president. 1888, Benjamin Harrison's grandfather was the 9th president. 2000, George W. Bush's father was the 41st president. Out of all the popular vote losers from those four elections, George W. Bush is the only one to win reelection, winning both the popular and the electoral votes in 2004.

Pointless Presidential Pfacts #10 - "Cleveland's Popular, the President not the City"

Grover Cleveland gets remembered for being the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms or as the first Democrat elected president since the Civil War. He was also the second bachelor elected in 1884, after James Buchanan in 1856, but that changed when he became the first to get married in the Executive Mansion to the 21 year old, he was 49, Francis Cleveland, the youngest first lady. His non-consecutive two terms wasn't intentional, he lost reelection in 1888 to Benjamin Harrison. Harrison 23, not to be confused with his grandfather William Henry Harrison, the 9th POTUS, won the Electoral College and Cleveland won the popular vote. Unlike the other elections where the popular vote winner lost the Electoral College, this was the only one that was accepted and no commission formed, no Supreme Court involvement, and the Congress didn't have to decide anything. Harrison won, Cleveland lost. When Cleveland returned 4 years later for a rematch, President vs. Former President, he won becoming the first former president to do so. Cleveland's buddy Theodore Roosevelt would come close in 1912 to be the second but no luck there. So Cleveland won the popular vote 3 elections in a row, but he never got over 50% of the vote, and he wasn't renominated in 1896 to try for a fourth consecutive run because of the economic depression, aka the Panic of 1893. The worst depression to face the country until the Great Depression, where a four consecutive term president would handle that and a second world war. That's another Roosevelt and another pointless presidential pfact.