List of United States presidential elections by popular vote margin
Updated: Wikipedia source
In a United States presidential election, the popular vote is the total number or the percentage of votes cast for a candidate by voters in the 50 states and Washington, D.C.; the candidate who gains the most votes nationwide is said to have won the popular vote. As the popular vote is not used to determine who is elected as the nation's president or vice president, it is possible for the winner of the popular vote to end up losing the election, an outcome that has occurred on five occasions, most recently in 2016. This is because presidential elections are indirect elections; the votes cast on Election Day are not cast directly for a candidate but for members of the Electoral College. The Electoral College's electors then formally elect the president and vice president. The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1804) provides the procedure by which the president and vice president are elected; electors vote separately for each office. Previously, electors cast two votes for president, and the winner and runner up became president and vice-president respectively. The appointment of electors is a matter for each state's legislature to determine; in 1872 and in every presidential election since 1880, all states have used a popular vote to do so. In every presidential election from 1788 through 1828, multiple state legislatures selected their presidential electors by discretionary appointment rather than by popular vote, while the South Carolina General Assembly did so in every presidential election through 1860, and the Florida Legislature and the Colorado General Assembly selected their presidential electors by discretionary appointment in 1868 and 1876 respectively. The 1824 election was the first in which the popular vote was first fully recorded and reported. Since then, 19 presidential elections have occurred in which a candidate was elected or reelected without gaining a majority of the popular vote. Since the 1988 election, the popular vote of presidential elections has been decided by single-digit margins, the longest streak of close-election results since states began popularly electing presidents in the 1820s.