Talk:List of United States presidential elections by popular vote margin

1960 Election

The entry for Kennedy should have him receiving less votes than Nixon, because you have to exclude votes in Alabama for a Democratic slate of electors that was specifically anti-Kennedy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.228.65.99 (talk) 22:47, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

This is just plain wrong. Nominate for removal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.176.133.24 (talk) 03:56, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Inconsistent with individual election pages

A number of the figures in this table are inconsistent with those shown in the election's page. For example, see United States presidential election, 1880 --Nick2253 (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

This is highly deceptive article. The electoral college votes for the winner of the popular vote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.130.84.37 (talk) 22:16, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

This is not true at all. The electors *usually* vote for the candidate that wins a plurality of the vote in their state. But that isn't always the case. -- Hux (talk) 05:34, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

The entire population of the country at time of election would be an interesting addition to this graph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.39.232.12 (talk) 12:12, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

2012 results not yet complete

Obama is clearly the winner, however, the vote count is "TBC" because additional votes, such as absentee and provisional votes, will continue to be counted and reported for about 10 days after 11/6.

Counting completed, results are in the table now. Cmckain14 (talk) 22:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Columnar sort incorrect for numeric sorting

This happens because of punctuation and (possibly) the left-based nature of some computer sorts. One example: when you sort popular vote amount, 1,855,993 appears to be less than 113,142 which is clearly an error. That is due to the comma. (The "left-based" issue may or may not affect this page. That problem can cause a computer sort to show 12 as less than 8 because the first digit 1 is less than the first digit 8, deriving from the computer method of alphabetic sort where the leftmost byte or position is compared first, and then the next position resolves "ties" in the previous position, etc.)

The correct approach is to use a numeric sort rather than an alphabetic sort on numeric fields. That is what Excel does; it treats alphabetic and numeric sorts differently, even though it's done behind the scenes and the Excel user does not specifically choose which sort method is applied (actually there is an aspect of user choice in Excel, but that's not the point). This webpage however does need to decide. (Side note: Excel has sophisticated sorting, albeit with some queer undocumented treatment of special characters, notably hyphens; yet many other software products only use "simple" alphabetic sorting methods.)

An alternate workaround would be to "blank-pad numbers on the left side" to achieve the desired result. E.g. then " 8" (blank in front of the 8) would sort as less than "11" and punctuation could be treated correctly since it would be precisely aligned. This is an awkward and potentially error prone solution, though, because every field might need to be "re-padded" when larger numbers appear. (In my example, one blank was needed to pad 8 for comparison to 11. However if 123 was introduced to the list, two preceding blanks would be needed to pad 8. If a number over 999 then entered the list, even more blanks would be needed.) Blank padding is clearly an awkward workaround.

An "emergency" workaround would be to disable columnar sort for columns that can contain numbers that sort incorrectly. However that may not be necessary. It appears that numeric sorting is an available option, since (e.g.) "Popular vote (%)" Margin column does sort correctly (9.96% shows as less than 10.08%).

Side note: the other popular vote % field (the one that doesn't say Margin) appears to operate correctly, but it is unclear whether it uses a numeric sort, or alphabetic, because alphabetic provides the same result when each item is of the same length, and the punctuation is purely identical and in identical alignment on every item.

Finally, making these HTML changes are above my pay grade, so I am just pointing out the errors and explaining some of the computer processing aspects of sorting to illustrate how the currently existing errors arose.24.27.72.99 (talk) 04:12, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

This issue was addressed by YBG a few hours after it was pointed out. Thanks, YBG! -- fjarlq (talk) 17:37, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

I probably should have replied myself. Thanks for doing it for me! YBG (talk) 00:56, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Clinton-Trump results are final

Final Popular Vote Total Shows Hillary Clinton Won Almost 3 Million More Ballots Than Donald Trump http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-popular-vote_us_58599647e4b0eb58648446c6

Hillary Clinton won 65,844,610 votes (48.2%) Trump took 62,979,636 votes (46.1%) Other candidates took 7,804,213 votes (5.7%)

Clinton took 2,864,974 more votes than Trump Karin D. E. Everett (talk) 04:20, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Negative numbers are preceded by an em-dash instead of negative (number) character

When copying negative numbers and pasting into a spreadsheet (e.g. LibreOffice Calc), the em-dash causes the application to treat the string as text. Subsequent formatting to number in the spreadsheet fails for the same reason. This is a problem for Microsoft Excel, as well as at least some other spreadsheet applications including Open/LibreOffice Calc. Not sure how much Wikipedia should cater to different apps, but wanted to note the situation. (also see the sorting entry below)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 November 2020

Biden has NOT won the election, only media projected that. Neither Trump nor Biden won. Recounts underway and legal lawsuits. Clearly changing Trump's profile as if HE LOST and blocking people from editing the lies makes WIKIPEDIA A HORRIBLE FAKE WEBSITE!!

Wikipedia is worse than I thought now. False information, censoring facts, and kicking editors out! 73.236.247.32 (talk) 01:53, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: Wikipedia properly indicates that Biden's win is projected based on a preponderance of reliable sources. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 03:05, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Order

Why was the order changed from size of margin?

Semi-protected edit request on 11 November 2020

Joe Biden is not the clear winner of the race and so it should be replaced with 'TBD' 2601:647:5480:6350:3995:C56E:1954:9767 (talk) 18:22, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

He is the clear winner, as he has the most electors. Dimadick (talk) 20:14, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: Wikipedia is not making this determination, but rather repeating what has been reported in multiple reliable, published sources. You're welcome to take this up with those sources directly. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 20:46, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Update the 2020 count with the final numbers

The popular vote difference in 2020 is still being updated as some states like New York keep (slowly) counting. The page says 5.3 million but it's already 5.5 million and it might change even more as states complete the count. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.228.214.46 (talk) 16:44, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

There is no reason why non-final numbers cannot be posted if this is being noted with a reference. Just as with any Wikipedia page, updates track the current news and reality. Dankirkd (talk) 10:06, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

The numbers are now the final numbers.  Resolved

2016 Voter Turnout

This article states that voter turnout in the 2016 US presidential election is greater than 60% while the 2016 US presidential election Wikipedia article says its only 55.7%, so which one is correct? — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrendonJH (talk • contribs) 19:56, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Good question. The sources are different. The 2016 US Presidential Election page refers to an FEC document that lists a total vote count of 136,669,276, a U.S. Census Bureau Voting Age Population (Current Population Survey for November 2016) of 245,502,000, and from that derives a Percentage of Voting Age Population casting a vote for President as 55.67% (i.e. 136,669,276 / 245,502,000 x 100). This page takes it's number from a different source, used for all turnout percentages, http://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present, which itself references a CQ Press publication. Dankirkd (talk) 07:21, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

"N. R.", 1828 and 1832

Under the column "Runnerup and party" in the elections of 1828 and 1832 there is the note "N.R." in the "party" column of the runnerup. The National Republican Party, as described in its Wiki page, wasn't organized until after the 1828 election, therefore linear time prevents the 1828 candidate from being the "N.R." nominee.

Also I would submit that Jackson's column in at least 1828 (if not 1832 as well) should list him as not having a party, since the Democratic Party also did not yet exist and wouldn't exist as such until Martin van Buren organized it in the 1830s out of the body of Jackson supporters, who were contemporaneously called, for lack of that formal name, "Jacksonians", just as the eventual Whig Party (N.R.) were called "anti-Jacksonians" for the same lack of name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.160.130.28 (talk) 18:03, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

1872 Horace Greeley and Liberal Republican vote

How best to show that Horace Greeley's Liberal Republican party, who was runner-up, but died before electoral votes were cast, was part of the losing party that year? The Dem background is used instead. Since this is a page for the popular vote, it seems we should better highlight this oddity. Dankirkd (talk) 03:37, 9 February 2021 (UTC)