11/02/2020 1:27 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 11/02/2020 1:27 PM
Five times in the history of the United States, candidates for the highest office lost in the popular vote but won the presidency: the most recent case,
in 2016.
Could Donald Trump be the first to do it
twice
?
Look at an American political anomaly:
—1824
:
Andrew Jackson
won in plural both the popular vote and in the Electoral College, but did not obtain a majority, with which the election
passed to the House of Representatives.
There were three other presidential candidates, including Jackson members of the Democratic-Republican Party: John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay.
Clay gave his support to Adams, thus ensuring victory for Adams, who made Clay his secretary of state.
Angered by this "corrupt deal," Jackson resigned from the Senate and ran for president again in 1828.
That time he won easily.
—1876:
Democrat
Samuel Tilden
defeated Republican Rutherford B. Hayes by more than 200,000 votes.
But he needed 185 votes from the Electoral College and only
got 184
to 165 from Hayes;
20 votes from Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina were in dispute.
Congress created a commission made up of representatives from both parties to decide the winner;
On March 2, three days before the inauguration, they elected Hayes, a compromise that the Democrats accepted in exchange for a promise to withdraw federal troops from the south, ending the so-called Post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Republican George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes.
Photo: AP
—1888
: The campaign was riddled with corruption, including allegations of vote buying and elimination of black votes.
It ended with the triumph of Democratic President
Grover Cleveland
in the popular vote by more than 90,000 votes over Republican Benjamin Harrison, but being defeated in the electoral vote by 233 to 168. Cleveland would regain office in the following presidential elections.
—2000:
Republican
George W. Bush
lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes.
But the Electoral College voting was tight and it
all came down to the state of Florida
, where the recount turned into a dispute over marks made on individual ballots.
On December 12 the US Supreme Court
halted the recount
with Bush prevailing in Florida, granting the choice to the former governor of Texas.
Bush obtained 271 electoral votes;
Gore 266.
—2016:
Trump won in the Electoral College, 304 votes to 227 for Hillary Clinton, but lost in the popular count by
2.8 million votes.
While the electorate has grown over the years, Trump lost the popular vote by
more margin
than any other president-elect.
By Jerry Schwartz, Associated Press
Translation: Román García Azcárate
ap
Look also
Elections in the United States: And the winner is ... whoever the AP agency says
An exhausted world holds its breath as America chooses its leader