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U.S. Presidential Elections: Will The Election Of 2016 Be Closer Than The One In 2000?

By Louis Babcock
Published on: 22:18 PST, Nov 5, 2016

On Tuesday, millions of voters in the United States will head to the polls in order to determine if Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will become the next President of the United States. With less than 72 hours to go, many political experts are stating that the election is currently too close to call, or that the race is tied.

According to Real Clear Politics, Hillary Clinton solidly has 216 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win while Donald Trump solidly has 164. The amount of electoral votes still out there for the taking totals 158.

With this election having the potential to be one of the closest in history, many are wondering if this election has the potential to be more of a nail-biter than the election that happened in 2000.

The 2000 election for president of the United States saw George W. Bush battle against Al Gore. This election was only the fourth time in history where the winner of the Electoral College did not win the popular vote. The other elections where this happened were in 1824, 1876, and 1888. In 2000, George W. Bush barely won the Electoral College by winning 271 electoral votes.

In order to win, 270 electoral votes are needed. Bush’s 271 electoral votes equaled 50,456,062 votes in total. Al Gore was only able to win 268 electoral votes but he received 50,996,582 total votes.

Related Article: Electoral College: What Happens If Donald Trump And Hillary Clinton Tie Or Do Not Reach 270?

As could be expected, controversy swirled around the two candidates as each party argued why their candidate should rightly have won the election. The main point of controversy was not the rare fact that the Electoral College winner did not win the popular vote. The main controversy came from the votes that were cast in the swing state of Florida.

With 25 electoral votes at the time, Florida was considered a must-win for each candidate. Leading up to the election, political experts knew that Florida would decide the election, but they had no idea just how close the votes were going to be in Florida. When election night coverage was in full swing on that November night, CNN, along with other networks, declared Al Gore the winner of Florida. As more vote totals from Florida came in, the networks recanted their decision and the winner of the state was still up in the air. The votes in Florida were so close that a mandatory recount was triggered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk38r8owZsg

During the Florida recount, the American public was introduced to the term “hanging chad.” Pollsters were discovering that some ballots in Florida did not fully have the area pushed out that was needed to be pushed out in order for the vote to officially count. According to the election law in Florida, the election needed to be certified within one week of Election Day. It took weeks for the recount in Florida to be completed. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris stated that she would not accept recount totals that were not certified by the time the one-week deadline had come to pass. Since the ballots were being recounted by hand, some counties in Florida were unable to meet the one-week deadline.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled to delay the vote certification deadline until every vote in Florida was counted. The court also allowed hand recounts to take place in some counties but not all of them. This point was one in which Gore did not agree with. If a recount was going to take place by hand in one county, then they should all be done by hand, according to him.

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually was brought in. The court met to determine if the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to allow hand recounts in only some of the counties was legal. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of George W. Bush and they ordered the recount in Florida to cease. When it was all said and done, Bush was declared the winner of Florida by only 537 votes.

Do you think the 2016 election will end up being as close as the election was in 2000?

[Featured Image By Charles Bennett/AP Photo, File]

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