scotzoidman,

It could only be considered a failure if the presumption is that the candidate with the most votes should be the president. As best as I can tell, that is not the way the Electoral College works – and not how it was intended to work. Do you read it differently? This is not to say that it cannot be replaced with a popular vote based approach, but a structural change of that order may be a difficult sell. You couldn’t point to England, Australia or Canada as models.

The election of 1824 could be identified as the first in which the candidate who obtained the greatest popular vote (Jackson) failed to be elected president. The claim is a weak one, though, since six of the twenty four States at the time still chose their Electors in the State legislature. Some of these (such as the populous New York) would likely have returned large majorities for Adams had they conducted a popular election. You’re not seriously suggesting that Andrew Jackson should have become president with less than 50% of the popular vote, are you?

In 1876, Hayes had announced in advance that he would serve only one term.

Benjamin Harrison's election in 1888 is really the only clear-cut instance in which the Electoral College vote went contrary to the popular vote. This happened because the incumbent, Democrat Grover Cleveland, ran up huge popular majorities in several of the 18 States which supported him while the Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison, won only slender majorities in some of the larger of the 20 States which supported him (most notably in Cleveland's home State of New York). Even so, the difference between them was less than 111,000 votes out of more than 11,000,000 cast - less than 1% of the total. Interestingly, in this case, there were few issues other than tariffs (Harrison for, Cleveland against) separating the candidates so that the election seems to have been fought - and won - more on the basis of superior party organization in getting out the vote than on the issues of the day. I find this strikingly similar to what happened between Messrs. Gore and Bush.

And, of course, the election of 2000. It seems somewhat presumptuous to refer to that winner as a one term president (even if the presumption seems appropriate).

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Eudaimonia