US Elections: Meet the Candidates Who Got the Most Votes But Didn’t Make it to the Presidency 2020 U.S. elections

• Understand how the election of the president by the electoral college works
• The main battlegrounds in the dispute between Trump and Biden

In 2016, for example, Democrat Hillary Clinton had the most direct votes, but was not elected and Donald Trump became president. Isolated case? No, at least four other candidates who were already the most voted did not sit in the Oval Office.

In the US it is not enough to have the majority of direct votes, the candidate for president must win the majority of the delegates who make up the electoral college. But the candidates take the entire “bank” of delegates from each state where they have a majority vote.

This means that a competitor who won by a wide margin of votes in one location may end up being matched in the polling station by an opponent who won by a much smaller margin in another state with the same number of delegates. Understand more about this process at the end of the story..

Professor Jacob Neiheisel in the political science department at the University at Buffalo (USA) explains in an interview G1 that the most common is that the candidate who won the majority of the popular vote also be elected by the delegates.

“A difference between the electoral college and the popular vote ends up raising doubts about the legitimacy of who is declared the winner, but from a historical perspective this is unusual,” Neiheisel said.

According to the researcher, there are “good arguments” in the country both to maintain this system and to put it aside. Notes that there are ongoing discussions about changes to the voting system, and proposals that would even eliminate the need for an electoral college.

“The most recent discussion focuses on Popular Vote Pact between States“said the political science professor.

With this agreement, The states undertake to respect that the most voted by individual vote that they also receive the majority of the votes in the electoral college. In practice, he calls for the end of the polling stations.

At least 16 states have already shown interest in following this pact, which represents about 196 electoral votes – delegates. However, for it to pass and become law, it needs the support of other states, responsible for at least 74 more electoral votes.

The 2016 election results caught many analysts by surprise: Outsider Donald Trump took the lead against Hillary Clinton, who already had a long political career.

Electoral polls pointed to victory with ease for the Democrat, who won the majority of the popular vote, some 3 million more than Trump, but in the end, what really mattered were the votes of the delegates who gave the Republican the job.

• How Trump won the election with 3 million fewer votes than Clinton

The democrat he only won in 19 states and in the federal capital –Receive the equivalent of 232 votes in the Electoral College. Trump, although he received fewer popular votes, secured victory by obtaining 306 delegates.

The last time a the mismatch of those that had happened was in 2000, when the polls had a majority of votes for the Democrat Al Gore, but the electoral college gave the victory to the Republican George W. Bush. He managed to win in states that guaranteed him a composition of more delegates.

That election was also scheduled for a controversial vote recount in the state of FloridaAll because of the ballots that confused voters: many voted for Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party, thinking they had voted for the Democrat.

After much recount and the judicialization of the case, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of Bush: in the end there were 271 votes for the Republican and 266 for the Democrat.

Jackson, Tilden and Cleveland

In addition to the 2016 and 2000 elections, the winner of the popular vote did not win on three other occasions:

• in 1824, General Andrew Jackson he lost the election even though he received more votes than President-elect John Quincy Adams.
• In 1876, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the majority of popular votes, but Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won with the support of delegates
• in 1888, President Grover Cleveland, who was seeking reelection, was the most voted. Lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison

According to the White House record, the first case in which the most voted candidate did not win the election was recorded in 1824. That year, General Andrew Jackson received the majority of popular votes and delegates, but lost to John Quincy Adams, who was elected by Congress.

In 1876, Tilden won 4,300,000 popular votes, while Hayes a little less, 4,036,000. The final decision was also given by the National Congress, which gave the victory to the Republican candidate with 185 votes to 184.

In the 1888 election, Republican Harrison defeated Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland despite the fact that his opponent has won 90,500 more votes than him. The decision fell on the electoral college that gave Harrison 233 votes and Cleveland only 168.

Despite being a system that receives criticism, the electoral college was Thought by the founders of the United States and appears in the Constitution of 1787. With the technological and geographic limitations of the United States at the time, a universal vote, like the one that exists in Brazil, was unthinkable.

Furthermore, as there is an obligation to states have at least three votes, the creators of this voting process tried to ensure that smaller or less populated states were also taken into account during elections.

Today, the tradition of the representatives continues: there are 538 in the 50 states plus the federal capital. The candidate who gets the vote of at least 270 of them, who are called delegates, becomes president.

The number of delegates per state is proportional to their representation in Congress. That is why it is so important that a candidate do well in states like California, Florida and Texas, for example. Together they have 133 delegates, almost 25% of the total.

Almost all states except Maine and Nebraska adopt a system called “winner takes all”, in which the candidate who gets the most votes in the state gets all his delegates.

In general, there are states that are traditionally Republican, others where Democrats almost always win, but the real fight takes place in what are known as “Swing states”, where there is not as much fidelity and the results vary according to each choice. North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and even Florida are among them and can be decisive.

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