Top 10 US Presidential Elections
The 2020 US presidential election and post-election will go down in the history books as one of the strangest of all time. We broke some records with the most votes cast for a winning presidential candidate, the most votes cast for a candidate who didn’t win, the most votes cast through mail-in ballots, and dare I say the most seditious loser of all time. As strange as it sounds, there have been just as, if not crazier, crazy elections. So buckle up cuz I’m counting down the top 10 weirdest U.S. presidential elections in all of US history.
Starting off our list at Number 10 is the First Presidential Election in 1788. George Washington ran unopposed and won 100% of the Electoral College vote… which if it’s not already obvious, would turn out to be the first and only time this would happen. FDR and James Monroe would both come close to running unopposed, but they both technically still had challengers.
Number 9, the 1840 United States presidential election was won by William Henry Harrison. Harrison was a war hero and at 68, he was the oldest person to take the office until Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. And he makes this list because he caught pneumonia and died 31 days after taking office. His death presented questions about the line of succession which were later addressed by the 25th amendment. To this day he holds the record for the short presidential term in US history.
Craziest Presidential Elections Quiz
Number 8, the Presidential Election of 1872. In many ways, this was a highly progressive electoral cycle. Victoria Woodhull would be the first woman to be nominated for president, and remember women couldn’t even vote yet except for in the middle of nowhere aka Wyoming, and remarkably she selected Fredrick Douglas, a black man as her running mate. In total there were three independent tickets in the race but ultimately the top two contenders would come down to Ulysses S. Grant vs Horace Greeley. Grant was a reportedly corrupt war hero and Greeley was a socialist vegetarian who thought he could communicate with the dead. Unsurprisingly Grant won with 286 electoral votes and 55.6% of the popular vote and Greeley lost with only 43.8% of the popular vote… oh and also he died. In between election day and the electoral vote, Horace Greeley suffered a quote “breakdown of both mind and body”, and died on November 29, 1872 of natural causes. This is the only time in American history that a candidate died during the electoral process.
Coming in at number 7 is Eugene V. Debs and the 1920 election. Debs was representing the Socialist Party… and if the name doesn’t give it away, it wasn’t a popular one at the time. He had to campaign from his jail cell after being arrested for his opposition to World War 1 and his views on the draft. He ended up receiving over nine hundred thousand votes or 3.4 % of the POPULAR vote.
Number 6 the Election of 1860… aka Abraham Lincoln’s first presidential election. Basically, the north liked Lincoln cuz he was a moderate stand up dude while the south HATED him because they were afraid he would abolish slavery. This paired with an extremely crowded 4 way race… Lincoln ended up winning with less than 40% of the popular vote, the southern state succeeded, and the USA Civil War 1.0, and hopefully the only, broke out.
Coming in at number 5 is the Election of 1912… this story starts 4 years earlier during the election of 1908 when Teddy Roosevelt decided not to run for a third term, instead endorsing his even fluffier friend William Howard Taft. Despite his promises, Taft did NOT hold true to Teddy’s progressive legislation which drove Rosevelt to run against him as the Republican nominee in 1912. Roosevelt won the primary but Taft was still chosen as the Republican nominee, which made the already pissed off Rosevelt even more angry so he ran as an independent which split the republican vote leading to the democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson to win the election of 1912.
Number 4, the election of 2000 between Al Gore and the second George Bush was the craziest in recent history… (ding from phone and I look at it) news update, the second craziest election in recent history. On election day Al Gore won… well maybe not. Gore was leading in both the popular and electoral votes but tied in the state of Florida. The state was too close to call so an automatic recount was issued. A month of legal battles later and Bush won Florida by 900 or so votes which despite losing the popular vote by half a million hanging chads, he took home the W after winning in the electoral college.
Number 8, the Presidential Election of 1872. In many ways, this was a highly progressive electoral cycle. Victoria Woodhull would be the first woman to be nominated for president, and remember women couldn’t even vote yet except for in the middle of nowhere aka Wyoming, and remarkably she selected Fredrick Douglas, a black man as her running mate. In total there were three independent tickets in the race but ultimately the top two contenders would come down to Ulysses S. Grant vs Horace Greeley. Grant was a reportedly corrupt war hero and Greeley was a socialist vegetarian who thought he could communicate with the dead. Unsurprisingly Grant won with 286 electoral votes and 55.6% of the popular vote and Greeley lost with only 43.8% of the popular vote… oh and also he died. In between election day and the electoral vote, Horace Greeley suffered a quote “breakdown of both mind and body”, and died on November 29, 1872 of natural causes. This is the only time in American history that a candidate died during the electoral process.
Coming in at number 7 is Eugene V. Debs and the 1920 election. Debs was representing the Socialist Party… and if the name doesn’t give it away, it wasn’t a popular one at the time. He had to campaign from his jail cell after being arrested for his opposition to World War 1 and his views on the draft. He ended up receiving over nine hundred thousand votes or 3.4 % of the POPULAR vote.
Number 6 the Election of 1860… aka Abraham Lincoln’s first presidential election. Basically, the north liked Lincoln cuz he was a moderate stand up dude while the south HATED him because they were afraid he would abolish slavery. This paired with an extremely crowded 4 way race… Lincoln ended up winning with less than 40% of the popular vote, the southern state succeeded, and the USA Civil War 1.0, and hopefully the only, broke out.
Coming in at number 5 is the Election of 1912… this story starts 4 years earlier during the election of 1908 when Teddy Roosevelt decided not to run for a third term, instead endorsing his even fluffier friend William Howard Taft. Despite his promises, Taft did NOT hold true to Teddy’s progressive legislation which drove Rosevelt to run against him as the Republican nominee in 1912. Roosevelt won the primary but Taft was still chosen as the Republican nominee, which made the already pissed off Rosevelt even more angry so he ran as an independent which split the republican vote leading to the democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson to win the election of 1912.
Number 4, the election of 2000 between Al Gore and the second George Bush was the craziest in recent history… (ding from phone and I look at it) news update, the second craziest election in recent history. On election day Al Gore won… well maybe not. Gore was leading in both the popular and electoral votes but tied in the state of Florida. The state was too close to call so an automatic recount was issued. A month of legal battles later and Bush won Florida by 900 or so votes which despite losing the popular vote by half a million hanging chads, he took home the W after winning in the electoral college.
Sliding in at number 3, Ronald Reagan won the election of 1980 by a landslide, crushing incumbent president Jimmy Carter… but that’s not the crazy part. See in 1979 the US-backed Iranian government fell and 52 American hostages were taken and held for 444 days. The rebel Iranian forces hated Jimmy Carter so much that they held the hostages until Inauguration Day, and released them moments after Reagan was sworn in. Jimmy did the work to get the hostages released but Ronald tough on crime, trickle-down, weed hatting Reagan got the credit.
Number 2… In the 1972 election, Richard Nixon won reelection in a landslide victory receiving 520 electoral votes and 60.7% of the popular vote. In fact, with an 18 million vote lead, he holds the title for the widest margin of victory in any US presidential election. The only thing is he cheated. He kept a hit list of political enemies and attacked them with tax audits and legal action and was caught with his hand in the cookie jar when his goons were found breaking into his opponents’ national headquarters in the Watergate hotel. Two years into his second term he was forced to resign in disgrace.
And now for the BIG DADDY of weird elections… coming in at number 1, the Presidential Election of 1800. It was the fourth election the new country had gone through and truthfully they hadn’t worked out all the kinks yet. See back then, the constitution stated that whoever won the most electoral votes would become president and whoever received the second most electoral votes became vice president. Also, each member of the electoral college was given two votes, allowing them to vote for two separate candidates, with an intended strategy of each party putting up two contenders, equally distributing their votes, giving the one they wanted to be president one more vote than the one they wanted to be vice president. Well in the 1800 election the winning party, aka the democratic-republicans, were working to place Thomas Jefferson as the president and a man named Aaron Burr as the vice president. The only problem is they tied, which sparked a months-long constitutional crisis, with you guessed it, threats of storming the capital. Which is all too reminiscent of today. Jefferson was eventually elected president and Aron Burr vice president. It prompted the creation of the 12th constitutional amendment, with the electoral college casting one vote for president and one vote for vice president, creating the “presidential ticket” we know today.
Point is, US history is made up of one wacked out Presidential election after another. Well I guess we did OK the first eight years with the whole George Washington thing, but yah know the good times can’t last forever. I’ll leave you with an inspiring quote from our soon to be former president and FBI’s number one most wanted… “go home, we love you, you’re very special.”
Host: Timo Bach – Research/writer: Lyka Naranjo – Video Editor: Isaiah John Jornales
