2000 elections in the United States

Presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial elections held November 7, 2000

The year 2000 saw the election of Republican George W. Bush after a prolonged recount and unprecedented Supreme Court decision decided the race between Bush and Democrat Al Gore thirty-six days after Election Day. In the US Senate, the Democrats enjoyed a majority until the inauguration of President Bush, when Vice President Dick Cheney broke the existing 50–50 tie. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans retained their majority.

In November of 2000, President Bill Clinton, first elected in 1992, was finishing his second and last term. Clinton’s administration had fared well—by the time he left office the government boasted a budget surplus—but his legacy, particularly by the end of his presidency, was marred by an extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky that resulted in his impeachment. Clinton’s record as well as his character flaws played a significant role in the 2000 election as Democrats, particularly Vice President Al Gore, sought to distance themselves from the president. Gore was named the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee following the withdrawal of his sole rival, New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, from the race.

Presidential Campaign

The Republican Party nominated George W. Bush, governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush (1989–93). In winning his party’s nomination, Bush defeated former undersecretary of education Gary Bauer; businessman Steve Forbes; Utah senator Orrin Hatch; and former diplomat Alan Keyes, among others, though it was widely recognized that Arizona senator John McCain was Bush’s strongest competitor leading up to the nomination. After the primaries, Bush selected veteran politico Dick Cheney, who had served as secretary of defense under the first President Bush, as his running mate. Gore strategically chose Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, who became the first Jewish candidate to be part of a major-party presidential ticket. Lieberman was also one of the first Democrats to chastise President Clinton publically for his indiscretions.

Third-party candidates in the 2000 presidential race included Ralph Nader for the Green Party, Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party, and Harry Browne for the Libertarian Party. Among them, the left-leaning Nader, a longtime consumer activist, arose as the most viable candidate, though he was barred from the national debates. Nader’s support of issues such as national healthcare, a livable wage, and environmental protection resonated with voters, so much so that nearing the election, the Gore campaign began to use the slogan “A Vote for Nader is a Vote for Bush,” alluding to a potential spoiler effect. In the general election, he and his running mate, American Indian activist Winona LaDuke, garnered 96,837 votes, or 1.6 percent of the vote, in the contentious state of Florida. Nader earned more votes than Bush’s margin of victory over Gore in New Hampshire as well. For years after the election, including during the 2004 presidential election, in which he also ran, many Democrats blamed him for siphoning off votes from Gore and ultimately contributing to Bush’s victory.

The race between Gore and Bush was tight going into the last months of the campaign. Early on, Bush placed an emphasis on education, which was enticing to Democrats and independent voters. He pushed equally hard for two conservative goals, tax cuts and the partial privatization of Social Security, despite Democratic opposition. But overall, Bush made aggressive efforts to reach out to voters outside his base with his “compassionate conservative” rhetoric. Bush also did not fail to position himself in opposition to Clinton. He charmed voters with his easygoing persona, and as an evangelical Christian, he carried 68 percent of the white evangelical vote in the general election.

Against the affable Bush, Gore was seen as pedantic and wooden. His persona was especially problematic during the three debates, in which his eye-rolling and audible sighing became the focus of his performance. Whether he had won the debates with his arguments did not matter to many voters; he had lost in appeal. Additionally, Gore’s antitobacco stance hurt him among Southern voters. Still, a number of groups rallied around Gore, sinking millions of dollars into ads and voter turnout initiatives, among them the environmentalist group the Sierra Club and the NAACP National Voter Fund. In the end, Gore failed to establish a clear persona or extricate himself from Clinton’s shadow, though his popularity among African Americans, among whom he garnered 90 percent of the vote, and other groups kept the race close throughout the election.

Election Night, the Florida Recount, and Bush v. Gore

The 2000 presidential election was one of the most eventful in United States history, and news organizations hurried to report every new development. At about 7:50 p.m. on November 7, major television news channels such as CNN, NBC, and CBS, as well as the Associated Press, projected Gore as the winner of Florida, ten minutes before polls closed in the state’s western panhandle, which falls in a different time zone. The news organizations retracted the call at about 9:54 p.m. At approximately 2:17 a.m. on November 8, the major networks projected Bush as the winner of the state of Florida and the election. Gore called Bush to concede the election, but CNN reported at 3:40 a.m. that Gore had called again to retract his concession. About twenty minutes later, both projections—Florida and the election for Bush—were retracted.

Much of the information that led the networks to make their calls was sourced from the Voter News Service (VNS), a polling organization collectively owned by the major news networks that relied heavily on exit polls, which tended to be unreliable. The misreporting as well as the closeness of the race contributed to the perception among some Americans that Gore was a “sore loser” for retracting his concession. Others believed that the early Gore call in Florida discouraged potential Republican voters in the state.

Confusion reigned for more than a month after Election Day. Votes were too close to call on election night in Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Mexico, but public attention remained on Florida, where discrepancies in the state’s ballots abounded. In Palm Beach County, it appeared that an unusually large vote for third-party candidate Buchanan was the result of a confusing “butterfly ballot,” a two-page ballot that was difficult for many voters to interpret. Chads, the bits of paper punched out of punch card ballots, were examined and deemed to be “dimpled,” “pregnant,” or “hanging”—that is, improperly or incompletely punched out—as poll workers tried to sort through remaining ballots elsewhere.

The closeness of the race automatically triggered a recount by Florida law. As limited recounting began, Bush held a tenuous lead numbered in hundreds of votes, out of nearly six million votes cast. On November 12, lawyers from the Bush campaign began a lawsuit to end the recount. Several federal judges turned the case down and allowed recounts to continue, but on November 24, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear Bush’s appeal. On November 26, Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris, a cochair of Bush’s Florida campaign, certified Florida’s vote for Bush, though the recount had not been completed. Gore’s lawyers contested the result the next day, triggering a court battle over the manually recounted votes that Harris did not include in her recount. Although Bush began preparations for his administration in late November, the legal maneuvering continued until December 12, when the Supreme Court ruled to end the recount in the historic Bush v. Gore. The per curium decision (literally meaning “by the court”; the justices did not delineate any single majority author) was based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Gore conceded the election the following day.

Ultimately, Gore received 266 electoral votes; twenty states as well as Washington, DC; and 48.38 percent of the popular vote with 50,999,897 votes. Bush received 271 electoral votes; thirty states; and 47.87 percent of the popular vote with 50,456,002 votes. (There are 538 votes in the Electoral College; one elector abstained from casting a vote.) This outcome, in which a candidate won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, had last occurred in the presidential election of 1888, when Benjamin Harrison defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland.

Congressional and Gubernatorial Elections

In the US Senate, the 2000 elections resulted in a 50–50 split between Democrats and Republicans. When such a split occurs, the vice president’s party claims the majority. Upon Bush’s inauguration, Vice President Cheney gave the Republican Party the advantage. However, Republican senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont became an independent and began caucusing with the Democrats in mid-2001, thus changing the balance in favor of the Democratic Party.

There were several notable Senate races. In Missouri, Governor Mel Carnahan, a Democratic senatorial candidate, died in a plane crash while campaigning in October. With his name still on the ballot, Carnahan posthumously won the election against Republican John Ashcroft, who would later serve as attorney general in the Bush administration. Carnahan’s widow, Jean Carnahan, served in her husband’s stead until 2002, when she narrowly lost the seat in a special election. In New York, Hillary Clinton became the first sitting First Lady to run for (and win) public office, defeating Republican senator Rick Lazio in a contentious and expensive race.

In the House of Representatives, Republicans retained their majority, though they lost several seats to Democrats. Eleven states held gubernatorial elections, but West Virginia became the only state to change parties in the governor’s house when Bob Wise, a Democrat, defeated incumbent governor Cecil H. Underwood, a Republican.

Impact

The 2000 elections changed the way news organizations reported on election results and sparked a larger debate about the Electoral College, particularly among Democrats, who argued that Gore won the popular vote and thus should have won the election. The election also had an impact on the voting process. In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which required states to offer up-to-date voting equipment, voter registration databases, provisional voting, and complaint procedures. In addition, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bush v. Gore established a cultural precedent in terms of how elections are decided and prompted a dramatic increase in the number of lawsuits brought over election issues.

Bibliography

Allen, Neal and Brian J. Brox. “The Roots of Third Party Voting: The 2000 Nader Campaign in Historical Perspective.” Party Politics 11.5 (2005): 623–37. Print. Discusses Nader’s 2000 campaign in relation to the campaigns of other third party candidates throughout history and concludes that voters who cast ballots for Nader likely would have voted for another third party candidate or not voted at all, contrary to the arguments of some Democrats.

Dershowitz, Alan M. Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000. New York: Oxford UP, 2001. Print. Argues against the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore and discusses the events that led up to it.

Konner, Joan, James Risser, and Ben Wattenberg. “Television’s Performance on Election Night 2000: A Report for CNN.” CNN. Cable News Network, 29 Jan. 2001. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. Analyzes the various failings of the television news organizations in their election night coverage.

Posner, Richard A. Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Election, the Constitution, and the Courts. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001. Print. Provides a defense of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore from the perspective of a US Court of Appeals judge and law professor.

Rakove, Jack N. The Unfinished Election of 2000: Leading Scholars Examine America’s Strangest Election. New York: Basic, 2001. Print. Compiles essays from scholars dissecting the numerous peculiarities of the 2000 election.

Toobin, Jeffrey. Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election. New York: Random, 2001. Print. Chronicles the unprecedented recount and court case that decided the 2000 election.