(Thread) Interesting factoids about presidential elections.

[MarkD]

Since 1912, there have been four presidential elections in which four candidates have each gotten at least 1% of the total popular vote.
In 1916, there were four candidates who each had at least 1%: Woodrow Wilson (49%), Charles Evans Hughes (46%), Allan Benson (3%), and Frank Hanley (1%).
In 1948, there were four candidates who each had at least 2%: Harry Truman (< 50%), Thomas Dewey (45%), Strom Thurmond (> 2%), and Henry Wallace (> 2%).
In 1980, the four candidates who each had at least 1% were: Jimmy Carter (41%), Ronald Reagan (< 51%), John Anderson (< 7%), and Ed Clark (1%).
In 2016, the four candidates who each had at least 1% were: Hillary Clinton (> 48%), Donald Trump (46%), Gary Johnson (> 3%), and Jill Stein (1%).

However, in 1912, there were five candidates who each ended up with at least 1%: Woodrow Wilson (< 42%), William Howard Taft (> 23%), Theodore Roosevelt (> 27%), Eugene Debs (6%), and Eugene Chafin (> 1%).

[MarkD]

The county results in New Hampshire are exactly the same in 2000 and 2016. The percentages are all really similar too, except for Grafton County (47-46 D in 2000, 55-37 D in 2016).

Wow! This IS interesting! Thanks or the info!

I've been calculating the NH results for both 2000 and 2016, and clearly without Grafton County, Hillary Clinton would not have won the state. It gave her the highest percentage. Grafton County voted for Al Gore by only 234 votes, but for Hillary Clinton by a whopping 9,500 votes!
If we subtract Grafton County from the results for the whole state, in 2000, Bush won by over 7,400 votes, a margin of 1.4%. In 2016, Trump won by almost 6,800, a margin of slightly less than 1% (the increase in the raw number of votes cast was over 30%). But because Grafton voted for Gore by a margin of less than 1% point in 2000 but voted for Clinton by a margin of over 18.5% points, the widest in the whole state, that was why Gore lost but Clinton won.
Eight of the counties voted almost exactly the same way in 2000 as they did in 2016, in terms of percentages. Besides Grafton County, the only other county in which there was a noticeable change in the vote margin was Carroll County, adjacent to Grafton in the northern half of  the state. Carroll County voted for Bush in 2000 by a margin of 11.5% points, but in 2016 it voted for Trump by only 5.5% points.

[MarkD]

Just looking at the last four elections ...

The change in the raw number of votes cast from 2004, to 2008, to 2012, to 2016 was as follows: A 7.5% increase from 2004 to 2008, then a 1.7% decrease to 2012, then a 5.75% increase to 2016.
Only twelve states out of all 50 had a similar pattern: a big increase, then a small decrease, then a big increase again. Those twelve were Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Texas, and Wyoming.
Sixteen states and DC did not experience a decrease from 2008 to 2012; they increased each time: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, Washington. The D. of C. had the highest rate of increase from 2004 to 2016: the raw number of votes cast in 2016 was 36.77% greater than in 2004, which was higher than any of the fifty states! North Carolina grew the fastest among the states: the votes cast in 2016 were 35.43% more than in 2004.
That still leaves twenty-two states that did not experience change by those two patterns: big increase, slight decrease, big increase (ending in 2016 with more than had been cast in 2008); or increase, increase, increase.

Three states hit its peak of voter turnout in 2004, and have been lower than that ever since. Here are the number of votes cast for President each year in Oklahoma:
2004 -- 1,463,758
2008 -- 1,462,661
2012 -- 1,334,872
2016 -- 1,452,992

South Dakota:
2004 -- 388,215
2008 -- 381,975
2012 -- 363,815
2016 -- 370,093

West Virginia:
2004 -- 755,887
2008 -- 713,451
2012 -- 670,438
2016 -- 714,423

Ohio had its peak in 2008, but the votes cast in both 2012 and 2016 were lower than either 2008 or 2004:
2004 -- 5,627,908
2008 -- 5,708,350
2012 -- 5,580,847
2016 -- 5,496,487

Hawaiians were most enthusiastic about voting when their native son, Barack Obama, was on the ballot the first time. Here are the votes cast in Hawaii:
2004 -- 429,013
2008 -- 453,568
2012 -- 434,697
2016 -- 428,937

Maine followed a pattern almost exactly the opposite of Hawaii, going down twice in a row before springing back up again, a lot:
2004 -- 740,752
2008 -- 731,163
2012 -- 713,180
2016 -- 747,927

Wisconsin also had a bizarre pattern: a slight decrease, followed by a bigger increase, then an even bigger decrease (although all of the changes were very small, the number of votes cast being so similar each time):
2004 -- 2,997,007
2008 -- 2,983,417
2012 -- 3,068,434
2016 -- 2,976,150