History of the United States II / Unit 17 USH2 2448 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Fifth Time
The idea
The anchor calls two thousand sixteen the fifth time a candidate won the presidency while losing the popular vote. The course has met two of the earlier cases: Benjamin Harrison in eighteen eighty-eight, recalled by Digital History's count of one hundred twelve years in unit sixteen, and George W. Bush in two thousand, after Bush v. Gore.
In practice
Two tallies of one election: millions more votes for Clinton, and a clear electoral majority for Trump.
Where people slip
The misreading treats two thousand sixteen as unprecedented. The anchor's count and the course's own entries say otherwise: the Electoral College has produced this result before. What was new was the size of the gap. Gore's popular margin in two thousand was about five hundred forty thousand votes; Clinton's was about two point nine million.
Your place on the trail
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