US Election Facts

A few facts for you to wow people with. Firstly a few boring ones:

• In the 1984 presidential election, Ronald Reagan received both the highest number of popular votes (54,455,075) and the highest number of Electoral College votes (525) in the history of US presidential elections. These numbers have never been surpassed
• The 2008 presidential election was the first time since the 1928 election that neither the incumbent president nor the incumbent vice-president ran for election
• The Electoral College-

-     The EC portions out votes for the States according to population size. The smallest number of votes a State can have is 3. The 23^rd Amendment to the US Constitution gives Washington D.C. 3 EC votes even though it isn’t a State.

-    The electors of the Electoral College cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December – that is when the winner is officially declared, even though the world almost always knows the result by the Wednesday morning in November.

• There are 4 other candidates in 2012. You won’t be surprised to hear they have no chance– Libertarian Gary Johnson, Jill Stein for the Green Party, Virgil Goode for the Constitution Party and Rocky Anderson, the Justice Party candidate.
• Ohio is a crucial swing state. I actually wrote my A-level essay in politics on the factors that won Ohio for Bush in 2004. Two facts for you on the Buckeye State - no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio, and Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.

Now some more fun facts. Well I think they’re fun.....shut up:

• Only George Washington has ever won every electoral college vote. James Monroe almost did in 1820 but one New Hampshire elector voted for John Quincy Adams, Monroe’s Secretary of State, to ensure that Washington kept the honour
• Barack Obama is 44^th US President but only 43 men have held that title. Grover Cleveland was elected twice to nonconsecutive terms; first as the 22nd president and later as the 24th
• There is a tradition going back to 1940 that the incumbent/previous winner by popular vote wins the election if the Washington Redskins win their last home game before the votes are counted. The Redskins lost this week 21-13 to the Carolina Panthers, thereby definitively predicting a Romney victory....and you thought democracy was about free citizens expressing their opinion by voting. Pah! It’s all decided by a football game. Black helicopter time.....