Talk:U.S. presidential election

Someone might want to add the presidential election maps from,

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

--Imran

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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 (http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/scores)), 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

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

Old format

President:	Bill Clinton (Democrat)
Main Opponent:	Bob Dole (Republican)
Electoral Vote:	Winner: 379	Main Opponent: 159	Total/Majority: 538/270
Popular Vote:	Winner: 45,590,703	Main Opponent: 37,816,307
Vice President:	Albert Gore, Jr. (379)
V.P. Opponent:	Jack Kemp (159)
Other elections	1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008[?]
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/ec-boxsc)

New format (New #1)

Winner/Main Opponent	Bill Clinton	Bob Dole
Party	Democrat	Republican
Electoral Votes (total: 538, majority: 270):	379	159
Popular Votes:	45,590,703	37,816,307
Vice President (electoral votes):	Albert Gore, Jr. (379)	Jack Kemp (159)
Other elections	1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008[?]
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/ec-boxsc)

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

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

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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)

	Winner	Main Opponent
Candidate	Bill Clinton	Bob Dole
Party	Democrat	Republican
Electoral Votes (total: 538, majority: 270):	379	159
Popular Votes:	45,590,703	37,816,307
Vice President (electoral votes):	Albert Gore, Jr. (379)	Jack Kemp (159)
Other elections	1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008[?]
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/ec-boxsc)

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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

Candidate	Electoral Vote	Party	Popular Vote	Pct
Bill Clinton (Winner)	379	Democratic	45,590,703	49%
Bob Dole	159	Republican	37,816,307	41%
Ross Perot	0	Reform Party	8,085,402	8%

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

President	Electoral Vote	Party	Vice President	Popular Vote	Pct
Bill Clinton (W)	379	Democratic	Albert Gore, Jr.	45,590,703	49%
Bob Dole	159	Republican	Jack Kemp	37,816,307	41%
Ross Perot	0	Reform	Pat Choate[?]	8,085,402	8%
Other elections	1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008[?]
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/ec-boxsc)

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

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

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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

	Winner	Runner Up	Other Opponent
Candidate	Bill Clinton	Bob Dole	Ross Perot
Party	Democrat	Republican	Reform
Electoral Votes (total: 538, majority: 270):	379	159	0
Popular Votes:	45,590,703	37,816,307	8,085,402
Running Mate (electoral votes):	Albert Gore, Jr. (379)	Jack Kemp (159)	Pat Choate[?]
Other elections	1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008[?]
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/ec-boxsc)

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

Presidential Candidate	Electoral Vote	Popular Vote	Pct	Party	Running Mate (Electoral Votes)
Bill Clinton (W)	379	45,590,703	49%	Democratic	Albert Gore, Jr. (379)
Bob Dole	159	37,816,307	41%	Republican	Jack Kemp (159)
Ross Perot	0	8,085,402	8%	Reform	Pat Choate[?] (0)
Other elections: 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008[?]
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/elctcoll/ec-boxsc)

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

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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

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In response to my moving Zoe's maps over to the right (compare U.S. presidential election, 1860 with an older version (/w/wiki.phtml?title=U.S._presidential_election%2C_1860&oldid=887745)), 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)

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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
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

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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 (http://www.fec.gov/pages/Statuteprov.htm#The%20Time%20of%20Conducting%20Federal%20Elections). 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)