Plurality Rules Transform 
the 2000 Presidential Race:
Al Gore and Ralph Nader 

The drama in Florida in 2000 focused national attention on electoral rules and practices -- primarily on outdated voting equipment, but also on the Electoral College, plurality voting and winner-take-all elections themselves. After 35 days and one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in history, Republican George W. Bush gained Floridaís 25 disputed electoral votes.  He thus won the presidency with 271 votes in the Electoral College, only four ahead of Democrat Al Gore.

After two terms as vice president, Gore was the first presidential contender since 1888 to win the national popular vote (by slightly more than 540,000 votes), but fail to win the Electoral College. Bush won 47.9% of the popular vote and Gore 48.4%. The popular vote in the House and Senate over the past three elections also has been nearly deade even, with the Senate ending 50-50 after the November electins and the Republicans holding a narrow edge in the House. 

This remarkable numerical closeness lent ìspoilerî power to any third party with the numbers to tip the balance ñ in which the two party, winner-take-all electoral system currently causes votes to contribute to the major party less aligned with the voterís preferences. For example, progressive Green Party candidate Ralph Nader attracted media attention in the final weeks of the campaign as he refused to encourage his supporters to vote for Gore and instead campaigned in several of the most hotly contested states.  . 

In the last month of the campaign, ìNader Traderî websites sprang up to arrange vote trades - a Nader supporters would pledge to cast their votes for Democrat Gore in states where the presidential race was expected to be close, and in exchange, a Democrat would agree to vote for Nader in states where Bush was expected to win. Not sanctioned by the campaigns, the exchanges were designed to help Gore in swing states and give the Green Party the 5 percent of the national vote it needed to win federal campaign money.  In the end, however, neither side got its way. Nader polled less than 3% of the popular vote and did win enough votes in Florida and New Hampshire to tip them toward George Bush. The Florida 547-vote margin was so close that Nader's 97,488 votes obviously would have tipped the difference, while Nader's 22,188 votes in New Hampshire far outstripped the 7,211 votes separating state winner Bush from Gore.

Of course George Bush supporters could point to Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan and Libertarian Party candidate Harry Browne as at least potential spoilers. While Gore likely would have won the presidency if only Gore and Bush had run, Bush would have won comfortably if Buchanan and Browne had not been running The Browne-Buchanan vote - which, while not uniformly conservative, likely heavily leaned toward Bush over Gore - was more than Gore's margin of victory in Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin and also would have put Florida clearly beyond Gore's reach no matter how the recount had been conducted.

National Vote Totals

Candidate and Party	Popular Vote	Percentage	Electoral College Vote
Al Gore:      Democrat	50,128,338	48%	266*
George Bush:        Republican	49,800,372	48%	271
Ralph Nader:      Green	2,781,109	3%	0
Pat Buchanan:      Reform	445,124	0%	0
Harry Browne:        Libertarian	382,869	0%	0

Plurality Victories in 2000

10 plurality victories total:

…        4 won by Bush (54 Electoral College Votes)

…        6 won by Gore (44 Electoral College Votes)

Of 10 states won by a plurality: None were won with less than 45%; the lowest winning percentage was in Oregon, where Gore won with 46.96%, Bush took 46.52%, and Nader won 5.04% of the vote.  Indicative of the closeness of the race, the average difference between the vote for the major parties in these 10 states was 1.69%.

GOP - Republican candidate George Bush
DEM - Democratic candidate Al Gore
GRN - Green candidate Ralph Nader
REF - Reform candidate Pat Buchanan
LBT - Libertarian candidate Howard Phillips
.

State	% of Popular Vote	Party	Difference Between Major Parties (%)	Electoral College Votes
FL	48.85	GOP		25
	48.84	DEM	0.01
	1.63	GRN
	0.29	REF
	0.28	LBT
IA	48.54	DEM		7
	48.22	GOP	0.32
	2.23	GRN	REF/LBT total
	0.44	REF
	0.24	LBT	0.68
ME	49.09	DEM		4
	43.97	GOP	5.12
	5.70	GRN
	0.68	REF
	0.47	LBT
MN	47.90	DEM		10
	45.50	GOP	2.40
	5.20	GRN
	0.91	REF
	0.22	LBT
NV	49.52	GOP		4
	45.98	DEM	3.54
	2.46	GRN
	0.78	REF
	0.54	LBT
NH	48.07	GOP		4
	46.80	DEM	1.27
	3.90	GRN
	0.48	LBT
	0.46	REF
NM	47.91	DEM		5
	47.85	GOP	0.06
	3.55	GRN	REF/LBT total
	0.34	LBT
	0.23	REF