Re: The debates mess (2) -- Harper v Ignatieff?

On Fri, 1 Apr 2011, Peter T. Chattaway wrote:

> FWIW, Wikipedia indicates that Perot got 18.9% of the vote in 1992 and 
> 8.4% in 1996.
>
> Clinton, meanwhile, got 43.0% in 1992 and 49.2% in 1996.
>
> And Bush got 37.5% in 1992, while Dole got 40.7% in 1996.

Hmmm.  I got curious ... did any incumbent president ever win a smaller 
percentage of the popular vote when he ran for re-election?

And it turns out that, yes, one did, namely Howard Taft.  In fact, Taft 
came in *third* when he ran for re-election; the winner was Woodrow 
Wilson, but second place went to former president Teddy Roosevelet.  So it 
was sort of a duel between two former/current presidents, with Wilson 
swimming up the middle and winning the prize.  Not exactly the situation 
that George H.W. Bush faced against Clinton and Perot in 1992.

    1912  Howard Taft lost to Woodrow Wilson              23.2%
    1992  George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton           37.5%
    1800  John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson             38.6%
    1932  Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt    39.7%
    1892  Benjamin Harrison lost to Grover Cleveland      43.0%
    1828  John Quincy Adams lost to Andrew Jackson        43.6%

I also got curious as to whether anyone had ever won the presidency with a 
smaller percentage of the popular vote than Clinton got.

And it turns out there *were* a few, and they all benefitted from three- 
or four-way races.  The most curious of these is John Quincy Adams, who 
won the election in 1824 with only 30.9% of the popular vote -- which was 
significantly smaller than the 41.3% that Andrew Jackson had.

    1824  John Quincy Adams                               30.9%
    1860  Abraham Lincoln                                 39.8%
    1912  Woodrow Wilson                                  41.8%
    1992  Bill Clinton                                    43.0%
    1968  Richard Nixon                                   43.4%

In fact, Adams apparently lost to Jackson in the *electoral college*, too, 
but for reasons too arcane for me to figure out right now, the contest 
between the two of them was settled ultimately by a vote in the House of 
Representatives ... which went in Adams' favour, not Jackson's.

As for the others ... well, we know that Lincoln's election was basically 
a precursor to the Civil War.  And Wilson, as noted above, benefitted from 
the fact that the Republican vote was split between incumbent president 
Taft and former president Roosevelt.  Nixon, meanwhile, was a former 
vice-president (and former presidential candidate) who ran against the 
incumbent vice-president (Humphrey) as well as George Wallace -- and 
Wallace apparently became the last third-party candidate to ever carry the 
electoral votes of an entire state (or five of them, in his case).

For more on that peculiar election in 1824, see here:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1824

And for more on the election in 1968, see here:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968

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