The 2000 Presidential Election
The 2000 presidential election was held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. The contest was between Republican candidate George W. Bush, who was the incumbent governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore, the incumbent vice president, as well as various third-party candidates including the well-known consumer rights activist Ralph Nader, who was the presidential candidate of the Green Party. The election is famous for having its outcome unclear until resolved by a decision of the US Supreme Court.
Incumbent Democratic President Bill Clinton was not eligible to serve a third term, and Vice President Gore was able to secure the Democratic nomination without much difficulty. Bush was the early favorite for the Republican nomination, but he faced stiff competition from Arizona Senator John McCain and other candidates. Bush chose former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his running mate, and Gore chose Senator Joe Lieberman as his. Both campaigns focused on domestic issues, such as the budget, tax relief, and reforms for federal social insurance programs. Clinton and Gore usually did not campaign together. This was a deliberate decision on the part of the Gore campaign in order to distance Gore from any criticism Clinton might attract as a result of the Lewinsky sex scandal. It was a strategy that Gore would be second guessed on.
Gore was a consistent front-runner for the Democratic nomination, though he was expected to face challenges from Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, and famous actor Warren Beatty. In the end none of these potential challengers chose to run. Former New Jersey Senator and ex-NBA star Bill Bradley ran as the alternative to Gore. Former basketball star Michael Jordan campaigned for him in the early primary states. The focus of his campaign was a plan to spend the budget surplus on a variety of social welfare programs to help the poor and the middle-class, along with campaign finance reform and gun control. Gore easily defeated Bradley in the primaries. The closest Bradley came to a victory was his 50%-46% loss to Gore in the New Hampshire primary. By March 14, Gore had won enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. Gore won the nomination unanimously at the Democratic National Convention. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was nominated for vice president by voice vote. Lieberman became the first Jewish American ever to be chosen for this position by a major party.
George W. Bush was the early front-runner for the Republican nomination. His campaign team achieved unprecedented funding and he had the benefit of name recognition and connections of the Bush family. Several other potential candidates withdrew before the Iowa Caucus because they were unable to secure funding and endorsements sufficient to be competitive with Bush. These included Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, and Lamar Alexander. That left Bush, John McCain, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, and Orrin Hatch as the only candidates still in the race. On January 24, Bush won the Iowa caucus with 41% of the vote. Forbes came in second with 30% of the vote. Keyes received 14%, Bauer 9%, McCain 5%, and Hatch 1%. Hatch dropped out. Bush was portrayed in the media as the establishment candidate, while McCain, with the support of many independents, portrayed himself as a crusading grass-roots candidate who focused on campaign reform. On February 1, McCain won a 49-30% victory over Bush in the New Hampshire primary. Gary Bauer dropped out. After coming in third in Delaware Forbes dropped out, leaving three candidates.
In the South Carolina primary, Bush soundly defeated McCain. McCain supporters blamed it on the Bush campaign, accusing them of dirty tricks, such as spreading the rumor that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi-born daughter was an African-American child he fathered out of wedlock. McCain rebounded, winning both Michigan and his home state of Arizona on February 22. On February 24, McCain criticized Bush for accepting the endorsement of Bob Jones University with its policy banning interracial dating. On February 28, McCain also referred to Rev. Jerry Falwell and televangelist Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance". Bush scored victories in Virginia on February 29, and on Super Tuesday, March 7, Bush won New York, Ohio, Georgia, Missouri, California, Maryland, and Maine. McCain won Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, but dropped out of the race. Bush won the majority of the remaining contests and won the Republican nomination on March 14, winning his home state of Texas and his brother Jeb's home state of Florida among others. At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia George W. Bush was formally selected as the party's candidate for President, receiving 1526 votes on the first ballot, with McCain finishing second with 275. Bush asked former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to head up a team to help select a running mate for him, but ultimately, Bush decided that Cheney himself should be the vice presidential nominee.
The campaign focused mainly on domestic issues, such as the projected budget surplus, proposed reforms of Social Security and Medicare, health care, and competing plans for tax relief. Foreign policy was also sometimes an issue. Bush criticized Clinton administration policies in Somalia, where 18 Americans died in 1993 trying to sort out warring factions, and in the Balkans, where the United States had sent troops for peacekeeping functions. Bush referred to this as "nation-building". Bush pledged to bridge partisan gaps in the Washington. Gore questioned Bush's fitness for the job, pointing to gaffes made by Bush in interviews and speeches.
Bill Clinton's impeachment and the sex scandal that led up to it cast a shadow on the campaign. Republicans denounced the Clinton scandals, and Bush, made repeated promises to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House. Gore avoided the Clinton scandals, as did Lieberman, even though Lieberman had been the first Democratic senator to denounce Clinton's misbehavior. It was believed that Gore actually chose Lieberman as his running mate in an attempt to separate himself from Clinton's failings. Gore avoided appearing with Clinton, who was limited to appearances in areas where he was popular.
Ralph Nader was the most successful of third-party candidates. He conducted large rallies in sports arenas like Madison Square Garden, with retired talk show host Phil Donahue as master of ceremonies. The Gore campaign made a pitch to potential Nader supporters in the final weeks of the campaign, warning of potential vote-splitting that might elect Bush. The Republican Leadership Council actually ran pro-Nader ads in a few states in an effort to split the liberal vote. When the campaign was over, many Gore supporters were hostile to Nader, claiming that Nader votes would have been cast for Gore, and that Nader threw the election outcome to Bush. Nader dismissed such concerns, claiming his objective in the campaign was to pass the 5-percent threshold so his Green Party would be eligible for matching funds in future races.
With the exceptions of Florida and Gore's home state of Tennessee, Bush carried the Southern states by comfortable margins, including Clinton's home state of Arkansas. He also secured wins in Ohio, Indiana, most of the rural Midwestern farming states, most of the Rocky Mountain states, and Alaska. Gore swept the Northeastern United States (with the sole exception of New Hampshire, which Bush won narrowly), most of the Upper Midwest, and all of the Pacific Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California, and carried Hawaii, as well. As election night wore on, the returns in a handful of small-to-medium-sized states, including Wisconsin and Iowa, were extremely close. But it was the state of Florida that would decide the winner of the election. As the final national results were tallied the following morning, Bush had clearly won a total of 246 electoral votes, while Gore had won 255 votes. 270 votes were needed to win. Two smaller states-New Mexico (5 electoral votes) and Oregon (7 electoral votes)-were still too close to call. It was Florida (25 electoral votes), however, that became the key to an election win for either candidate. Both New Mexico and Oregon were declared in favor of Gore over the next few days. Florida would ultimately win the election.
The outcome of the election was not known for more than a month after the balloting ended because of the extended process of counting and then recounting Florida's presidential ballots. Between 7:50 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. EST on election day, just as the polls closed in the largely Republican Florida panhandle, which is in the Central time zone, all major television news networks (CNN, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, and ABC) declared that Gore had carried Florida's 25 electoral votes. They based this on exit poll data. However, in the actual vote tally Bush began to take a wide lead early in Florida, and by 10 p.m. EST the networks had retracted that prediction and placed Florida back into the "undecided" column. At approximately 2:30 a.m., with some 85% of the votes counted in Florida and Bush leading Gore by more than 100,000 votes, the networks declared that Bush had carried Florida and therefore had been elected president. However, most of the remaining votes to be counted in Florida were located in three heavily Democratic counties-Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach. As their votes were reported Gore began to gain on Bush. By 4:30 a.m., after all votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush's margin to just over 2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their predictions that Bush had won Florida and the presidency.
Gore, had privately conceded the election to Bush, but he later called Bush to withdraw his concession. The final result in Florida was slim enough to require a mandatory recount (by machine) under state law; Bush's lead had dwindled to about 300 votes by the time it was completed later that week. A count of overseas military ballots later boosted his margin to about 900 votes.
Gore requested hand recounts in four counties (Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia), as provided under Florida state law. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced she would reject any revised totals from those counties if they were not turned in by November 14, the statutory deadline for amended returns. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline to November 26, but this decision was later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court. Miami-Dade eventually halted its recount and resubmitted its original total to the state canvassing board, while Palm Beach County failed to meet the extended deadline. On November 26, the state canvassing board certified Bush the winner of Florida's electors by 537 votes.
Gore formally contested the certified results. A state court decision which ruled against Gore was reversed by the Florida Supreme Court. That court ordered a recount of over 70,000 ballots previously rejected by machine counters. But the last word on the recount and on the election came from the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 12, 2000, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 vote that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling requiring a statewide recount of ballots was unconstitutional. In a 5-4 vote the US Supreme Court ruled the Florida recounts could not be completed before a December 12 and should therefore cease. This meant that the previously certified total should hold, and the 25 electoral votes from the state of Florida were awarded to George W. Bush, making him the President-elect of the United States.
Gore came in second in the electoral vote, but he received 543,895 more popular votes than Bush. Gore failed to win his home state of Tennessee, which both he and his father had represented in the Senate. He was the first major-party presidential candidate to have lost his home state since George McGovern lost South Dakota in 1972. Bush received 50,456,002 votes (47.87%) and 271 electoral votes, compared to 50,999,897 (48.38%) and 266 electoral votes for Gore. Nader received 2,882,955 votes (2.74%) and no electoral votes.
Although these results were the ones that counted, several independent sources performed unofficial recounts of the Florida votes. The first was conducted by the Miami Herald and USA Today. They found that under most recount scenarios, Bush would have won the election, but Gore would have won using the most generous methods. Another group which included the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, CNN, Palm Beach Post and St. Petersburg Times, hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to examine 175,010 ballots that were collected from the entire state, Bush would have won the most inclusive scenario by 110 votes. Subsequent analyses came to the conclusion that Bush likely would have won anyway, had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened.
Incumbent Democratic President Bill Clinton was not eligible to serve a third term, and Vice President Gore was able to secure the Democratic nomination without much difficulty. Bush was the early favorite for the Republican nomination, but he faced stiff competition from Arizona Senator John McCain and other candidates. Bush chose former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his running mate, and Gore chose Senator Joe Lieberman as his. Both campaigns focused on domestic issues, such as the budget, tax relief, and reforms for federal social insurance programs. Clinton and Gore usually did not campaign together. This was a deliberate decision on the part of the Gore campaign in order to distance Gore from any criticism Clinton might attract as a result of the Lewinsky sex scandal. It was a strategy that Gore would be second guessed on.
Gore was a consistent front-runner for the Democratic nomination, though he was expected to face challenges from Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, and famous actor Warren Beatty. In the end none of these potential challengers chose to run. Former New Jersey Senator and ex-NBA star Bill Bradley ran as the alternative to Gore. Former basketball star Michael Jordan campaigned for him in the early primary states. The focus of his campaign was a plan to spend the budget surplus on a variety of social welfare programs to help the poor and the middle-class, along with campaign finance reform and gun control. Gore easily defeated Bradley in the primaries. The closest Bradley came to a victory was his 50%-46% loss to Gore in the New Hampshire primary. By March 14, Gore had won enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination. Gore won the nomination unanimously at the Democratic National Convention. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was nominated for vice president by voice vote. Lieberman became the first Jewish American ever to be chosen for this position by a major party.
George W. Bush was the early front-runner for the Republican nomination. His campaign team achieved unprecedented funding and he had the benefit of name recognition and connections of the Bush family. Several other potential candidates withdrew before the Iowa Caucus because they were unable to secure funding and endorsements sufficient to be competitive with Bush. These included Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, and Lamar Alexander. That left Bush, John McCain, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, and Orrin Hatch as the only candidates still in the race. On January 24, Bush won the Iowa caucus with 41% of the vote. Forbes came in second with 30% of the vote. Keyes received 14%, Bauer 9%, McCain 5%, and Hatch 1%. Hatch dropped out. Bush was portrayed in the media as the establishment candidate, while McCain, with the support of many independents, portrayed himself as a crusading grass-roots candidate who focused on campaign reform. On February 1, McCain won a 49-30% victory over Bush in the New Hampshire primary. Gary Bauer dropped out. After coming in third in Delaware Forbes dropped out, leaving three candidates.
In the South Carolina primary, Bush soundly defeated McCain. McCain supporters blamed it on the Bush campaign, accusing them of dirty tricks, such as spreading the rumor that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi-born daughter was an African-American child he fathered out of wedlock. McCain rebounded, winning both Michigan and his home state of Arizona on February 22. On February 24, McCain criticized Bush for accepting the endorsement of Bob Jones University with its policy banning interracial dating. On February 28, McCain also referred to Rev. Jerry Falwell and televangelist Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance". Bush scored victories in Virginia on February 29, and on Super Tuesday, March 7, Bush won New York, Ohio, Georgia, Missouri, California, Maryland, and Maine. McCain won Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, but dropped out of the race. Bush won the majority of the remaining contests and won the Republican nomination on March 14, winning his home state of Texas and his brother Jeb's home state of Florida among others. At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia George W. Bush was formally selected as the party's candidate for President, receiving 1526 votes on the first ballot, with McCain finishing second with 275. Bush asked former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to head up a team to help select a running mate for him, but ultimately, Bush decided that Cheney himself should be the vice presidential nominee.
The campaign focused mainly on domestic issues, such as the projected budget surplus, proposed reforms of Social Security and Medicare, health care, and competing plans for tax relief. Foreign policy was also sometimes an issue. Bush criticized Clinton administration policies in Somalia, where 18 Americans died in 1993 trying to sort out warring factions, and in the Balkans, where the United States had sent troops for peacekeeping functions. Bush referred to this as "nation-building". Bush pledged to bridge partisan gaps in the Washington. Gore questioned Bush's fitness for the job, pointing to gaffes made by Bush in interviews and speeches.
Bill Clinton's impeachment and the sex scandal that led up to it cast a shadow on the campaign. Republicans denounced the Clinton scandals, and Bush, made repeated promises to restore "honor and dignity" to the White House. Gore avoided the Clinton scandals, as did Lieberman, even though Lieberman had been the first Democratic senator to denounce Clinton's misbehavior. It was believed that Gore actually chose Lieberman as his running mate in an attempt to separate himself from Clinton's failings. Gore avoided appearing with Clinton, who was limited to appearances in areas where he was popular.
Ralph Nader was the most successful of third-party candidates. He conducted large rallies in sports arenas like Madison Square Garden, with retired talk show host Phil Donahue as master of ceremonies. The Gore campaign made a pitch to potential Nader supporters in the final weeks of the campaign, warning of potential vote-splitting that might elect Bush. The Republican Leadership Council actually ran pro-Nader ads in a few states in an effort to split the liberal vote. When the campaign was over, many Gore supporters were hostile to Nader, claiming that Nader votes would have been cast for Gore, and that Nader threw the election outcome to Bush. Nader dismissed such concerns, claiming his objective in the campaign was to pass the 5-percent threshold so his Green Party would be eligible for matching funds in future races.
With the exceptions of Florida and Gore's home state of Tennessee, Bush carried the Southern states by comfortable margins, including Clinton's home state of Arkansas. He also secured wins in Ohio, Indiana, most of the rural Midwestern farming states, most of the Rocky Mountain states, and Alaska. Gore swept the Northeastern United States (with the sole exception of New Hampshire, which Bush won narrowly), most of the Upper Midwest, and all of the Pacific Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California, and carried Hawaii, as well. As election night wore on, the returns in a handful of small-to-medium-sized states, including Wisconsin and Iowa, were extremely close. But it was the state of Florida that would decide the winner of the election. As the final national results were tallied the following morning, Bush had clearly won a total of 246 electoral votes, while Gore had won 255 votes. 270 votes were needed to win. Two smaller states-New Mexico (5 electoral votes) and Oregon (7 electoral votes)-were still too close to call. It was Florida (25 electoral votes), however, that became the key to an election win for either candidate. Both New Mexico and Oregon were declared in favor of Gore over the next few days. Florida would ultimately win the election.
The outcome of the election was not known for more than a month after the balloting ended because of the extended process of counting and then recounting Florida's presidential ballots. Between 7:50 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. EST on election day, just as the polls closed in the largely Republican Florida panhandle, which is in the Central time zone, all major television news networks (CNN, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, and ABC) declared that Gore had carried Florida's 25 electoral votes. They based this on exit poll data. However, in the actual vote tally Bush began to take a wide lead early in Florida, and by 10 p.m. EST the networks had retracted that prediction and placed Florida back into the "undecided" column. At approximately 2:30 a.m., with some 85% of the votes counted in Florida and Bush leading Gore by more than 100,000 votes, the networks declared that Bush had carried Florida and therefore had been elected president. However, most of the remaining votes to be counted in Florida were located in three heavily Democratic counties-Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach. As their votes were reported Gore began to gain on Bush. By 4:30 a.m., after all votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush's margin to just over 2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their predictions that Bush had won Florida and the presidency.
Gore, had privately conceded the election to Bush, but he later called Bush to withdraw his concession. The final result in Florida was slim enough to require a mandatory recount (by machine) under state law; Bush's lead had dwindled to about 300 votes by the time it was completed later that week. A count of overseas military ballots later boosted his margin to about 900 votes.
Gore requested hand recounts in four counties (Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia), as provided under Florida state law. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced she would reject any revised totals from those counties if they were not turned in by November 14, the statutory deadline for amended returns. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline to November 26, but this decision was later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court. Miami-Dade eventually halted its recount and resubmitted its original total to the state canvassing board, while Palm Beach County failed to meet the extended deadline. On November 26, the state canvassing board certified Bush the winner of Florida's electors by 537 votes.
Gore formally contested the certified results. A state court decision which ruled against Gore was reversed by the Florida Supreme Court. That court ordered a recount of over 70,000 ballots previously rejected by machine counters. But the last word on the recount and on the election came from the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 12, 2000, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 vote that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling requiring a statewide recount of ballots was unconstitutional. In a 5-4 vote the US Supreme Court ruled the Florida recounts could not be completed before a December 12 and should therefore cease. This meant that the previously certified total should hold, and the 25 electoral votes from the state of Florida were awarded to George W. Bush, making him the President-elect of the United States.
Gore came in second in the electoral vote, but he received 543,895 more popular votes than Bush. Gore failed to win his home state of Tennessee, which both he and his father had represented in the Senate. He was the first major-party presidential candidate to have lost his home state since George McGovern lost South Dakota in 1972. Bush received 50,456,002 votes (47.87%) and 271 electoral votes, compared to 50,999,897 (48.38%) and 266 electoral votes for Gore. Nader received 2,882,955 votes (2.74%) and no electoral votes.
Although these results were the ones that counted, several independent sources performed unofficial recounts of the Florida votes. The first was conducted by the Miami Herald and USA Today. They found that under most recount scenarios, Bush would have won the election, but Gore would have won using the most generous methods. Another group which included the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, CNN, Palm Beach Post and St. Petersburg Times, hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to examine 175,010 ballots that were collected from the entire state, Bush would have won the most inclusive scenario by 110 votes. Subsequent analyses came to the conclusion that Bush likely would have won anyway, had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened.