2000 Presidential Election
The 2000 Election refers to the presidential election in the United States between Republican candidate George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore. The election was highly controversial due to issues with ballot counting in Florida, ultimately leading to a Supreme Court decision that resulted in Bush winning the presidency. This election highlighted the importance of accurate voting processes and had a significant impact on American politics.
4 Key excerpts on "2000 Presidential Election"
eBook - ePub- M.J.C. Vile(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The discussion of policies may be important in the campaign, according to the circumstances of the time, but essentially the campaign is a battle of personalities. It is perhaps in the very nature of this democratic system that, in attempting to create a position of authority, the candidates must submit to a process that is almost lethal in the demands it makes upon them, and that will almost certainly involve them in embarrassing, even humiliating, situations. In the course of the campaign a candidate may travel 50,000 miles, making speeches on both sides of the continent in a single day. The candidate will address great rallies and speak to a handful of voters at a street corner, shaking as many hands as is humanly possible, being photographed wearing the comic headgear of this or that association or, like the president of the United States campaigning for re-election in 1964, give cowboy whoops from the saddle of a horse while his audience laughed and clapped in appreciation. The person who wishes to be president has to convince the electors that he or she is an ordinary citizen who understands the problems of everyday living and, at one and the same time, is capable of dealing with complex questions involving war and peace, and of making decisions daily that deeply affect the welfare of all Americans. The election of 2000 The presidential election of the year 2000 was an extraordinary affair. It was the closest election since 1960; it was the most extended in modern history, the result not being declared for five weeks after the election; it was extremely controversial, culminating in a decision of the United States Supreme Court. The Democratic candidate, Al Gore, won the popular vote, with a majority of more than half a million votes over his opponent, the Republican George W. Bush; 48.4 per cent of the total vote for Gore, 47.9 per cent for Bush...
eBook - ePubLost in a Gallup
Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections
- W. Joseph Campbell(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
...presidential election since 1888, when the incumbent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison. Despite its rarity, the split-decision scenario often has emerged as a topic of conjecture in presidential elections that were, or were thought to be, closely contested. 54 Speculation about a split decision in 2000 arose with some intensity in the final days of the campaign. Because Bush led in the national polls but Gore seemed to be edging ahead in battleground states such as Florida and Pennsylvania, a divided popular vote–electoral vote outcome seemed possible. 55 “The tightness of the race with so little time left has fueled speculation that the contest could end with Bush capturing the popular vote but Gore winning the electoral college vote—and the presidency,” the Detroit News speculated two days before the election. 56 Mark Siegel, a former executive director at the Democratic National Committee, went on MSNBC to declare that “it is very, very easy to configure an Electoral College map where Bush wins states like Texas and states in the Mountain parts of the United States, and in the South, by very, very large margins, while Gore is winning states like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, by two or three points. And at the end of the day, we could have Bush winning a 2 million or 3 million popular vote plurality, while Gore is hovering around 300 Electoral College votes,” enough to win the presidency. 57 Some journalists said they relished or were intrigued by the prospect of a popular vote–electoral vote discrepancy, 58 saying even that it would be the stuff of dreams. “Now we always talk about scenarios like this,” Cokie Roberts said on NPR the day before the election, “and they are the kinds of things that those of us who want a good story dream about.” Still, she added, “it’s unlikely” the election would end in a split decision. 59 But it did...
eBook - ePub- James Daley, James Daley(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Dover Publications(Publisher)
...Bush v. Gore 2000 In the hotly contested Presidential election of 2000, George W. Bush won the popular vote for the State of Florida over Al Gore by a margin of less than 0.5%. As per Florida’s election laws, a margin that small sets into motion an automatic machine recount of all votes, which, once completed, had Bush in the lead by an even smaller margin. Al Gore then requested a manual recount of the votes in four counties—Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade—which, though granted, would not be completed by the deadline for submitting election results to the Florida Secretary of State. After the Florida Supreme Court ordered that the deadline be extended, Bush filed an application with the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting that the manual recount be stopped. In a 5–4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Florida recount was unconstitutional, citing a lack of uniformity in the ways the votes were being recounted as its primary basis. Though there was much dissent both in the court and throughout the country, the decision was upheld and George W. Bush was declared the winner of Florida’s twenty-five electoral votes, and thus the Presidency. U.S. SUPREME COURT BUSH V. GORE. U.S. (2000) V.S. GEORGE W. BUSH, ET AL., PETITIONERS V. ALBERT GORE, JR., ET AL. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE FLORIDA SUPREME COURT December 12, 2000. Per Curiam. I. ON December 8, 2000, the Supreme Court of Florida ordered that the Circuit Court of Leon County tabulate by hand 9,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County. It also ordered the inclusion in the certified vote totals of 215 votes identified in Palm Beach County and 168 votes identified in Miami-Dade County for Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., and Senator Joseph Lieberman, Democratic Candidates for President and Vice President. The Supreme Court noted that petitioner, Governor George W...
eBook - ePubInternational News Agencies
A History
- Michael B. Palmer(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
...© The Author(s) 2019 M. B. Palmer International News Agencies https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31178-0_10 Begin Abstract 10. Covering US Presidential Elections: 2000—Bush vs. Gore Michael B. Palmer 1 (1) Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France Michael B. Palmer Email: [email protected] The final chapters use the abundant material of the Reuters’ archives from the 1970s to the 2000s, supplemented by material from AP and AFP. End Abstract AP has long been the leading agency covering US elections; as Reuters expanded in the US, so did its coverage of presidential elections. The 2000 campaign opposing the Democrat Al Gore and Republican G. W. Bush led to a tightly fought finish, the result on a knife-edge. Here the Reuters archive reveals how the agency monitored its campaign coverage. AP, for well over a century, covers US elections. Its membership of local newspapers gives it grass-roots strengths. There are over 3242 counties and county equivalents. In a democracy, Americans vote often: there were 519,682 elected officials in the US in 2012. In presidential elections, voter participation has fallen since 1908 (65.4%), but generally fluctuates between 50% and 60%. Julian Ralph (1853–1903), in The Making of a Journalist (1903), devotes a chapter to “Election night”. A newspaper worth its salt, he writes, would not rely solely on “any press association”. Today, in the 2000s, many rely on AP for updates on electoral returns during a presidential election, while also monitoring TW channels and on-line sites. By 2004, AP was the sole source of returns for all media, states the AP 2007 book. In the nineteenth century, the book recalls, “in the presidential elections of 1876 and 1884, AP, was accused of influencing the outcome, through its reporting – and more precisely non-reporting – and through its relationship with the Western union telegraph agency”. The book details the reasons for the accusations—partly justified...
