A candidate can win the state if he/she wins the electoral votes for the state. The famous case with Al Gore was that he won the popular vote in some states and not in others, which resulted in his not getting the majority of electoral votes overall.
You see, there are also Electoral Votes involved in elections. Each state has a set amount of Electoral Votes; the amount depends on how many counties the state has. When the popular vote is done, it is determined who got the most votes in each state. Once that is determined, ALL of the state's Electoral Votes go to that candidate. After a certain amount of Electoral Votes, a candidate an automatically win the election. In case that was too confusing, here's an example. In the last election, more of Oregon's residents voted for Obama than for McCain. So, all their Electoral College votes (I believe they have 5) went to Obama. There's more about Electoral Votes (they don't always go to the right candidate, for example), but that's the gist of it.
It depends on how many votes the other candidate is getting. If you were a candidate running for president, and if your opponent had 74 votes, you'd have to get more than that to win the election. If he got 98, you have to get more than 98 to win.
No. In fact the Socialist candidate got only 139,000 out of 48.7 million votes nationwide which was 0.29% of the popular vote. He did best in Wisconsin, with 0.98% of the popular vote. Harry Truman(D) beat Thomas Dewey (R) to win.
By majority, if the candidate has most of Iowa's electoral votes lets say 21-20 then that candidate that had 21 got all the 41 electoral votes for that state.
George W. Bush Might have stolen the 2000 presidential election from the Al Gore, (who received more popular votes). We will probably never know for certain who really got the most votes in Florida and it's electoral votes and the presidency.
Bell got 39 electoral votes and 590,901 popular votes. Douglas got 12 electoral votes and 1,004,823 popular votes.
27,175,754. He got 38.5% of popular votes.
Andrew Jackson received the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, but nobody had more than half of all electoral votes as required. When that happens, the House of Representatives elects the President. They chose John Quincy Adams.
George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election defeating Albert Gore, Jr. In the 2000 presidential election George W. Bush received 271 (50.5%) electoral votes and Albert Gore, Jr. received 266 (49.5%) electoral votes. The popular vote totals were Gore 50,996,582 (50.3%) and Bush 50,456,062 (49.7%).
He got 15,723,789 popular votes (59%) in 1924 the only time he ran for President. He got 382 electoral votes and carried 35 of the 48 states.
Roosevelt won 7,630,457 popular votes in 1904. This was 56.4 % of the total. His opponent Alton Parker got 5,083,880.
George W. Bush received all four Idaho electoral votes.
Al Gore- Bush got in by default due to defects in the system of voting by punch-card, which was pioneered in the 2000 American elections but was too complicated for many ordinary voters to understand. There were also a few states where the result was so close that there had to be a re-count, which it is now believed was flawed due to various underhand dealings on the part of Bush's supporters.
Barack Obama got more votes than his challenger in both the popular vote and the electoral college, so Mr. Obama won re-election.
Barack Obama received the most popular votes in the 2012 election; his final totals were 65,899,660 (51%) to Romney's 60,932,152 (47%).
He lost the electoral vote. He got more popular votes but those don't matter.Had Al Gore won one more state (even a 3-electoral vote state like Wyoming) he would have been the president from 2001-2005. Also Joe Lieberman would have become the first Jewish vice president.Because he did not win 270 electoral votes. Yes, he did win the popular vote, but he had won by more states in the states he won, and a closer margin in the states that he lost.