Neck and Neck to the White House

Download or read book Neck and Neck to the White House written by Robert E. Kelly and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Close presidential elections in the United States are measured, evaluated and remembered primarily by simple statistics. One can easily find out, for example, how many states in the electoral college were won by each presidential candidate, and by how much. But to stop there is to miss the most dramatic parts of the political contests. Why were the votes so close? What issues split the electorate? Was it the behavior or the reputation of the candidates? This book answers these questions and more, identifying and examining 12 of the closest elections, from the 1796 battle between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to the contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore.