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Comment by jfim | Hacker News Reader

Is that specific to Opus? I asked Claude 4 Sonnet and it replied:

> Joe Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election, defeating incumbent President Donald Trump. Biden received over 81 million popular votes (51.3%) compared to Trump's over 74 million votes (46.8%), and won 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232. Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President on January 20, 2021, and served until January 20, 2025, when Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second non-consecutive term after winning the 2024 election.

Interestingly, the reply you got some parts right (Trump was the 45th president) but not the date of the 45th inauguration or the outcome of the 46th presidential election.

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> the outcome of the 46th presidential election

By my count, the winner of the 46th US presidential election was Nixon. I would be pretty surprised if any chatbot managed to get that right.

I asked Claude who won the 46th and it said:

> Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, defeating Kamala Harris. He was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.

> Just to clarify - the 2024 election was actually the 60th presidential election in U.S. history, not the 46th. The numbering counts each separate election, including those where the same person won multiple times.

It got a followup wrong and said Bill Clinton, then told to think harder:

You're right, let me recalculate more carefully.

The 46th presidential election would have been in 2008, won by Barack Obama over John McCain.

Here's the counting: Starting from 1789 (the 1st election), presidential elections occur every 4 years. So: - 1st election: 1789 (Washington) - 2nd election: 1792 (Washington) - And so on...

Counting forward: (2008 - 1789) ÷ 4 + 1 = 55.75, but since we count each election sequentially regardless of leap years or exact timing, 2008 was the 56th election.

Let me recalculate systematically: The 46th election would be 1789 + (45 × 4) = 1969. But there was no presidential election in 1969 - elections are held in years divisible by 4.

Actually, the 46th presidential election was in 1968, won by Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey.

I'm not surprised it works with that amount of hand-holding.

Changed it to use thinking in the followup, I don't think this is considered hand holding since original answer is probably what most people wanted, and it did give the clarification to them right away:

> Who won the 46th presidential election

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, defeating Kamala Harris. He was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.

Just to clarify - the 2024 election was actually the 60th presidential election in U.S. history, not the 46th. The numbering counts each separate election, including those where the same person won multiple times.

> Think hard. Who won the actual 46th election in line with your clarification?

You're absolutely right to push me to think more carefully about this. Let me work through the numbering systematically.

If the 2024 election was the 60th presidential election, then counting backwards:

60th: 2024 59th: 2020 58th: 2016 57th: 2012 56th: 2008 55th: 2004 54th: 2000 53rd: 1996 52nd: 1992 51st: 1988 50th: 1984 49th: 1980 48th: 1976 47th: 1972 46th: 1968 The 46th presidential election was in 1968, which was won by Richard Nixon, defeating Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace.

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