Talk:United States presidential election/Archive 1

Useful standards
Some of these standards are useful for other election types. France has a president, so does Russia, and some Latin American and many developing countries. Most examples of elections are for parliamentary styles, but not all. So the table styles, means of tallying up to the final winner, etc., would all be useful to document for other presidential systems (though hopefully no other country will ever have an Electoral College!).

Also mayoralty elections and governor elections also have a single winner who takes all.

External election maps
Someone might want to add the presidential election maps from,

http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/_browse2000.htm

--Imran

More external election maps:

2008 election with Google Maps

1980 to 2004 election with Google Maps

--Minglam

External election results graphic
I created this animated graphic to show election results from 1952 to 2008 broken down by state.

http://home.comcast.net/~tmoy/super-graph/pres-elec.html

It shows not only Republican/Democrat preference, but the degree one way or the other. It also shows change from one election to the next.

It's written as a Java Applet, so you need to have Java enabled in your browser. Check here if you do not have the Java plug-in (add on).

http://www.java.com/en/download/

Tmoy (talk) 03:32, 15 November 2008 (UTC)tmoy

Results format
Hm, I really dislike the table listing "President" and "Opponent", as if there always has been and can only be one of the later. This is a major distortion of elections like 1860 and 1912, and in many other elections additional candidates may have swung the ballance of power, and in any case are usefull to know as far as understanding the electorate at the time. --Infrogmation


 * This is an artifact of the source for the data (National Archives), and the format of the table. I agree that this could be done better.  I've got an idea that I'm going to give a shot (listing all major opponents, where "major" is explicitly defined as greater than 1% of the total popular vote -- RobLa


 * Excellent! -- Infrogmation

I'm mulling over a new format for the box scores at the top of every article. Thoughts on this?

Old format

New format (New #1)

This moves all of the explanatory clutter off to the left, making it easier to see what happened at a glance.

Lemme know what you think. I probably won't have time to act on this for a while (if ever...that's a lot of work switching them all over, even with a script). -- RobLa 04:07 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

I like this, Rob. It seems easier to follow. -- Zoe

I also like this. I made one tiny change to help IE6: Instead of colspan='2', I changed it to colspan="2". For whatever reason, IE doesn't like the former. --Mrwojo

---

I also prefer the new proposed format. -- M Carling

Thanks for the feedback; glad you like it. Now that I've gotten everyone to agree, I've got a tweak to make. ;-) How about adding a column header, as below?  It's less compact, but a lot clearer, IMHO. -- RobLa 06:59 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

Even newer format (New #2)

-

I liked your idea above of listing all oponents with 1% or more of the popular vote. Why is Ross Perot not in the table? I believe he got 9% or so in 1996. -- M Carling 13:55 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)

The table looks good as long as it can be used with more than 2 candidates. Again while 2 candidates may be an acceptable oversimplification for most years, it becomes a major distortion of fact when talking about elections such as 1860 and 1912. Could you post an example of the table with more candidates? -- Infrogmation 17:00 Feb 5, 2003 (UTC)


 * One concern I have is, in the case of the 1860 election, there is no way to in which you can really identify who the "main opponent" was. There was no single, "main" opponent to Lincoln; Douglas got the most votes among those opponents, but several of them got a lot of votes that weren't much different from Douglas's total, and three of the opponents got electoral votes.  It really isn't an accurate characterization of that election to describe any of Lincoln's opponents as the "main" one.  soulpatch


 * As a followup, I would prefer that the table got turned on its side, so that the candidates were lined up vertically. Here is a very rough draft of what I think would be a preferable organization for the table (it is not polished, it is just meant to give a flavor of what I propose) soulpatch:

New #3


 * Looks good to me. -- Infrogmation


 * I would also suggest that we add a column for the Vice Presidential candidate (there is plenty room for it, I just left it out). We could also probably  squeeze in a column for the VP's electoral vote count, if anyone really cares about that.  And of course the "other elections" and Federal Register references can be added to the bottom as additional rows to the table.  soulpatch

Here's another draft of my proposal soulpatch: New #4

Other suggestions: The electoral vote, popular vote, and percentage columns should be right-justified so that they line up more nicely. soulpatch

---

I like soulpatch's table. -- M Carling 5 Feb 2003 18:20 (UTC)

-- I'm torn...I agree that significant third/fourth/fifth place finishers should be listed. I'm not sure I like the idea of switching the X and Y axis to accommodate that, though. I find it's easier to read with the candidates in a column.

New #5

There are problems once you get up to five candidates, but that is rare enough that the table could be split into two "macro rows". The column headers are also admittedly awkward.

If people really prefer New #4 above, I'd at least like to reorder and relabel the columns as below, making it easier to associated the popular vote with the candidate (running mate is more obvious, and can go far right):

New #6

More thoughts? -- RobLa 06:54 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)


 * Using the term "Running mate" could be problematic, since for the first dozen or so elections, the Vice President was whoever finished second in the Electoral College standings.  That's why many of the first President/Vice President combinations featured politicians from different political parties.  Also, is there some way to work in the total/majority electoral college numbers? Minesweeper


 * I like #6. It's true that the first three elections handled vice presidential elections differently  (it was changed by the 12th amendment in 1804 after the 1800 election resulted in a tie; the framers of the Constitution didn't anticipate the rise of partisan politics where parties would submit two candidates for office in the hopes of capturing both president and vice-president).  I think that the 1792, 1796, and 1800 elections probably need to have a different table format than the others, just because the elections were conducted according to different constitutionally defined rules. Another issue is the question of the occasional cases where people who didn't even run got an electoral vote because of some renegade elector, like Ronald Reagan in 1976 or John Qunicy Adams who got 1 electoral vote in 1820 which prevented James Monroe from winning the election unanimously.  It seems like, for completeness, we should include lines in the table for these people, with the popular vote totals being blank, maybe with a footnote.  But maybe there's a better way to handle those cases. soulpatch

1824 is also a rather messy election. Not only were four presidential candidates, but the ultimate winner (John Quincy Adams) was not the one who got the plurality of electoral votes (that was Andrew Jackson), because no one carried a majority and it got thrown to the House. And on top of that, the vice presidential race DID have a winner with a majority. Part of what made that one messy was the fact that there was only one major party at that time, the Democratic-Republicans. soulpatch

-

I like table #6 for all but the first three elections. Renegade electors are not a problem -- just list in the table the recipient with their electoral vote and however many, if any, popular votes, with an explanation in the body below. M Carling

- In response to my moving Zoe's maps over to the right (compare U.S. presidential election, 1860 with an older version), I received the following remark on my talk page:


 * I think the election maps look better centered. Kingturtle 05:15 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

I think it wastes a lot of space to center the map. I'm not sure exactly how it looks on your machine, but on mine, this means that any explanatory text gets shoved "below the fold", which is pretty awful. However, I'll hold off on 1808-1848 to let others weigh in. -- RobLa 05:50 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

Instructions for converting Electoral College maps

Here's how I converted the maps you see on U.S. presidential election, 2000 from the source material provided by NationalAtlas.gov. Clearly, there are many ways of doing this. This method relies only on free software:


 * 1) Visit http://nationalatlas.gov/electionsprint.html
 * 2) Download the "EPS download"
 * 3) Open in GIMP
 * 4) In the "Load Postscript" dialog, choose "Graphic Antialiasing: Strong", and "Text Antialiasing: Strong", and a resolution of 90
 * 5) In the full image, use selection tool to select map for given year
 * 6) Copy the region (Ctrl+C)
 * 7) Right click, select "Edit", "Paste as new"
 * 8) Save as ElectoralCollegeXXXX.jpg
 * 9) Close the EPS
 * 10) Reopen the EPS file, this time choosing "Graphic Antialiasing: Strong", and "Text Antialiasing: Strong", and a resolution of 264
 * 11) Repeat process, saving as ElectoralCollegeXXXX-Large.jpg

I just changed the description of when elections take place from "the first Tuesday in November" to "the Tuesday after the first Monday in November". For example, see Federal Election Commission. It is possible that I am misinterpreting something, as I am not an American. - Molinari 01:01 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Good catch. You're correct...the old wording was in error.   - RobLa 07:51 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

There's a change I would like to make to all of the electoral articles. It involves adding this table to the bottom of all of them: Template:Uspresidentialelections

...and removing the seven election window that's included in the table near the top. I've done it on U.S. presidential election, 2000 already, but the question is whether that should be propogated to all of them. Thoughts? -- RobLa 06:03, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Results format (again)
It appears as though we have three competing formats for the election result tables. They are (currently) reflected in these articles:

1. Current standard (discussed and agreed to above): 1996 2. Enhanced standard: 2000 3. Pres/VP split: a. old - 1916 b. new - 1920

 Discussion'

I don't have a strong opinion one way or another as to which one it should be, but I do strongly feel that changes made to this many articles should be vetted before being made, as it's very time consuming to change them after the fact.

There are elements of the enhanced standard that I like. The consolidation of the "popular vote" header is a nice touch, as well as the more rows for voter turnout. The problem that I have with it is that it assumes that the VP always gets the same electoral votes as the pres (not true).

There are elements of the Pres/VP split I like. It's a simpler format, and works well even for the earliest elections. The problem that I have with it is that it doesn't make room for percentage breakdowns or totals. The center justification for numeric values doesn't look right, and will look worse once totals are added.

So, can we have some discussion about the various formats before an edit war breaks out? -- RobLa 19:34, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think I prefer the Pres/VP split format. I think it's clearest and easiest to understand. Furthermore, for elections like 1824, 1836, 1840, 1872, and so forth, it makes a lot more sense, since Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates in those years (at least the ones who won electoral votes) weren't tied together in any predictable way. I think the Pres/VP split can be tinkered with to take care of your objections, as well. We could add a column for percentages, and (obviously) change the alignment of the numbers columns - I'd prefer a right justification, actually, I was just following the alignment already set. Another irritating thing about it would be harder to deal with - that it's in html code. But I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Certainly there are tremendous disadvantages to moving several of the articles currently in the Pres/VP split format over to the standard/enhanced format. I'd also note that I don't particularly like the turn out figures - I think this would be better placed in the text than in an election results table. john k 19:50, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've updated the 1920 election with a split table I can live with. If we can agree on that or something closer to that, then I think the next step is to convert a highly visible article (e.g. 2000), so that more people see the new format and have a chance to throw rocks, make changes, etc. Once the dust settles, only then do I think a resumption of conversion would be in order. -- RobLa 04:08, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. john k 22:49, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No objection yet in 2000...one thing that I do find irritating about the table is that the two popular vote/popular vote percentage columns in the President table are slightly wider than the Popular vote column in the VP table. I'm not comfortable with the html, so I don't really want to jigger with it, but I think that once that's settled, we should start converting the rest of them. john k 16:38, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you wish to attract even more attention, then you might wait until the second and use your proposed format for the 2004 results page. (Then again, one might have to wait even longer to find out results in some states.) -- Emsworth 20:08, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree. John K, this change is your baby, so I'll let you do the honors. -- RobLa 06:11, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to argue that all candidates be listed in the table. Not just those with > 1% of the poll. In 2004, that decision would mean that only the two main candidates are listed. I believe that all presidential candidates should be listed even if they only ran in part of the country. After all this is an encyclopedia, and should be complete. What do others think? -- Bernfarr 18:18, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Project page and results format
Hi there:

John K just made me aware of the discussions happening on this page. As it happens, I have been working to make the presidential election pages consistent, and I have created a project page for the "U.S. presidential election, yyyy" pages. Please take a look; I'd like to know if my proposals are good ones or if I've totally screwed the pooch.

One thing I should mention is that, since I wasn't aware of this discussion page (or, more precisely, that discussions about the set of U.S. presidential election pages was occurring here), I have been making changes to the "Electoral results" sections of the various presidential election pages. I started at 1789 and am up to 1904. I have been employing templates, using the same techniques as were used for the succession tables, to generate the results tables. For example, here is the election results table for the election of 1828:

(a) ''The popular vote figures exclude Delaware and South Carolina. In both of these states, the Electors were chosen by the state legislatures rather than by popular vote.'' (b) U.S. popular vote total disclaimer

and here is the code I used to generate it:

(a) ''The popular vote figures exclude Delaware and South Carolina. In both of these states, the Electors were chosen by the state legislatures rather than by popular vote.'' (b) 

The advantage to using templates is that style tweaks that don't change the underlying information can be made instantaneously across all the presidential election pages.

Now, this election results table doesn't work for a Presidential election in which a presidential ticket has a presidential candidate who is paired with at least two veeps, and a veep candidate who is paired with at least two presidential candidates. It also doesn't work for pre-Amendment XII elections. For these elections (unless any happened in the 20th century, the elections for which this applies are: 1789, 1792, 1796, 1800, 1812, 1824, 1836, and 1872), I generate three tables:  one for the presidential election, one for the vice presidential election, and one to show how the candidates are paired up. All of these tables also make use of templates.

Let me know what you think. &mdash; DLJessup 04:07, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I generally like the new table format, and I definitely like leveraging templates.  I think the best way to get everyone's attention is to edit the 2004 election results, and see if that sticks.  If it does, then finish off the rest of the results for 1908-2000 -- RobLa 20:14, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, the 2004 election does have one twist: it has the only elections results box that contains a "Ballot Access" column.  What I think I'll do is break out that column into a separate table for now, and then put that column into a revised template format if further discussion indicates that I should do so.  I am currently hesitant to add the "Ballot Access" column to the templates for a couple of reasons:
 * On low resolution monitors, the elections results table is already plenty wide without adding in new columns.
 * Currently, the only election for which we have this data is 2004. Unless we can get the data for other elections, it really doesn't make sense to have a separate set of templates for the 2004 election alone or to have a dummy column for all elections except 2004.
 * I will proceed to split off the "Ballot Access" column and edit the 2004 election results momentarily. &mdash; DLJessup 05:20, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maps
On some of the maps on the pages for specific elections, blue is Republican, and red is Democrat. However, it is the other way around on the U.S. presidential election, 2004 page. Does anyone think this is potentially confusing? And isn't it blue for Democrat and red for Republican anyway, i.e isn't the 2004 version correct and the others wrong?


 * I was sort of thinking the same thing. I mean, I don't think either party has an official color (actually I'm sure the official colors for both parties are red, white, and blue) but certainly today with the whole red state/blue state terminology it's basically essential that the coloring should remain as it is for the 2004 map. Unfortunately, if we want consistency, that means changing all the other maps. I'd be for this, as I don't think there was any particular reason why it was done the other way for the earlier maps. However, I don't know how to do this, and I sort of doubt it can be done without redoing all the maps from scratch. Can anyone help out here? -R. fiend 07:30, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It isn't just the 2004 election - the 2000, 1984, and 1980 presidential elections also have the states which voted Republican in red. I agree it should be changed, as it is rather irritating to have to refer to the legend on every map. I'm not sure where the contemporary "red state/blue state" terminology came from, but it certainly seems to be in the minority of the maps referenced. IstvanWolf 17:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Most of the Presidential maps used here are from the National Archives (i.e. are free to use by Wikipedia). The thing is that before the 2000 election there was no real strong connection between the colors and the political parties.  In fact, for most of the 2nd half of the 20th century, the major TV networks agreed on a color scheme and just switched them every election (i.e. in 1996 the Dems were colored Red and the Reps Blue).  I think that the drama of the 2000 election, in which we all stared at that map for a month while the whole recount played out, really just cemented the whole Republican=Red and Democrats=Blue connection into everybody's mind, and the phrase "red state" and "blue state" started entering the political discourse; by the time 2004 rolled around, it was sort of unthinkable that they'd switch colors as they did traditionally, but it is really quite a recent phenomenon.


 * According to the Red State vs Blue State article, it was just a coincidence that all major networks used the same scheme for the first time in the 2000 election. Schoop 13:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I think people in Europe must think it's kind of funny, actually: over there colors tend to be very strongly associated with parties, but almost always more left-wing parties use red and more right-wing parties use blue. --Jfruh (talk) 03:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

How to get your name on the ticket
This is a very interesting article and I enjoyed reading it. I am hoping someone can expand on how someone is legally allowed to have thier name on the ticket for the Presidential election. The Republicans and Democrats most people know about, but there are always those third parties that are at the bottom of the ballet and then there is the crazy guy who is running for President on the Neo-Nazi Communist ticket who asks everyone to "write in" his name. Why can't that guy have his name printed on the ticket ahead of time? I know there is a set of laws stating who can be be pre-printed on the election ticket and that would be a good addition to the article. -Husnock 12:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * It's not a national thing; the requirements vary from state to state and it's easier to get listed in some states than in others. The order in which they appear is also subject to determination by each individual state. That doesn't make it impossible to produce such a list, but it does make it more complicated both to generate and to keep up to date as state laws change. 68.105.71.75 (talk) 21:55, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

More years to the Voter turnout table
I think we should add more years and numbers to the voter turnout table using statistics gathered from the other Presidential Election pages. I will be doing this soon, barring any major objections. Any objections? Copysan 08:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

In addition, it would be useful to explain the acronym VAP - Anonymous

The general format of the elections
One thing that I would suggest is that the entire process of the US elections is described. A I am from outside the US I don't know a great deal about the system, except that there is a race to lead a party and then the two candidates go against each other for the Presidency, with each state given a number of points and the candidiate with the most overall points will win. Maybe it would bw nice to give a general idea of the process, how (and when) candidtates can enter, what eventually decides who will lead each party, the caucus and primary elections, etc. --TheTall One 20:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I'm also from outside the US and I find the american system a bit strange, to say the least, since the winner is not neccessarily the one that receives the most votes. The 2000 president election seems like a semi-democratic farce to me given the knowledge I currently hold on the subject. I would like to see a comparation between how a president is selected in USA and other countries. 83.177.66.212 20:02, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Electoral maps
Can we get consistent with the Red/Blue and which party it denotes? Thanks 70.177.37.131 14:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Election trends
Contemporary electoral success has favored state governors.

Is this saying that governorship bodes better then senatorialship for getting elected POTUS? If so, I'm not sure 4 of 5 really indicates a trend from 50-50 choices.Techsmith 05:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Limit on number of terms?
Is there a limit on the number of terms a US president can serve? Can Bush get elected for a third term in 2008? J I P | Talk 17:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Short answer: no. See Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution.   A person can only be elected president twice, and can only serve as president for 10 years. --Jfruh (talk) 23:05, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Slightly longer answer - George Washington was asked to seek a third term (and he would probably have won unopposed), but he declined. Every successive President followed Washington's example through the Nineteenth century.  Franklin Roosevelt violated precedent by seeking and winning reelection in 1940.  The 22nd amendment was put into place following Roosevelt's death, during Harry Truman's presidency.  Schoop 13:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Improper source for popular vote
I am not sure if this has been discussed elsewhere, or if this is the proper place to bring this up, but is there any reason why the source for the popular vote is uselectionatlas.org instead of archives.gov, which is the source for the electoral votes? There are significant variations in the numbers when these two sites are compared. I compared all of the US election pages (which use uselectionatlas.org) to the National Archives' totals, and every election back to 1888 is off. Why is this? I propose using the National Archives' results unless there is some reason why uselectionatlas.org's totals are correct over and above the official results. The discrepancies are as follows: candidates             popular vote 2004 Bush/Kerry             62,040,610/59,028,111 - total used on article page from NARA                 60,693,281/57,355,978 - total from National Archives 2000 Bush/Gore              50,460,110/51,003,926 NARA                   50,456,062/50,996,582 1996 Clinton/Dole           47,400,125/39,198,755 NARA                   45,590,703/37,816,307 1992 Clinton/Bush           44,909,806/39,104,550 NARA                   44,908,254/39,102,343 1988 Bush/Dukakis           48,886,597/41,809,476 NARA                   48,886,097/41,809,074 1984 Reagan/Mondale         54,455,472/37,577,352 NARA                   54,455,075/37,577,185 1980 Reagan/Carter          43,903,230/35,480,115 NARA                   43,904,153/35,483,883 1976 Carter/Ford            40,831,881/39,148,634 NARA                   40,830,763/39,147,793 1972 Nixon/McGovern         47,168,710/29,173,222 NARA                   47,169,911/29,170,383 1968 Nixon/Humphrey         31,783,783/31,271,839 NARA                   31,785,480/31,275,166 1964 Johnson/Goldwater      43,127,041/27,175,754 NARA                   43,129,566/27,178,188 1960 Kennedy/Nixon          34,220,984/34,108,157 NARA                   34,226,731/34,108,157 1956 Eisenhower/Stevenson   35,579,180/26,028,028 NARA                   35,590,472/26,022,752 1952 Eisenhower/Stevenson   34,075,529/27,375,090 NARA                   33,936,234/27,314,992 1948 Truman/Dewey           24,179,347/21,991,292 NARA                   24,179,345/21,991,291 1944 Roosevelt/Dewey        25,612,916/22,017,929 NARA                   25,612,610/22,117,617 1940 Roosevelt/Wilke        27,313,945/22,347,744 NARA                   27,313,041/22,348,480 1936 Roosevelt/Landon       27,752,648/16,681,862 NARA                   27,757,333/16,684,231 1932 Roosevelt/Hoover       22,821,277/15,761,254 NARA                   22,829,501/15,760,684 1928 Hoover/Smith           21,427,123/15,015,464 NARA                   21,437,277/15,007,698 1924 Coolidge/Davis         15,723,789/8,386,242 NARA                   15,719,921/8,386,704 1920 Harding/Cox            16,144,093/9,139,661 NARA                   16,153,115/9,133,092 1916 Wilson/Hughes          9,126,868/8,548,728 NARA                   9,126,300/8,546,789 1912 Wilson/Roosevelt       6,296,284/4,122,721 NARA                   6,293,152/4,119,207 1908 Taft/Bryan             7,678,395/6,408,984 NARA                   7,676,258/6,406,801 1904 Roosevelt/Parker       7,630,457/5,083,880 NARA                   7,626,593/5,082,898 1900 McKinley/Bryan         7,228,864/6,370,932 NARA                   7,218,039/6,358,345 1896 McKinley/Bryan         7,112,138/6,508,172 NARA                   7,108,480/6,511,495 1892 Cleveland/Harrison     5,553,898/5,190,819 NARA                   5,551,883/5,179,244 Have there been any previous discussion about this? If I am missing something, I apologize and please let me know. Otherwise, any comments or feedback would be appreciated. Regards.--Old Hoss 18:27, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * good point--there is a difference. There is no "official" source. however the NARA uses an old CQ book and the Atlas is very specific about the high quality state sources it uses (election returns are a state matter, not federal). Rjensen 21:29, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, I was not aware of that. Do you think it would be appropriate to note that somewhere on the election pages (maybe in the notes or something), or is this something that draws little concern?--Old Hoss 04:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

1824 Election
"Aaron Burr responded by shooting Alexander Hamilton." Is it just me or does that sentence not really explain what happened? Maybe my 8th grade history teacher was just lying to us, but that's not how I remember it going down... (yes, it happened, but that sentence is incredibly misleading).128.187.192.227 (talk) 21:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

News Media Source Link
Hi Wikipedia, Please add my link to the News Media section of United State Presidential election page. I am a reliable news source on the 2008 Campaign and Elections. I get news from major news sources. I tried placing my link but it repeatedly got deleted. Here is my link. Presidential Election Campaign 2008, Campaign 2008 Headline News, Breaking News, Top News Video My site is "The Bird's Eye View Newsstand".

I look forward to your response. I would appreciate my link as a news media source at United States Presidential Election page.

I enjoy Wikipeda.

Sincerely, Robin Casey —Preceding unsigned comment added by Isavesmart (talk • contribs) 06:45, 23 January 2008 (UTC) --Isavesmart (talk) 06:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Results table
Is there a pticlr reason why the results table is colour-banded, rather than being coloured to show which party won? Certainly it makes it very difficult to see party trends, as it is… — OwenBlacker (Talk) 12:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Libertarian Party
Twice now, people have tried to add Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party nominee, to the Major Candidates list. As the Libertarian party has gathered <1% of the popular vote of the two major parties in the last two elections, I reverted the edits. I wonder now if my actions were appropriate and in keeping with Wikipedian policy? Please respond :) NuclearWarfare (talk) 23:44, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Seeing as ho this year they have a real candidate (forgive my snarkiness) the issue is somewhat different. Nader is included in 2000 and 2004 despite the fact that before that the Green Party was as much a non-entity as the Libs. We can't look just at the history, or we'd have excluded Perot in 1992 and 1996 as well. Barr is polling substantially higher than any previous Libertarian Party candidate and is getting much more media coverage, and while he's not a credible candidate to win, it is possible for him to affect the outcome. I think he deserves to be included. -R. fiend (talk) 13:50, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Confusing table order
Is there a good reason why the two tables sort both according to date but in opposite orders? This is most confusing, I only noticed because a reference to changing turnout seemed the wrong way round. If you have looked at the first table I would suggest it is natural to expect the second to be in the same order. Walworth (talk) 13:44, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Who is eligible to vote?
This article lacks a description of who is eligible to vote. (voting age, American citizinship, exceptions, etc.) I am not an American, but I have understood that in order to vote in the USA, you have to register as a voter. How does that work? Perhaps that is described in an other article, but then, this article must have a summary of that and a link to that other article.

In the Netherlands, since the days of Napoleon, every town hall keeps records of all inhabitants, births, deaths etc. So, no separate registration as voter is required. Every voter automatically gets a voting card in the mail. You don't have to do anything for that. Johan Lont (talk) 09:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC) Johan Lont (talk) 09:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC)


 * ...which necessarily includes a significant number of persons ineligible to vote, such as non-citizens, felons, and the mentally incompetent. The actual number of eligible voters is somewhat lower, and the number of registered voters is lower still.


 * The general eligibility information for any election in the United States is on Elections in the United States. Because it is essentially an amalgamation of separate and simultaneous state elections instead of a single national election run by the federal government, it depends on each state's laws. However, I have not figured out how to work it into the article. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 04:41, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion as "major candidate"
The current criteria requires 2% of the popular vote for inclusion as a "major candidate" in modern elections. Whatever number we choose will be arbitrary; I propose changing this value to 1%. It would result in the inclusion of only a few more candidates over the years and would seem to be a more logical cutoff point. Thoughts? Qqqqqq (talk) 18:54, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

1st paragraph
The wording in the first paragraph is a little confusing. At first look I thought that it was the date the president was elected and not the date he (or she) takes office. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.25.235.229 (talk) 03:48, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

EC votes
I think that having a column in the table for EC votes is a good idea.

The way I had it before it was changed, meant you could look down a single column and see the winning margin in each election. I was wondering what the votes were like and if the margins tended to be small or large. Since the info wasn't easily available, I added it. This info is harder to see under the new format.

After the update the EC votes are shown beside the name of the candidate.

Perhaps, as a compromise, the column could be called 'winning margin' and would just should the votes received by the top 2.

If a person wants to see more detail, they can just click on the link to detailed info on the particular election. Ivnryn (talk) 09:32, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

David Leip/Popular votes
Is this a reliable source for popular votes?

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/

If you click on 1876 on this page, the results are significantly different from WP's article, which appear to be drawn from a different source on the same site: http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/GENERAL/pe1876.html.

I don't know which is right, although the former one (http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/) indicates on the "other" tab that an unnamed candidate for the "communist" party gained 32 votes. In 1876 I find this very hard to believe! BillMasen (talk) 12:58, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

2008 Voter turnout
There seems to be data for the 2008 voter turnout, but there is no source attributed and I don't see this information on any of the major news websites. Where did this come from? --Jackdavinci (talk) 05:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC) AP estimates (here) of 2008 voter turnout should be added & cited in the appropriate table.

Joe Biden
shall we add Joe Biden as the 45th president of the United States? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alaedwcir (talk • contribs) 06:20, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

not funny Ericl (talk) 15:35, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

need to have 2012 prez election article
since the 2008 has passed it is logical to assume the next one.there is no reason why i see that it wont be created as it is inevitable.you guys aren't going to create it until 2010? areyou? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.105.113 (talk) 11:35, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

of the G-7 countries, all the other ones have their next elections with an article, and there are a number of polls out and everything. Ericl (talk) 15:34, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Why is there now a totally blank page when I try to access the 2012 article? It was there yesterday, now there's nothing but a solid white page. ScottM84 (talk) 18:43, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's back now, but that was still pretty weird. ScottM84 (talk) 18:57, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite Voter Turnout
The Voter Turnout paragraph is a grammatical and logical nightmare. Needs a rewrite. --EricE (talk) 18:41, 7 November 2008 (UT EVERYBODY should be equl no matter what 

Headline textBold text
In attempting to obtain voter turnout data, the paragraph was relatively unhelpful, but the link to US census reports in a usable format was very useful. The difficulty I have is that this data seems to contradict the report's basic statements about voter turnout. The official US govt records of voter turnout in presidential elections show that the turnout exceeded 60 % in 2004 and 1992. This leads me to doubt the statement that the 2008 turnout was 61%. Admittedly, the US Census data is expressed as percentages of voting-age, non-institutionalsed citizens, not percentage of registered voters, however a statistic of percentage of registered voters should be higher than the US census figures. The only way that the percentages would drop is if they are percentages of total estimated population. This is an inappropriate statistic in my view -- if that is what is used. In any event, it should be specified in the text. Professor Vector (talk) 12:45, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Geographical trends
This doesn't seem relevant, more like trivia than a trend ("East of Texas" in particular seems arbitrary). I'm not disputing the facts, just questioning whether they actually tell us anything. It might be an issue of how it's worded, since the following observations do seem like they might be pertinent: three of the four states are former members of the Confederacy, and three of the four states have large representations in the electoral college (California and Texas have the two largest delegations; Georgia is tied with North Carolina for 10th). I still think the sample size is too small to draw any conclusions, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.71.75 (talk) 23:12, 22 April 2010 (UTC)