A Brief History
On March 5, 1933, Germany’s Reichstag elections were won by Adolf Hitler and his band of “national socialists” with only 43.9% of the vote, enough to allow Hitler, already appointed Chancellor, to become virtual dictator of Germany and lead the world to a path of ruin.
Digging Deeper
Germany’s Weimar Republic is not the only place where winning the most votes does not guarantee victory, as the US has experienced several Presidential elections where the winner won less than 50% of the vote.
In 2016, Donald Trump was out voted by Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes, but still became President. Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, won the 1992 Presidential election by grabbing 45 million votes, while GHW Bush and Ross Perot garnered almost 59 million votes between them.
Other US Presidents that won despite losing the popular vote include JQ Adams in 1824, RB Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and GW Bush in 2000.
Note: A variety of reasons can allow a candidate that did not win a majority to take power, such as the Electoral College system in the US or multi-party systems where a single person or party is unlikely to win a majority, necessitating a coalition of minority vote getters to form and select a winner. Additionally, in the US, failing to achieve a plurality in the Electoral College results in the Presidential election being sent to the House of Representatives.
Question for students (and subscribers): Should the U.S. elect presidents by popular vote? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Foley, Edward. Presidential Elections and Majority Rule: The Rise, Demise, and Potential Restoration of the Jeffersonian Electoral College. Tantor Audio, 2020.
Stibbe, Matthew. Germany, 1914-1933: Politics, Society and Culture. Routledge, 2013.
The featured image in this article, a map by 沁水湾 of the 1933 Reichstag election results by constituencies, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
