The outcome was so bizarre, the United States had to amend the Constitution.

• The election of 1800 saw Thomas Jefferson tie with his Democratic-Republican "running mate" Aaron Burr. Both had 73 votes to Adams' 65.
• Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasury secretary and fo...

• Andrew Jackson won the popular vote by less than 39,000 ballots and took 99 Electoral College votes. John Quincy Adams secured 84, William Crawford won 41, and Henry Clay had 37.
• Clay, with the least votes, got the boot, and his supporters shifted their support to Adams, who would go...

The 1860 election was notable because it ripped the long-dominant Party (and nation) in half.

• The Democrats were unable at their 1860 convention to establish an official party line on slavery.
• At a second convention that year, the Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, but man...

1872 was strange because one of the primary candidates never saw the final Electoral College vote.

• Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union armies that defeated the Confederacy, had not been so convincing in the Oval Office.
• Some Republicans defected, becoming Liberal Republicans...

• Democrat Samuel Tilden had beaten Republican Rutherford Hayes.
• But Tilden was one Electoral College vote away from a majority of 185 votes, and four states composing a total of 20 votes, were disputing the results.
• The two parties agreed to establish a 15-member commission...

This election wasn't very exciting. Republican Warren G. Harding took more than 60% of the popular vote over Democrat James Cox, along with 37 of the 48 states.

Third place is interesting because union leader Eugene Debs ran his fifth campaign from prison. He was convicted under an espiona...

• President Harry S. Truman was done before the election began. An opinion poll showed that only a third of Americans approved of Truman's handling of the presidency. The election was New York Gov. Thomas Dewey's.
• The final pre-election Gallup poll showed Dewey beating Truman by 5 perc...

The contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon marked another precedent: the first time that presidential debates were televised.

• Nixon had recently been hospitalized. He refused to wear makeup, giving him a thin, sickly appearance. He wore a gray suit that made him blend int...

This election was not about whether Republican Barry Goldwater or President Lyndon Johnson was a more capable commander in chief. Race shaped the 1964's ballot and would affect elections for decades to come.

• Goldwater, who had cast his vote against the Civil Rights Act, was painted as...

• Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota had just won the Democratic nomination for president and phoned Sen. Thomas Eagleton and asked him to be his running mate.
• Eagleton was quiet about his three hospitalizations for depression and his electroshock therapy on two of those occasions. H...