The 2000 Presidential Election in Historical Perspective

Abstract

The year 2000 presidential election was a unique historical event. With a very close popular vote, the outcome depended on Florida, where, whichever way the votes were counted, the outcome was the closest state election in memory, closer than if Florida voters were deciding by flipping fair coins.' Although Al Gore won the national popular vote, George W. Bush eventually won the contested Electoral College verdict with help from the U.S. Supreme Court. Continuing the Political Science Quarterly tradition of following each presidential election with an early analysis in the spring issue after the election,2 this article attempts to put the 2000 election in perspective-to understand the electorate's 2000 verdict within the context of what we know about elections past. Fortunately, several resources are available to help with this task. For a start, there are the Voter News Service (VNS) exit polls of voters as they left their polling places on election day. Both national and state exit polls, with their breakdowns of the vote by attitudes and social characteristics, became available to all on the web immediately after the election. Another data source available from the web is the trial-heat poll results reported throughout the cam-