4% of the US Population Chooses the President

     In the United States we have a representative democracy. The president is chosen by the people and therefore has a popular mandate to rule and reign, or something like that.

     This little chart shows the number of votes received in the primary election by each president that was not an incumbent since 1912. Because most voters will only vote for one of the two major party nominees the primary is actually more important in selecting the president than the general election. As you can see a pretty small percentage of the population actually gets the president they wanted from the beginning.

      I only looked at years where an incumbent was not running or did not win. The extremely low percentages at the beginning of the time period are due, I believe, to the fact that primary voting was not wide spread until much later in the century, but I am by no means an expert on the history of elections. I also used total population which includes persons not eligible to vote. I did this for two reasons: the numbers were easier to find, and babies and felons still have to live here even if they do not vote.

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