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54th quadrennial U.S. presidential election / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. Republican candidate George W. Bush, the incumbent governor of Texas and eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush, won the election, defeating incumbent Vice President Al Gore. It was the fourth of five American presidential elections, and the first since 1888, in which the winning candidate lost the popular vote, and is considered one of the closest U.S. presidential elections, with long-standing controversy about the result.[1][2][3][4] Gore conceded the election on December 13.
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39 members of the Electoral College 8 votes needed to win | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Turnout | 66.1% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Bush/Cheney and blue denotes those won by Gore/Lieberman. One of D.C.'s three electors abstained from casting a vote for president or vice president. Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state and the District of Columbia. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Incumbent President Bill Clinton was ineligible to run for a third term due to presidential term limits, and Gore, the most recent incumbent vice president to run for president, secured the Democratic nomination with relative ease, defeating former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley in the primaries. Bush was seen as the early favorite for the Republican nomination, and after a contentious primary battle with U.S. Senator John McCain and others, secured the nomination by Super Tuesday. Bush chose former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his running mate, while Gore chose U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman.
Both major-party candidates focused primarily on domestic issues, such as the budget, tax relief, and reforms for federal social insurance programs, although foreign policy was not ignored. Due to President Bill Clinton's sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky and subsequent impeachment, Gore avoided campaigning with Clinton. Republicans denounced Clinton's indiscretions, while Gore criticized Bush's lack of experience. On election night, it was unclear who had won, with the electoral votes of the state of Florida still undecided. The returns showed that Bush had won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount.
The recount having been ended, Bush won Florida by 537 votes, a margin of 0.009%. The Florida recount and subsequent litigation resulted in major post-election controversy, and with speculative analysis suggesting that limited county-based recounts would likely have confirmed a Bush victory, whereas a statewide recount would likely have given the state to Gore.[5][6] Ultimately, Bush won 271 electoral votes, one vote more than the 270-to-win majority, despite Gore receiving 543,895 more votes (a margin of 0.52% of all votes cast).[7] Bush flipped 11 states that had voted Democratic in 1996: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia. As of 2023, this remains the last time that a Republican carried New Hampshire in a presidential election. This is also the last time as of 2023 that the sitting vice president at the time of the election was the nominee of a major party.
Since the death of George H. W. Bush in 2018, this is the earliest presidential election in which all major candidates for President and Vice President are still alive.
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The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States,[8] indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College.[9] The officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.[10] Since the office was established in 1789, 45 men have served in 46 presidencies. The first president, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College.[11] Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms and is therefore counted as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, giving rise to the discrepancy between the number of presidencies and the number of persons who have served as president.[12] The incumbent president is Joe Biden.[13]
The presidency of William Henry Harrison, who died 31 days after taking office in 1841, was the shortest in American history.[14] Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest, over twelve years, before dying early in his fourth term in 1945. He is the only U.S. president to have served more than two terms.[15] Since the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1951, no person may be elected president more than twice, and no one who has served more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected may be elected more than once.[16]
Four presidents died in office of natural causes (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), four were assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy), and one resigned (Richard Nixon, facing impeachment and removal from office).[17] John Tyler was the first vice president to assume the presidency during a presidential term, and set the precedent that a vice president who does so becomes the fully functioning president with his presidency.[18]
Throughout most of its history, American politics has been dominated by political parties. The Constitution is silent on the issue of political parties, and at the time it came into force in 1789, no organized parties existed. Soon after the 1st Congress convened, political factions began rallying around dominant Washington administration officials, such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.[19] Concerned about the capacity of political parties to destroy the fragile unity holding the nation together, Washington remained unaffiliated with any political faction or party throughout his eight-year presidency. He was, and remains, the only U.S. president never affiliated with a political party.[20]