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Looking at
the Numbers: Minority Rules
September 2004
Just how many people elect the President of the
United States? The answer may surprise you.
Consider the 2000 presidential elections.. Even
though more than 100
million people voted in the election, only a small portion of those
votes in fact were decisive. Indeed the results would have been
exactly the same even if nearly 80 million of those voters would
have stayed home.
Here’s what we mean:
105,396,641 = Total number votes cast
nationwide in the 2000 Presidential election.
48,467112 = Total number of votes cast
for candidates in states that they did not win. If these votes had
not been cast, the Electoral College divide between George Bush and
Al Gore would have been exactly the same.
26,353,058 = Total number of votes cast
for George Bush in the 30 states that Bush won.
21,835,615 = Minimum number of votes
Bush needed in order to win the 30 states that he won and still beat
Al Gore for the Presidency (calculated by adding one vote to the
number of votes cast for Gore in each state that Bush won).
83,561,026 = Total number of votes that
did not factor in determining the winner of the 2000 Presidential
election (To win the electoral college Bush only needed 21,835,615
votes out of a total 105,396,641 votes cast).
79.28% = Percentage of votes that did
not factor in determining the winner of the 2000 presidential
elections were ineffectual because they did not help Bush win the
Presidency
Note that 56,929,580 was the total
number of votes a candidate needed to win every state in the
Electoral College (Calculated by adding one vote to the number of
votes cast for the second-place finisher in every state). This means to win all
538 electoral votes only 57 million votes were needed. Bush won the
Electoral College with 30 states, but theoretically a candidate
could win the Electoral College with victories in as few as 11
states according to both the 2000 and 2004 electoral vote
distribution.
Vote totals from the Federal Elections Commission
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