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Comment by B-Con | Hacker News Reader

> Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics!

An untrue claim[0] that's been copy-pasted for a while. It has happened twice recently and three times before that, stop making it sound like it's unprecedented. None happened in the 1900s, so it's very rare (well, an 11% occurrence rate now) but not more than in the rest of history.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

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Sure, that point of OP's post was pedantically incorrect ... but I think the overarching point they were trying to make is that the republicans haven't had a candidate elected by the popular vote since 1989 when GHWB was elected. Since then, both elections in which a republican president won the office, was while losing the popular vote ... that's THIRTY YEARS since the last true win.

Looked at from that perspective, yeah that feels pretty depressing that it keeps happening.

It's not pedantically incorrect, it's simply incorrect as well as partially misleading. It's an 11% occurrence rate now in a system that was designed to have this kind of feature.

It's simply correct if "never" is replaces with "not for a century", which conveys about the same meaning as what was intended.

George W Bush won the popular vote in 2004 though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidentia...

yes ... but I'll be honest, that was extenuating circumstances. Never would have happened were it not for 9/11, so I consider that a black swan event

This is known as "moving the goalposts"

Invoking goalposts in the context of this discussion seems overly combative.

The article deals in pessimism/optimism which is a matter of perception. If one perceives that George W. Bush's success in 2004 was precipitated by extenuating circumstances like 9/11 or the invasion of Iraq, or if they perceive Bush's re-election as an extension of a presidency that never should have been, I would argue that still matters in terms of their outlook. I don't sense that the fact that Bush won the popular vote in 2004 will elevate or depress anyone's perception of the political climate of that decade or right now.

But he'd never have been in a position for re-election had he not won in 2000 first. That's not to say it'd have been impossible for him to run and win in 2004 otherwise, but who can really say.

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