![]() | This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
A citation is requested for the line which states that the U.S. Constitution does not require states to hold a vote. The fact that such a thing is absent from the Constitution cannot be cited. I would recommend however asked for the citation to dispute the claim if it is in doubt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.235.128.27 ( talk) 21:14, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
hello, I feel the first chart would be easier to read and identify which candidates were in which election if there were horizontal lines separating each year. thank you Ajlee2006 ( talk) 07:54, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Should we add the 2016 election or is it still too early to call that? 68.55.111.219 ( talk) 04:12, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
List of United States presidential elections where winner lost popular vote has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Albanydog ( talk) 05:40, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
I request the removal of this sentence under "George Bush": Clinton and Gore did not often campaign together, a deliberate decision resulting from the
Lewinsky sex scandal two years prior.
This sentence and all reference to Bill Clinton is unnecessary as the election was between Bush and Gore and had nothing to do with Clinton. The sentence is a political bash by the republican party and does not belong on this page!
This Wikipedia entry exists mainly because Hillary Clinton and her supporters cannot accept defeat! Whenever a political body consists of more or less equivalent and autonomous subentities, like a federal state, it is quite common all over the world that these subentities appoint delegates that actually vote on behalf of them. The number of delegates depends on the number of persons each subentity represents, not on the number of actual voters within each subentity. Therefore it is possible that more actual voters support one actual political party, yet more delegates support another political party. Especially this can occur in the presidential election for the United States of America, where in most states all delegates for the actual presidential elections will be backing the majority within that state, according to the principle "the winner takes all". In many states of the USA this majority is so unchangeable that it hardly matters when people miss out on voting, so there is no factual need to vote. It will therefore occur once in a while that, although the one presidential candidate receives the most individual votes, the other presidential candidate has more delegates supporting him or her at the actual presidential election by these delegates. Amand Keultjes ( talk) 17:01, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
2015-07-26T23:16:51
. Your argument that this article exists because of events on 2016-11-08 therefore makes no sense.
Peaceray (
talk)
17:26, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
I'm removing the NPVIC reference. Much as I would like to see the NPVIC publicized, I don't think mention of it belongs on this list page. Criticism of/solutions to the Electoral College should be confined to that article, whereas this page is merely a list of relevant historical elections. Moreover, even if the NPVIC is successful, it will not take effect before Trump assumes office. -- 2600:1008:B009:43E6:5980:1AD4:B2A9:E1B9 ( talk) 00:39, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: move to List of United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote, for grammar's sake. ( non-admin closure) JudgeRM (talk to me) 02:15, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
List of United States presidential elections where winner lost popular vote →
List of United States presidential elections where the winner lost the popular vote – Is there any reason to avoid using definite articles in this title, aside from making it more concise by eight characters? I think the current phrasing sounds awkward.
bd2412
T
19:46, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
I have requested semi-protection due to high level of IP and newbie vandalism. As long as the election is unresolved, we're going to continue to see lots of attacks, so protection is necessary. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 14:44, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
I'm not calling for its removal, but I'm not sure if that passage about the petition is extremely notable. 108.54.106.8 ( talk) 15:31, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Donald J Trump is necessary to be consistent with the other names in the article, namely Rutherford B. Hayes & George W. Bush. The names of John Quicy Adams & Benjamin Harrison are complete in themselves & thus they do not have an initial.
Besides, it's been Donald J Trump since it was added, so let's not change it on a whim & without consensus.
Peaceray ( talk) 21:24, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
WP:CONSENSUS to remove the middle initial to be consistent with the article title per WP:COMMONNAME has been reached. Making the change. TompaDompa ( talk) 02:01, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
"There is a scenario in which Clinton might become president. The Electoral College, as originally set up, was intended to debate and vote on the candidates; the general election merely decided who the electors would be. As of November 2016, 29 states and the District of Columbia legally require their electors to vote according to the popular vote in their state, but other states still allow their electors to vote against their state's popular vote (earning such electors the label "faithless electors"). A scenario where Clinton wins is not impossible[12] but is very unlikely because about 37 Republican electors would have to vote against their party's candidate and their respective state's plurality vote.[13][citation needed] Various petitions are being circulated asking the electoral college to elect Clinton instead of Trump. As of November 12, 2016, according to FoxNews, one of these petitions had garnered over 3 million signatures.[12]"
My concern with the paragraph as currently phrased, is that it appears to violate a Core Content Policy, the Neutral Point of View. Despite statements to the contrary, it nonetheless seems to overstate the microscopic odds of Hillary Clinton becoming elected president. (see here). Discussion of the original intent of the Electoral College is completely irrelevant, because that is not at all how it currently operates, as well as redundant, seeing as the Electoral College is explained in sections above. It is not merely unlikely that 37 out of 538 electors will change their votes, it is de facto impossible, given that there are no relevant historical scenarios to reference, meaning such a move would be wildly unprecedented. Lastly, while the segment about petitions is fair in regards to policy, it does seem to overstate the validity of online petitions, namely those from Change.org.
Keep in mind (as some of you may be curious), I come at this from a left-wing perspective. A neutral Wikipedia is something I highly value. If not removed, at the very least I request this be changed to meet the curriculum suggested above.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.246.1 ( talk) 2016-11-23T12:19:49
While attempting to reverse the good faith change made earlier today to this article's title by JFG, I inadvertently changed it myself from the newly agreed upon title as discussed above on this talk page. Before I simply restore consensus title, let me ask, does anyone object to leaving "list of" out of the title? Thanks for your understanding. Drdpw ( talk) 00:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
*(supplemental) Support Bullrangifers 2nd shorter option In addition to dropping "list of" for reasons I explained above, BullRangifer's subsequent suggestion is even better so let's go an additional step and make it United States presidents who won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
16:45, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Since there were no objections to dropping "list of" in the title agreed in the earlier thread "List of United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote" I made that move today. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
FWIW, John Quincy Adams was not elected by the Electoral College. Indeed nobody was, in 1824. Therefore, the 1824 entry should be deleted. GoodDay ( talk) 18:31, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Please, would either JudgeRM or BD2412 restore this article's consensus title. This J. Q. Adams drama is unnecessary. Thank you. Drdpw ( talk) 18:46, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
It has been suggested in another thread that this article's inclusion criteria seems to include all elections, regardless if the victor was an incumbent. However, incumbents who won reelection but lost popular vote aren't included. I don't know if this is historically factual, and I don't know if the other ed correctly assessed our article in this regard. But since the subject was raised, I'm tossing it out there for the election experts to consider. Are we missing elections of incumbents who lost pop vote when they ran for re-election? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 19:10, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
I was bold and made a few modifications to the table of elections: removed the election number column, to conserve vertical space, as it's function was unclear and the information provided inconsequential; separated shaded-text party name cells and modified the abbreviation format, and also the legend to further explain what the colors and abbreviations mean (per MOS:COLOR); modified 1824 popular vote figures that didn't match those stated in the 1824 election article; changed turnout column link (from Voting age population to Voter turnout); shifted popular vote votes and margins columns to the left, to match the EV columns pattern, the votes column comes before the percentage column; and, modified the way notations are presented. Hope these are seen as constructive improvements by others. Cheers. Drdpw ( talk) 19:57, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
We seem to be using terms like "win" and "lose" fast and loose. Can we take a moment to build a consensus as to what it means to "lose" the popular vote so we have an objective standard to measure future edits and avoid edit-warring? Here are a few options:
If standard #1 is adopted, Donald Trump would have lost the popular vote in 2016 (along with every other candidate, but this would not materially change the article since he would still be listed as a president who "won" despite "losing"). If standard #2 is adopted it would mean Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 along with every other candidate except Hillary Clinton, but - again - the article would not materially change (Trump would still be listed as a president who "won" despite "losing"). If standard #3 is adopted, only Frank Atwood [1] would have lost the popular vote in 2016 as he received 337 votes, fewer than any other candidate (this would materially change the article). LavaBaron ( talk) 18:25, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
I can see how it could be confusing for people not familiar with American voting. A less ambiguous way to describe the result would be "Clinton received a plurality of the popular vote." Jc3s5h ( talk) 19:10, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
I can't see a way to help people that would be confused by win or lose. They play Soccer in Australia for instance. In Soccer the winner is the person who gets the most points. Not 51% of the points but simply the most points. The winner of the popular vote is the person that gets the higher amount of votes. The statutory requirement to win an election in Australia may be to receive 51% of votes but the Statutory requirement to become US President is to receive more than 50% of Electoral votes, or 270+ Electoral votes, in the electoral college. You can attempt to apply statutory election laws of Australia to the United States but it's not very logical. And If you are doing so then nothing we write here can help you. -Serialjoepsycho- ( talk) 09:48, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
I think the lead paragraph ought to make readers aware of the distinction between #1 and #2. Only one person who lost a presidential election secured more than 50% of the popular vote, whereas five people who lost a presidential election secured more popular votes than the person who won the election. I have expressed this thought in the lead paragraph as follows: in four elections where the winner lost the popular vote, no candidate won a majority of the national popular vote, whereas Samuel Tilden in 1876 lost the election while winning a majority rather than a plurality of the national popular vote. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 16:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
It seems peculiar that the table at top right excludes the United States presidential election, 1824. I will include it if no one objects (I can't imagine why anyone would). Anythingyouwant ( talk) 20:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
"...contributing to the electoral flip of the popular vote." What does this mean? It makes no sense. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 04:54, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
I question whether this material belongs in this article. 1960 was an anomaly, and the situation with the Alabama electors was bizarre. That doesn't necessarily make it a good choice for an article about Presidents who have lost the popular vote. Kennedy did not lose the popular vote in 1960. Arguments that Byrd, not Kennedy, should have received all of the Electoral votes in Alabama are interesting, and worthy of debate. Arguments that Byrd should have in turn been credited with another 334,000 popular votes (thereby giving the overall national popular vote to Nixon) are a different story. These arguments, while also the subject of valid debate, include a "what if" scenario. They also include a scenario that involves Byrd being credited with hundreds of thousands of popular votes that he clearly did not receive. It's a complex situation, but even assuming–strictly for the sake of argument–that Nixon should have been the rightful winner, the bottom line is he wasn't. Fair or unfair, there is no dispute that Kennedy won the popular vote in 1960. I could see perhaps a brief footnote, alluding to the anomaly that was 1960, with a link to the article for those interested in learning more about it, but I don't think it merits coverage within this article. Joefromrandb ( talk) 18:20, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
Rather than repeat a clumsy expression such as "US Presidents who lost the popular vote," why not follow the current incumbent's practice and refer to them as "Fake Presidents?" NRPanikker ( talk) 22:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
I find problems with this line in the section regarding the '16 presidential elections:
"After the election, Trump claimed that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally".[32] This claim was judged untrue by multiple fact-checkers.[33]"
I hate to have to get political here, but the claim that Trump's claim was judged untrue by multiple fact checkers is coming from a pro-left publication (The New York Times -- if you don't believe me, the headline contains the word "lie", usually an indication of [yellow journalism] or potential bias), and some of the facts may be distorted. I believe it's necessary to remove the final part and replace it with this, as a scientific hypothesis cannot be "true" or "untrue", only supported by the data or unsupported by the gathered data:
"After the election, Trump claimed that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally".[32] This claim has not been officially supported by any of the data from the election."
Of course, a reference to all the official data would be required at the end. Just don't link that article, because no media outlet analyst, liberal or conservative, is going to give you a straight answer. The raw data should be presented to allow people to make their own sense of it.
If you want, the hypothesis can be scrapped if nothing seems to be supporting it, and changed to a more logical assumption based on the data for the final theory, but no hypothesis or theory is ever true. This is the nature of the scientific process, and, chances are, people are going to have different ways of interpreting the data, and, as I have found from looking at various data around the internet, not all the data can be 100% accurate. This is also the nature of the scientific process.
Or this could be political science, which means that if your hypothesis doesn't conform with reality, reality must be changed. You choose.
70.187.183.248 ( talk) 07:09, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
In the opening section, we say "the 1824 election is distinguishable from the latter four elections, which were held after all states had instituted the popular selection of electors..." This isn't quite correct. In the 1876 election, Colorado, which had only been admitted to the Union in August, didn't have time to organize a popular vote, so its 3 electors were chosen by the state legislature. Since Hayes ended up winning by a single electoral vote, these three electors were crucial to his victory; however, since Tilden won the popular vote by 250K votes and the population of the entire state of Colorado was less than 200K people, it wouldn't have changed the popular victory even in Coloradans had voted.
I'm not quite sure how to address this or even to address it in the intro, since it strikes me as possibly unnecessarily complicating things. However, would it be worth a mention in the 1876 section of the article? -- Jfruh ( talk) 18:56, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Is it really within the scope of this article to even mention the idea that some of the popular votes were faked? He made a claim about this but that doesn't mean it's within scope to mention it as well as say this is a false claim. Who knows, maybe she did? The argument about this being true or not is really the subject of another article. Also the whole sentence is formatted poorly look at where the quotation mark starts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.252.40.216 ( talk) 13:28, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
I agree that it might not be relevant to this page, though definitely relevant to the 2016 election page.
As of this moment, however, I noticed there is an inaccurate depiction of Trump's "3-5 mil illegal immigrants voted" claim. As of now it states Trump "Correctly" claimed that millions of illegals voted, but that has been clearly debunked, and the cited links here lead to dead pages for NYT and PolitiFact. Seems like a clearly partisan edit that should be amended immediately.
Here is the actual working page for PolitiFact addressing that claim, which was a resounding "False" https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/28/donald-trump/donald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-millions-illegal-vo/
Here is an actual working link for New York Times addressing this false claim as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/unauthorized-immigrant-voting-trump-lie.html
And a third link for extra verification where the Washington Post also concluded these claims were false: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/27/trumps-bogus-claim-that-millions-of-people-voted-illegally-for-hillary-clinton/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c1a03c014a86 76.169.79.75 ( talk) 00:09, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
"When individuals cast ballots in the general election, they are choosing electors and telling them whom they should vote for in the Electoral College."
The statement suggests that the population chooses national electors while the process is, sadly, not as clear cut. A vote also doesn't tell the elector who to vote for, but contributes to the majority vote within a state that should be reflected by the elector's vote within the college. That said, it would be nice if "elector" were linked to the relevant article: /info/en/?search=Electoral_College_(United_States)#Electors
2600:1702:701:21A0:91CC:74DE:F771:29BC ( talk) 06:57, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I was just asking because I saw the history of the page and it seems there's some back-and-forth about the Donald Trump section. Someone deleted the statement that the "illegal voter" claim was a lie, supposedly because all sources that stated it had a liberal bias(but that edit was reverted). I tried to look for sources generally considered unbiased to add to the section, but it seems that even PolitiFact has a lot of allegations that it has a liberal bias as well (although I added it anyway, just in case). I'm not sure what to do. (By the way, if anything, I probably lean more towards liberal than conservative myself. However, I have heard of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Verifiability.) Any suggestions on how to maintain those policies while improving the article?
171.64.70.62 ( talk) 18:48, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
I think this claim is universally false - I cannot find any valid source (left or right leaning) that proves otherwise. The line "After the election, Trump "correctly claim(ed) that millions of illegal immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority, ..."[32][33] Trump repeated this in a meeting with members of Congress in 2017,[32] and in a speech in April 2018.[34]" should be amended immediately. Both sources are dead links (probably just to give the appearance of validity, even though it is clearly a false claim from Trump.
Below are actual links from both the sources (32 and 33) that were previously cited but were dead (404) links on NYT and PolitiFact.
Here is the actual working page for PolitiFact addressing that claim, which was a resounding "False" https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/28/donald-trump/donald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-millions-illegal-vo/
Here is an actual working link for New York Times addressing this false claim as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/unauthorized-immigrant-voting-trump-lie.html
And a third link for extra verification where the Washington Post also concluded these claims were false: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/27/trumps-bogus-claim-that-millions-of-people-voted-illegally-for-hillary-clinton/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c1a03c014a86 76.169.79.75 ( talk) 00:14, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
For the sake of completeness, a section on elections where the EC winner received a plurality of the popular vote, but not a majority, would be nice. "Winning" the popular vote is somewhat of a misleading notion, as the Founders did not view it to be an issue. In addition, states where one party has a solid majority, like California, can depress voter turnout for minority parties. This affects the nationwide total. Therefore, other scenarios where the EC winner did not receive 50+% of the vote would be illuminating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.97.59.176 ( talk) 01:31, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
The United States does not and never has elected its President based on the national popular vote. Until the U.S. Constitution is amended to provide for the national popular vote election of the President, this topic remains a historical curiosity, no more and no less. Tpkatsa ( talk) 16:23, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
There is no Popular Vote as each state has different voting procedures and laws. Some votes rejected in one state could be lawful in another making a final tally not only impossible but totally meaningless. 97.71.136.170 ( talk) 18:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
There is niko such thing. Voting rules very state to state and so render any totals useless and meaningless and the entire entry removed for sake of clarity and accuracy. 72.189.172.169 ( talk) 21:53, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
![]() | This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.
Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. |
Reporting errors |
A citation is requested for the line which states that the U.S. Constitution does not require states to hold a vote. The fact that such a thing is absent from the Constitution cannot be cited. I would recommend however asked for the citation to dispute the claim if it is in doubt. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.235.128.27 ( talk) 21:14, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
hello, I feel the first chart would be easier to read and identify which candidates were in which election if there were horizontal lines separating each year. thank you Ajlee2006 ( talk) 07:54, 12 November 2020 (UTC)
Should we add the 2016 election or is it still too early to call that? 68.55.111.219 ( talk) 04:12, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
![]() | This
edit request to
List of United States presidential elections where winner lost popular vote has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Albanydog ( talk) 05:40, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
I request the removal of this sentence under "George Bush": Clinton and Gore did not often campaign together, a deliberate decision resulting from the
Lewinsky sex scandal two years prior.
This sentence and all reference to Bill Clinton is unnecessary as the election was between Bush and Gore and had nothing to do with Clinton. The sentence is a political bash by the republican party and does not belong on this page!
This Wikipedia entry exists mainly because Hillary Clinton and her supporters cannot accept defeat! Whenever a political body consists of more or less equivalent and autonomous subentities, like a federal state, it is quite common all over the world that these subentities appoint delegates that actually vote on behalf of them. The number of delegates depends on the number of persons each subentity represents, not on the number of actual voters within each subentity. Therefore it is possible that more actual voters support one actual political party, yet more delegates support another political party. Especially this can occur in the presidential election for the United States of America, where in most states all delegates for the actual presidential elections will be backing the majority within that state, according to the principle "the winner takes all". In many states of the USA this majority is so unchangeable that it hardly matters when people miss out on voting, so there is no factual need to vote. It will therefore occur once in a while that, although the one presidential candidate receives the most individual votes, the other presidential candidate has more delegates supporting him or her at the actual presidential election by these delegates. Amand Keultjes ( talk) 17:01, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
2015-07-26T23:16:51
. Your argument that this article exists because of events on 2016-11-08 therefore makes no sense.
Peaceray (
talk)
17:26, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
I'm removing the NPVIC reference. Much as I would like to see the NPVIC publicized, I don't think mention of it belongs on this list page. Criticism of/solutions to the Electoral College should be confined to that article, whereas this page is merely a list of relevant historical elections. Moreover, even if the NPVIC is successful, it will not take effect before Trump assumes office. -- 2600:1008:B009:43E6:5980:1AD4:B2A9:E1B9 ( talk) 00:39, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: move to List of United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote, for grammar's sake. ( non-admin closure) JudgeRM (talk to me) 02:15, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
List of United States presidential elections where winner lost popular vote →
List of United States presidential elections where the winner lost the popular vote – Is there any reason to avoid using definite articles in this title, aside from making it more concise by eight characters? I think the current phrasing sounds awkward.
bd2412
T
19:46, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
I have requested semi-protection due to high level of IP and newbie vandalism. As long as the election is unresolved, we're going to continue to see lots of attacks, so protection is necessary. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 14:44, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
I'm not calling for its removal, but I'm not sure if that passage about the petition is extremely notable. 108.54.106.8 ( talk) 15:31, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
Donald J Trump is necessary to be consistent with the other names in the article, namely Rutherford B. Hayes & George W. Bush. The names of John Quicy Adams & Benjamin Harrison are complete in themselves & thus they do not have an initial.
Besides, it's been Donald J Trump since it was added, so let's not change it on a whim & without consensus.
Peaceray ( talk) 21:24, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
WP:CONSENSUS to remove the middle initial to be consistent with the article title per WP:COMMONNAME has been reached. Making the change. TompaDompa ( talk) 02:01, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
"There is a scenario in which Clinton might become president. The Electoral College, as originally set up, was intended to debate and vote on the candidates; the general election merely decided who the electors would be. As of November 2016, 29 states and the District of Columbia legally require their electors to vote according to the popular vote in their state, but other states still allow their electors to vote against their state's popular vote (earning such electors the label "faithless electors"). A scenario where Clinton wins is not impossible[12] but is very unlikely because about 37 Republican electors would have to vote against their party's candidate and their respective state's plurality vote.[13][citation needed] Various petitions are being circulated asking the electoral college to elect Clinton instead of Trump. As of November 12, 2016, according to FoxNews, one of these petitions had garnered over 3 million signatures.[12]"
My concern with the paragraph as currently phrased, is that it appears to violate a Core Content Policy, the Neutral Point of View. Despite statements to the contrary, it nonetheless seems to overstate the microscopic odds of Hillary Clinton becoming elected president. (see here). Discussion of the original intent of the Electoral College is completely irrelevant, because that is not at all how it currently operates, as well as redundant, seeing as the Electoral College is explained in sections above. It is not merely unlikely that 37 out of 538 electors will change their votes, it is de facto impossible, given that there are no relevant historical scenarios to reference, meaning such a move would be wildly unprecedented. Lastly, while the segment about petitions is fair in regards to policy, it does seem to overstate the validity of online petitions, namely those from Change.org.
Keep in mind (as some of you may be curious), I come at this from a left-wing perspective. A neutral Wikipedia is something I highly value. If not removed, at the very least I request this be changed to meet the curriculum suggested above.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.246.1 ( talk) 2016-11-23T12:19:49
While attempting to reverse the good faith change made earlier today to this article's title by JFG, I inadvertently changed it myself from the newly agreed upon title as discussed above on this talk page. Before I simply restore consensus title, let me ask, does anyone object to leaving "list of" out of the title? Thanks for your understanding. Drdpw ( talk) 00:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
*(supplemental) Support Bullrangifers 2nd shorter option In addition to dropping "list of" for reasons I explained above, BullRangifer's subsequent suggestion is even better so let's go an additional step and make it United States presidents who won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote
NewsAndEventsGuy (
talk)
16:45, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Since there were no objections to dropping "list of" in the title agreed in the earlier thread "List of United States presidential elections in which the winner lost the popular vote" I made that move today. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:49, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
FWIW, John Quincy Adams was not elected by the Electoral College. Indeed nobody was, in 1824. Therefore, the 1824 entry should be deleted. GoodDay ( talk) 18:31, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Please, would either JudgeRM or BD2412 restore this article's consensus title. This J. Q. Adams drama is unnecessary. Thank you. Drdpw ( talk) 18:46, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
It has been suggested in another thread that this article's inclusion criteria seems to include all elections, regardless if the victor was an incumbent. However, incumbents who won reelection but lost popular vote aren't included. I don't know if this is historically factual, and I don't know if the other ed correctly assessed our article in this regard. But since the subject was raised, I'm tossing it out there for the election experts to consider. Are we missing elections of incumbents who lost pop vote when they ran for re-election? NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 19:10, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
I was bold and made a few modifications to the table of elections: removed the election number column, to conserve vertical space, as it's function was unclear and the information provided inconsequential; separated shaded-text party name cells and modified the abbreviation format, and also the legend to further explain what the colors and abbreviations mean (per MOS:COLOR); modified 1824 popular vote figures that didn't match those stated in the 1824 election article; changed turnout column link (from Voting age population to Voter turnout); shifted popular vote votes and margins columns to the left, to match the EV columns pattern, the votes column comes before the percentage column; and, modified the way notations are presented. Hope these are seen as constructive improvements by others. Cheers. Drdpw ( talk) 19:57, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
We seem to be using terms like "win" and "lose" fast and loose. Can we take a moment to build a consensus as to what it means to "lose" the popular vote so we have an objective standard to measure future edits and avoid edit-warring? Here are a few options:
If standard #1 is adopted, Donald Trump would have lost the popular vote in 2016 (along with every other candidate, but this would not materially change the article since he would still be listed as a president who "won" despite "losing"). If standard #2 is adopted it would mean Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 along with every other candidate except Hillary Clinton, but - again - the article would not materially change (Trump would still be listed as a president who "won" despite "losing"). If standard #3 is adopted, only Frank Atwood [1] would have lost the popular vote in 2016 as he received 337 votes, fewer than any other candidate (this would materially change the article). LavaBaron ( talk) 18:25, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
I can see how it could be confusing for people not familiar with American voting. A less ambiguous way to describe the result would be "Clinton received a plurality of the popular vote." Jc3s5h ( talk) 19:10, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
I can't see a way to help people that would be confused by win or lose. They play Soccer in Australia for instance. In Soccer the winner is the person who gets the most points. Not 51% of the points but simply the most points. The winner of the popular vote is the person that gets the higher amount of votes. The statutory requirement to win an election in Australia may be to receive 51% of votes but the Statutory requirement to become US President is to receive more than 50% of Electoral votes, or 270+ Electoral votes, in the electoral college. You can attempt to apply statutory election laws of Australia to the United States but it's not very logical. And If you are doing so then nothing we write here can help you. -Serialjoepsycho- ( talk) 09:48, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
I think the lead paragraph ought to make readers aware of the distinction between #1 and #2. Only one person who lost a presidential election secured more than 50% of the popular vote, whereas five people who lost a presidential election secured more popular votes than the person who won the election. I have expressed this thought in the lead paragraph as follows: in four elections where the winner lost the popular vote, no candidate won a majority of the national popular vote, whereas Samuel Tilden in 1876 lost the election while winning a majority rather than a plurality of the national popular vote. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 16:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
It seems peculiar that the table at top right excludes the United States presidential election, 1824. I will include it if no one objects (I can't imagine why anyone would). Anythingyouwant ( talk) 20:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
"...contributing to the electoral flip of the popular vote." What does this mean? It makes no sense. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 04:54, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
I question whether this material belongs in this article. 1960 was an anomaly, and the situation with the Alabama electors was bizarre. That doesn't necessarily make it a good choice for an article about Presidents who have lost the popular vote. Kennedy did not lose the popular vote in 1960. Arguments that Byrd, not Kennedy, should have received all of the Electoral votes in Alabama are interesting, and worthy of debate. Arguments that Byrd should have in turn been credited with another 334,000 popular votes (thereby giving the overall national popular vote to Nixon) are a different story. These arguments, while also the subject of valid debate, include a "what if" scenario. They also include a scenario that involves Byrd being credited with hundreds of thousands of popular votes that he clearly did not receive. It's a complex situation, but even assuming–strictly for the sake of argument–that Nixon should have been the rightful winner, the bottom line is he wasn't. Fair or unfair, there is no dispute that Kennedy won the popular vote in 1960. I could see perhaps a brief footnote, alluding to the anomaly that was 1960, with a link to the article for those interested in learning more about it, but I don't think it merits coverage within this article. Joefromrandb ( talk) 18:20, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
Rather than repeat a clumsy expression such as "US Presidents who lost the popular vote," why not follow the current incumbent's practice and refer to them as "Fake Presidents?" NRPanikker ( talk) 22:16, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
I find problems with this line in the section regarding the '16 presidential elections:
"After the election, Trump claimed that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally".[32] This claim was judged untrue by multiple fact-checkers.[33]"
I hate to have to get political here, but the claim that Trump's claim was judged untrue by multiple fact checkers is coming from a pro-left publication (The New York Times -- if you don't believe me, the headline contains the word "lie", usually an indication of [yellow journalism] or potential bias), and some of the facts may be distorted. I believe it's necessary to remove the final part and replace it with this, as a scientific hypothesis cannot be "true" or "untrue", only supported by the data or unsupported by the gathered data:
"After the election, Trump claimed that he "won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally".[32] This claim has not been officially supported by any of the data from the election."
Of course, a reference to all the official data would be required at the end. Just don't link that article, because no media outlet analyst, liberal or conservative, is going to give you a straight answer. The raw data should be presented to allow people to make their own sense of it.
If you want, the hypothesis can be scrapped if nothing seems to be supporting it, and changed to a more logical assumption based on the data for the final theory, but no hypothesis or theory is ever true. This is the nature of the scientific process, and, chances are, people are going to have different ways of interpreting the data, and, as I have found from looking at various data around the internet, not all the data can be 100% accurate. This is also the nature of the scientific process.
Or this could be political science, which means that if your hypothesis doesn't conform with reality, reality must be changed. You choose.
70.187.183.248 ( talk) 07:09, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
In the opening section, we say "the 1824 election is distinguishable from the latter four elections, which were held after all states had instituted the popular selection of electors..." This isn't quite correct. In the 1876 election, Colorado, which had only been admitted to the Union in August, didn't have time to organize a popular vote, so its 3 electors were chosen by the state legislature. Since Hayes ended up winning by a single electoral vote, these three electors were crucial to his victory; however, since Tilden won the popular vote by 250K votes and the population of the entire state of Colorado was less than 200K people, it wouldn't have changed the popular victory even in Coloradans had voted.
I'm not quite sure how to address this or even to address it in the intro, since it strikes me as possibly unnecessarily complicating things. However, would it be worth a mention in the 1876 section of the article? -- Jfruh ( talk) 18:56, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
Is it really within the scope of this article to even mention the idea that some of the popular votes were faked? He made a claim about this but that doesn't mean it's within scope to mention it as well as say this is a false claim. Who knows, maybe she did? The argument about this being true or not is really the subject of another article. Also the whole sentence is formatted poorly look at where the quotation mark starts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.252.40.216 ( talk) 13:28, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
I agree that it might not be relevant to this page, though definitely relevant to the 2016 election page.
As of this moment, however, I noticed there is an inaccurate depiction of Trump's "3-5 mil illegal immigrants voted" claim. As of now it states Trump "Correctly" claimed that millions of illegals voted, but that has been clearly debunked, and the cited links here lead to dead pages for NYT and PolitiFact. Seems like a clearly partisan edit that should be amended immediately.
Here is the actual working page for PolitiFact addressing that claim, which was a resounding "False" https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/28/donald-trump/donald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-millions-illegal-vo/
Here is an actual working link for New York Times addressing this false claim as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/unauthorized-immigrant-voting-trump-lie.html
And a third link for extra verification where the Washington Post also concluded these claims were false: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/27/trumps-bogus-claim-that-millions-of-people-voted-illegally-for-hillary-clinton/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c1a03c014a86 76.169.79.75 ( talk) 00:09, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
"When individuals cast ballots in the general election, they are choosing electors and telling them whom they should vote for in the Electoral College."
The statement suggests that the population chooses national electors while the process is, sadly, not as clear cut. A vote also doesn't tell the elector who to vote for, but contributes to the majority vote within a state that should be reflected by the elector's vote within the college. That said, it would be nice if "elector" were linked to the relevant article: /info/en/?search=Electoral_College_(United_States)#Electors
2600:1702:701:21A0:91CC:74DE:F771:29BC ( talk) 06:57, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I was just asking because I saw the history of the page and it seems there's some back-and-forth about the Donald Trump section. Someone deleted the statement that the "illegal voter" claim was a lie, supposedly because all sources that stated it had a liberal bias(but that edit was reverted). I tried to look for sources generally considered unbiased to add to the section, but it seems that even PolitiFact has a lot of allegations that it has a liberal bias as well (although I added it anyway, just in case). I'm not sure what to do. (By the way, if anything, I probably lean more towards liberal than conservative myself. However, I have heard of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Verifiability.) Any suggestions on how to maintain those policies while improving the article?
171.64.70.62 ( talk) 18:48, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
I think this claim is universally false - I cannot find any valid source (left or right leaning) that proves otherwise. The line "After the election, Trump "correctly claim(ed) that millions of illegal immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority, ..."[32][33] Trump repeated this in a meeting with members of Congress in 2017,[32] and in a speech in April 2018.[34]" should be amended immediately. Both sources are dead links (probably just to give the appearance of validity, even though it is clearly a false claim from Trump.
Below are actual links from both the sources (32 and 33) that were previously cited but were dead (404) links on NYT and PolitiFact.
Here is the actual working page for PolitiFact addressing that claim, which was a resounding "False" https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/28/donald-trump/donald-trumps-pants-fire-claim-millions-illegal-vo/
Here is an actual working link for New York Times addressing this false claim as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/us/politics/unauthorized-immigrant-voting-trump-lie.html
And a third link for extra verification where the Washington Post also concluded these claims were false: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/27/trumps-bogus-claim-that-millions-of-people-voted-illegally-for-hillary-clinton/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c1a03c014a86 76.169.79.75 ( talk) 00:14, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
For the sake of completeness, a section on elections where the EC winner received a plurality of the popular vote, but not a majority, would be nice. "Winning" the popular vote is somewhat of a misleading notion, as the Founders did not view it to be an issue. In addition, states where one party has a solid majority, like California, can depress voter turnout for minority parties. This affects the nationwide total. Therefore, other scenarios where the EC winner did not receive 50+% of the vote would be illuminating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.97.59.176 ( talk) 01:31, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
The United States does not and never has elected its President based on the national popular vote. Until the U.S. Constitution is amended to provide for the national popular vote election of the President, this topic remains a historical curiosity, no more and no less. Tpkatsa ( talk) 16:23, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
There is no Popular Vote as each state has different voting procedures and laws. Some votes rejected in one state could be lawful in another making a final tally not only impossible but totally meaningless. 97.71.136.170 ( talk) 18:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
There is niko such thing. Voting rules very state to state and so render any totals useless and meaningless and the entire entry removed for sake of clarity and accuracy. 72.189.172.169 ( talk) 21:53, 26 April 2023 (UTC)