In keeping with the “Presidents” theme due to the upcoming conventions, I thought I’d touch on another misconception some people have about past Presidents. Many people think George W. Bush was the first President to lose the popular vote (to Al Gore in 2000) but win the electoral vote. In fact, there were four times that the President did not win the popular vote.
However, in the first case, he didn’t win the electoral vote, either. That was in 1824 when John Quincy Adams won the election. There were four candidates, and all received a significant number of electoral votes, so no candidate won a majority. The President was selected by the House of Representatives.
The other three Presidents who lost the popular vote were Rutherford Hayes in 1876, when he beat Samuel Tilden, Benjamin Harrison beating Grover Cleveland in 1888 (Cleveland won in 1884 and 1892), and of course George W. Bush beating Al Gore in 2000.
Further details can be found at our new page Presidential Election Results.
