How many elections have there been

Featured Search Historical Highlights of the House. Learn about Foreign Leader Addresses. Featured Search the People of the House. Majority Leaders. Bean Soup! Featured Black Americans in Congress.

Featured Mace of the U. House of Represen- tatives. House Trivia Timeline. Featured Resources for National History Day Fast Facts The founders struggled for months to devise a way to select the President and Vice President.

Historical Highlight February 01, The electoral vote count of the presidential election. Electors Most states require that all electoral votes go to the candidate who receives the most votes in that state. House of Representatives About this object The contested Presidential election brought Senators, and the electoral certificates under investigation, into the House Chamber.

Bill Clinton Democrat defeated George H. Bush Republican and Ross Perot Independent. Perot drew more votes than any other third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt's campaign in George H. Bush Republican defeated Michael Dukakis Democrat , winning 53 percent of the popular vote. The vote casters, known as electors, are chosen by rules differing in each state, but many are elected during each party's state conventions. Electors have traditionally cast their votes for president in December, following the general election in November.

The Electoral College system emerged as a compromise between the framers of the Constitution, who debated whether to elect the president by popular vote, Congress, or state legislatures.

The framers viewed the Electoral College as "an actual decisionmaking body that would reduce the uncertain impact of popular participation and increase the likelihood that only well-qualified would be elected to the presidency," according to Benjamin Ginsberg, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.

The following chart shows the five presidential elections where there was a split between the Electoral College and the national popular vote or no candidate received a majority of the Electoral College vote.

The split in the presidential can be attributed to three main factors. First, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton received significant support in populous blue states like New York and California , where together she received more than 13 million votes. Similarly, Clinton performed well in several red states that she ended up losing. In Texas , for example, she received 3. Clinton also added significantly to her popular vote totals in Arizona and Georgia.

Donald Trump R won both of those states. The third factor was several close races in battleground states with large populations. For example, Clinton and Trump were separated by margins of less than one percent in Wisconsin , Michigan , and Pennsylvania. The NPVIC would go into effect if states representing at least electoral college votes adopt the legislation.

Together, they represent Electoral College votes. Ballotpedia features , encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers.