Popular vote
As a popular vote in is the United States the number of votes cast or the percentage share of the vote in an election for political office referred.
Presidential election in the United States
Particularly in the context of the presidential elections , one often speaks of the popular vote in relation to the votes and the proportion of votes of the population participating in the election, since the decisive votes for the election of the president are cast in an electoral committee . These electors are elected according to state rules in each state and then cast their votes. With the exception of Nebraska and Maine , all states have the "winner-takes-all" principle, and the party that achieves a simple majority in that state may send any electors to that state. The number of electors per state is based on the number of its representatives in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, with the number of representatives in the House of Representatives depending on the size of the population. Since every state has two senators, regardless of the population, states with poor population are over-represented in the electoral body.
Since the votes of the electorate are decisive, the term popular vote is deliberately used as a delimitation to show what percentage of the vote a candidate has achieved. Due to the electoral system, it can happen that a candidate receives a majority of popular votes nationwide , i.e. more votes than his opponent, but receives fewer votes in the decisive electoral body.
Candidates who lost the Popular Vote and won the election
1824: John Quincy Adams
In the 1824 presidential election , John Quincy Adams was elected president on February 9, 1825. The election was made by the US House of Representatives because no candidate received an absolute majority in the Electoral College and therefore the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution was applied. Andrew Jackson had received a simple majority in Electoral College . Hence, he claimed the election was rigged. However, Adams and his supportive Henry Clay , who was no longer allowed to run, together received more votes than Jackson.
1876: Rutherford B. Hayes
The 1876 presidential election was the most controversial in US history. Samuel J. Tilden of New York received the most votes ahead of Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio with a vote lead of about 250,000 votes. Tilden also got 184 votes in Electoral College up from 165 for Hayes. There was a dispute over 20 votes from the states of Florida (4), Louisiana (8) and South Carolina (7) and Oregon (1). A 15-member electoral commission consisting of five members each from the Senate, House of Representatives and Supreme Court was formed. It was agreed to give Hayes a majority vote and to accept important points in the area of the reconstruction of the southern states. Hayes was elected president.
1888: Benjamin Harrison
In the presidential elections in 1888 , the incumbent came Grover Cleveland against former Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana on. Cleveland won the Popular Vote by just under 90,000 votes, but not the majority of the electorate. In 1892 Cleveland faced Harrison again and won both a majority of the electoral and the majority of the electoral vote.
2000: George W. Bush
In the 2000 presidential election , incumbent Vice President Al Gore ran against incumbent Texas governor George W. Bush . Gore won the Popular Vote by more than 540,000 votes, but not a majority of the electorate. To this day (as of 2017) Bush is also the only election winner with a lost popular vote who was able to win a later election with a majority of votes. When he was re-elected in 2004 , he received both a majority of the electorate and actual votes in the population.
2016: Donald Trump
In the 2016 presidential election , Hillary Clinton won almost 2.9 million votes more than her opponent Donald Trump , who received more electoral votes. Trump claimed to leading members of Congress three days after his inauguration that he would have received a majority of the vote in the popular vote if it had not been for five million people who had voted illegally in the election. He did not provide any evidence for this assertion, which was repeated several times later. Even a commission appointed by Trump could not find any evidence of the alleged fraud.
Other uses of the term
The term Popular Vote is also used in the US for direct elections , such as members of Congress , gubernatorial elections or elections to the parliaments of the states . Since only the popular vote decides in direct elections , an election winner is not possible without an own majority.
German-speaking media occasionally use the term Popular Vote .
See also
Web links
- Definition at dictionary-reference (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ "The Election of 1824 Was Decided in the House of Representatives: The Controversial Election was Denounced as 'The Corrupt Bargain'" , Robert McNamara, About.com
- ^ RR Stenberg: Jackson, Buchanan, and the "Corrupt Bargain" Calumny . In: The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography . 58, No. 1, 1934, pp. 61-85. doi : 10.2307 / 20086857 .
- ↑ Stephen A. Jones, Eric Freedman: Presidents and Black America . CQ Press , 2011, ISBN 9781608710089 , p. 218: "In an eleventh-hour compromise between party leaders - considered the" Great Betrayal "by many blacks and southern Republicans ..."
- ^ Downs, 2012
- ↑ 2000 Presidential Electoral and Popular Vote Summary , Federal Election Commission
- ↑ washingtonpost.com January 23, 2017: Without evidence, Trump tells lawmakers 3 million to 5 million illegal ballots cost him the popular vote