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| Turnout | 70% [1] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 County results Congressional district results Precinct results
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The2000 United States presidential election in Florida took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the nationwide presidential election.Florida, aswing state, had a majorrecount dispute that took center stage in the election. The outcome of the2000 United States presidential election was not known for more than a month after balloting because of the extended process of counting andrecounting Florida's presidential ballots. State results tallied on election night gave 246 electoral votes toRepublican nomineeTexas GovernorGeorge W. Bush and 255 toDemocratic nomineeVice PresidentAl Gore, withNew Mexico (5),Oregon (7), and Florida (25) too close to call that evening. Gore won New Mexico and Oregon over the following few days, but the result in Florida was decisive, regardless of how those two states had voted.
After an intense recount process and theUnited States Supreme Court's decision inBush v. Gore, Bush won Florida's electoral votes by a margin of only 537 votes out of almost six million cast (0.009%) and, as a result, became the president-elect. The process was extremely divisive and led to calls forelectoral reform in Florida. If Gore had been declared the winner, he would have won the election with a total of 292 electoral votes. Post-election analysis has found that Palm Beach County'sbutterfly ballot misdirected over 2,000 votes from Gore to third-party candidatePat Buchanan, tipping Florida—and the election—to Bush.[2]
The final official Florida count gave the victory to Bush by 537 votes, making it by percentage not only the closest state of the election (New Mexico was decided by 366 votes but has a much smaller population, representing a 0.061% margin), but also the closest of any state in any United States presidential election ever.[a] This was the closest margin in any tipping point state in history, surpassing the record of the1876 United States presidential election in South Carolina.
As of the2024 presidential election[update], this is the last election in which the Democratic candidate wonPasco County andHernando County.[3] It was also the first time the Democratic candidate wonOrange County sinceFranklin D. Roosevelt in1944. This county, along withCharles County, Maryland, were the only two Gore flipped from the previous election.[4]
Initially, Florida had been considered fertile territory for Republicans. It was governed byJeb Bush, a staunch conservative[5] and George W. Bush's brother. Nonetheless, Republicans put significant advertising resources into the state, and later polls indicated that the state was very much in play as late as September 2000.[6] Some late momentum for Gore and his Jewish running mateJoe Lieberman may have come from southern Florida's significant Jewish population.[7] Voters from reliably Democratic states in theNortheast had also been migrating to Florida since the 1950s. The state's electorate was becoming more diverse in general, with growingAsian andHispanic immigrant populations.
Meanwhile, there was a heavy backlash in the Cuban-American population against Democrats during theElian Gonzalez dispute, during whichJanet Reno, PresidentBill Clinton's Attorney General, ordered the six-year-old Cuban refugee to be returned to Cuba. The Democrats' share of the Cuban-American vote dropped dramatically after 1996.[8]
In late October, one poll found that Gore was leading Bush and third parties by 44–42–4 among registered voters and 46–42–4 among likely voters, but that poll had a margin of error of four percentage points, making the race too close to call.[9]
On election day itself, the extent of the mix-ups in the electoral rolls was such that "in a number of precincts in Florida's inner cities, the polling locations were heavily fortified with police."[10]
| 2000 United States presidential election in Florida[11][12] | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Running mate | Votes | Percentage | Electoral votes | |
| Republican | George W. Bush | Dick Cheney | 2,912,790 | 48.847% | 25 | |
| Democratic | Al Gore | Joe Lieberman | 2,912,253 | 48.838% | 0 | |
| Green | Ralph Nader | Winona LaDuke | 97,488 | 1.64% | 0 | |
| Reform | Patrick Buchanan | Ezola Foster | 17,484 | 0.29% | 0 | |
| Libertarian | Harry Browne | Art Olivier | 16,415 | 0.28% | 0 | |
| Natural Law | John Hagelin | Nat Goldhaber | 2,281 | 0.04% | 0 | |
| Workers World | Monica Moorehead | Gloria La Riva | 1,804 | 0.03% | 0 | |
| Constitution | Howard Phillips | Curtis Frazier | 1,371 | 0.02% | 0 | |
| Socialist | David McReynolds | Mary Cal Hollis | 622 | 0.01% | 0 | |
| Socialist Workers | James Harris | Margaret Trowe | 562 | 0.01% | 0 | |
| Write-in | 36 | <0.01% | — | |||
| Totals | 5,963,110 | 100.00% | 25 | |||
Florida was the second of the 50 states (after Louisiana) to report its official results to the federal government (in aCertificate of Ascertainment submitted to theNational Archivist, the manner prescribed for presidential elections).
Bush became the first Republican to win the White House without carryingPalm Beach County since the county's founding in 1909.
| County | George W. Bush Republican | Al Gore Democratic | Ralph Nader Green | Pat Buchanan Reform | Various candidates Other parties | Margin | Total | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | # | % | ||
| Alachua | 34,135 | 39.80% | 47,380 | 55.25% | 3,228 | 3.76% | 263 | 0.31% | 751 | 0.88% | -13,245 | -15.45% | 85,757 |
| Baker | 5,611 | 68.80% | 2,392 | 29.33% | 53 | 0.65% | 73 | 0.90% | 26 | 0.32% | 3,219 | 39.47% | 8,155 |
| Bay | 38,682 | 65.70% | 18,873 | 32.06% | 830 | 1.41% | 248 | 0.42% | 243 | 0.41% | 19,809 | 33.64% | 58,876 |
| Bradford | 5,416 | 62.43% | 3,075 | 35.45% | 84 | 0.97% | 65 | 0.75% | 35 | 0.40% | 2,341 | 26.98% | 8,675 |
| Brevard | 115,253 | 52.75% | 97,341 | 44.55% | 4,471 | 2.05% | 571 | 0.26% | 852 | 0.39% | 17,912 | 8.20% | 218,488 |
| Broward | 177,939 | 30.93% | 387,760 | 67.41% | 7,105 | 1.24% | 795 | 0.14% | 1,640 | 0.29% | -209,821 | -36.48% | 575,239 |
| Calhoun | 2,873 | 55.52% | 2,156 | 41.66% | 39 | 0.75% | 90 | 1.74% | 17 | 0.33% | 717 | 13.86% | 5,175 |
| Charlotte | 35,428 | 52.96% | 29,646 | 44.31% | 1,462 | 2.19% | 182 | 0.27% | 182 | 0.27% | 5,782 | 8.65% | 66,900 |
| Citrus | 29,801 | 52.06% | 25,531 | 44.60% | 1,383 | 2.42% | 270 | 0.47% | 263 | 0.46% | 4,270 | 7.46% | 57,248 |
| Clay | 41,903 | 72.80% | 14,668 | 25.48% | 565 | 0.98% | 186 | 0.32% | 237 | 0.41% | 27,235 | 47.32% | 57,559 |
| Collier | 60,467 | 65.58% | 29,939 | 32.47% | 1,405 | 1.52% | 122 | 0.13% | 269 | 0.29% | 30,528 | 33.11% | 92,202 |
| Columbia | 10,968 | 59.24% | 7,049 | 38.07% | 258 | 1.39% | 89 | 0.48% | 150 | 0.81% | 3,919 | 21.17% | 18,514 |
| DeSoto | 4,256 | 54.48% | 3,321 | 42.51% | 157 | 2.01% | 36 | 0.46% | 42 | 0.54% | 935 | 11.97% | 7,812 |
| Dixie | 2,697 | 57.79% | 1,827 | 39.15% | 75 | 1.61% | 29 | 0.62% | 39 | 0.84% | 870 | 18.64% | 4,667 |
| Duval | 152,460 | 57.49% | 108,039 | 40.74% | 2,762 | 1.04% | 653 | 0.25% | 1,267 | 0.48% | 44,421 | 16.75% | 265,181 |
| Escambia | 73,171 | 62.62% | 40,990 | 35.08% | 1,733 | 1.48% | 502 | 0.43% | 460 | 0.39% | 32,181 | 27.54% | 116,856 |
| Flagler | 12,618 | 46.53% | 13,897 | 51.25% | 435 | 1.60% | 83 | 0.31% | 83 | 0.31% | -1,279 | -4.72% | 27,116 |
| Franklin | 2,454 | 52.83% | 2,047 | 44.07% | 85 | 1.83% | 33 | 0.71% | 26 | 0.56% | 407 | 8.76% | 4,645 |
| Gadsden | 4,770 | 32.38% | 9,736 | 66.09% | 139 | 0.94% | 38 | 0.26% | 48 | 0.33% | -4,966 | -33.71% | 14,731 |
| Gilchrist | 3,300 | 61.17% | 1,910 | 35.40% | 97 | 1.80% | 29 | 0.54% | 59 | 1.09% | 1,390 | 25.77% | 5,395 |
| Glades | 1,841 | 54.71% | 1,442 | 42.85% | 56 | 1.66% | 9 | 0.27% | 17 | 0.51% | 399 | 11.86% | 3,365 |
| Gulf | 3,553 | 57.79% | 2,398 | 39.00% | 86 | 1.40% | 71 | 1.15% | 40 | 0.65% | 1,155 | 18.79% | 6,148 |
| Hamilton | 2,147 | 54.14% | 1,723 | 43.44% | 37 | 0.93% | 23 | 0.58% | 36 | 0.91% | 424 | 10.70% | 3,966 |
| Hardee | 3,765 | 60.38% | 2,342 | 37.56% | 75 | 1.20% | 30 | 0.48% | 24 | 0.38% | 1,423 | 22.82% | 6,236 |
| Hendry | 4,747 | 58.32% | 3,240 | 39.81% | 104 | 1.28% | 22 | 0.27% | 26 | 0.32% | 1,507 | 18.51% | 8,139 |
| Hernando | 30,658 | 47.00% | 32,648 | 50.05% | 1,501 | 2.30% | 243 | 0.37% | 186 | 0.29% | -1,990 | -3.05% | 65,236 |
| Highlands | 20,207 | 57.48% | 14,169 | 40.31% | 545 | 1.55% | 127 | 0.36% | 104 | 0.30% | 6,038 | 17.17% | 35,152 |
| Hillsborough | 180,794 | 50.17% | 169,576 | 47.06% | 7,496 | 2.08% | 847 | 0.24% | 1,641 | 0.46% | 11,218 | 3.11% | 360,354 |
| Holmes | 5,012 | 67.77% | 2,177 | 29.43% | 94 | 1.27% | 76 | 1.03% | 37 | 0.50% | 2,835 | 38.34% | 7,396 |
| Indian River | 28,639 | 57.71% | 19,769 | 39.84% | 950 | 1.91% | 105 | 0.21% | 164 | 0.33% | 8,870 | 17.87% | 49,627 |
| Jackson | 9,139 | 56.06% | 6,870 | 42.14% | 138 | 0.85% | 102 | 0.63% | 54 | 0.33% | 2,269 | 13.92% | 16,303 |
| Jefferson | 2,478 | 43.91% | 3,041 | 53.89% | 76 | 1.35% | 29 | 0.51% | 19 | 0.34% | -563 | -9.98% | 5,643 |
| Lafayette | 1,670 | 66.67% | 789 | 31.50% | 26 | 1.04% | 10 | 0.40% | 10 | 0.40% | 881 | 35.17% | 2,505 |
| Lake | 50,010 | 56.44% | 36,571 | 41.27% | 1,460 | 1.65% | 289 | 0.33% | 281 | 0.32% | 13,439 | 15.17% | 88,611 |
| Lee | 106,151 | 57.57% | 73,571 | 39.90% | 3,588 | 1.95% | 305 | 0.17% | 785 | 0.43% | 32,580 | 17.67% | 184,400 |
| Leon | 39,073 | 37.88% | 61,444 | 59.57% | 1,934 | 1.87% | 282 | 0.27% | 421 | 0.41% | -22,371 | -21.69% | 103,154 |
| Levy | 6,863 | 53.91% | 5,398 | 42.40% | 285 | 2.24% | 67 | 0.53% | 117 | 0.92% | 1,465 | 11.51% | 12,730 |
| Liberty | 1,317 | 54.65% | 1,017 | 42.20% | 19 | 0.79% | 39 | 1.62% | 18 | 0.75% | 300 | 12.45% | 2,410 |
| Madison | 3,038 | 49.29% | 3,015 | 48.92% | 54 | 0.88% | 29 | 0.47% | 27 | 0.44% | 23 | 0.37% | 6,163 |
| Manatee | 58,023 | 52.58% | 49,226 | 44.61% | 2,494 | 2.26% | 271 | 0.25% | 330 | 0.30% | 8,797 | 7.97% | 110,344 |
| Marion | 55,146 | 53.55% | 44,674 | 43.39% | 1,810 | 1.76% | 563 | 0.55% | 778 | 0.76% | 10,472 | 10.16% | 102,971 |
| Martin | 33,972 | 54.78% | 26,621 | 42.93% | 1,118 | 1.80% | 112 | 0.18% | 193 | 0.31% | 7,351 | 11.85% | 62,016 |
| Miami-Dade | 289,574 | 46.29% | 328,867 | 52.57% | 5,355 | 0.86% | 560 | 0.09% | 1,196 | 0.19% | -39,293 | -6.28% | 625,552 |
| Monroe | 16,063 | 47.39% | 16,487 | 48.64% | 1,090 | 3.22% | 47 | 0.14% | 208 | 0.61% | -424 | -1.25% | 33,895 |
| Nassau | 16,408 | 68.98% | 6,955 | 29.24% | 253 | 1.06% | 90 | 0.38% | 81 | 0.34% | 9,453 | 39.74% | 23,787 |
| Okaloosa | 52,186 | 73.69% | 16,989 | 23.99% | 988 | 1.40% | 268 | 0.38% | 388 | 0.55% | 35,197 | 49.70% | 70,819 |
| Okeechobee | 5,057 | 51.32% | 4,589 | 46.57% | 131 | 1.33% | 43 | 0.44% | 34 | 0.35% | 468 | 4.75% | 9,854 |
| Orange | 134,531 | 48.02% | 140,236 | 50.06% | 3,879 | 1.38% | 446 | 0.16% | 1,063 | 0.38% | -5,705 | -2.04% | 280,155 |
| Osceola | 26,237 | 47.11% | 28,187 | 50.61% | 733 | 1.32% | 145 | 0.26% | 388 | 0.70% | -1,950 | -3.50% | 55,690 |
| Palm Beach | 152,964 | 35.31% | 269,754 | 62.27% | 5,566 | 1.28% | 3,411 | 0.79% | 1,527 | 0.35% | -116,790 | -26.96% | 433,222 |
| Pasco | 68,607 | 48.05% | 69,576 | 48.73% | 3,394 | 2.38% | 570 | 0.40% | 622 | 0.44% | -969 | -0.68% | 142,769 |
| Pinellas | 184,849 | 46.38% | 200,657 | 50.35% | 10,023 | 2.52% | 1,013 | 0.25% | 1,984 | 0.50% | -15,808 | -3.97% | 398,526 |
| Polk | 90,310 | 53.56% | 75,207 | 44.60% | 2,059 | 1.22% | 533 | 0.32% | 520 | 0.31% | 15,103 | 8.96% | 168,629 |
| Putnam | 13,457 | 51.29% | 12,107 | 46.14% | 379 | 1.44% | 148 | 0.56% | 148 | 0.56% | 1,350 | 5.15% | 26,239 |
| Santa Rosa | 36,339 | 72.10% | 12,818 | 25.43% | 726 | 1.44% | 311 | 0.62% | 208 | 0.41% | 23,521 | 46.67% | 50,402 |
| Sarasota | 83,117 | 51.63% | 72,869 | 45.27% | 4,071 | 2.53% | 305 | 0.19% | 615 | 0.38% | 10,248 | 6.36% | 160,977 |
| Seminole | 75,790 | 55.00% | 59,227 | 42.98% | 1,949 | 1.41% | 195 | 0.14% | 644 | 0.47% | 16,563 | 12.02% | 137,805 |
| St. Johns | 39,564 | 65.10% | 19,509 | 32.10% | 1,217 | 2.00% | 229 | 0.38% | 252 | 0.41% | 20,055 | 33.00% | 60,771 |
| St. Lucie | 34,705 | 44.50% | 41,560 | 53.29% | 1,368 | 1.75% | 124 | 0.16% | 233 | 0.30% | -6,855 | -8.79% | 77,990 |
| Sumter | 12,127 | 54.48% | 9,637 | 43.29% | 306 | 1.37% | 114 | 0.51% | 77 | 0.35% | 2,490 | 11.19% | 22,261 |
| Suwannee | 8,009 | 64.27% | 4,076 | 32.71% | 180 | 1.44% | 108 | 0.87% | 88 | 0.71% | 3,933 | 31.56% | 12,461 |
| Taylor | 4,058 | 59.59% | 2,649 | 38.90% | 59 | 0.87% | 27 | 0.40% | 17 | 0.25% | 1,409 | 20.69% | 6,810 |
| Union | 2,332 | 60.95% | 1,407 | 36.77% | 33 | 0.86% | 37 | 0.97% | 17 | 0.44% | 925 | 24.18% | 3,826 |
| Volusia | 82,368 | 44.84% | 97,313 | 52.98% | 2,910 | 1.58% | 498 | 0.27% | 585 | 0.32% | -14,945 | -8.14% | 183,674 |
| Wakulla | 4,512 | 52.54% | 3,838 | 44.70% | 149 | 1.74% | 46 | 0.54% | 42 | 0.49% | 674 | 7.84% | 8,587 |
| Walton | 12,186 | 66.51% | 5,643 | 30.80% | 265 | 1.45% | 120 | 0.65% | 109 | 0.59% | 6,543 | 35.71% | 18,323 |
| Washington | 4,995 | 62.24% | 2,798 | 34.86% | 93 | 1.16% | 88 | 1.10% | 52 | 0.65% | 2,197 | 27.38% | 8,026 |
| Totals | 2,912,790 | 48.85% | 2,912,253 | 48.84% | 97,488 | 1.63% | 17,484 | 0.29% | 23,095 | 0.39% | 537 | 0.01% | 5,963,110 |
Bush won 13 of 23 congressional districts, including one that elected a Democrat. Gore won ten, including three that elected Republicans.[13][14]
| District | Bush | Gore | Representative |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 68% | 30% | Joe Scarborough |
| 2nd | 49% | 48% | Allen Boyd |
| 3rd | 37% | 62% | Corrine Brown |
| 4th | 63% | 35% | Tillie K. Fowler |
| Ander Crenshaw | |||
| 5th | 46% | 50% | Karen Thurman |
| 6th | 58% | 39% | Cliff Stearns |
| 7th | 50% | 48% | John Mica |
| 8th | 53% | 45% | Bill McCollum |
| Ric Keller | |||
| 9th | 52% | 45% | Michael Bilirakis |
| 10th | 44% | 53% | Bill Young |
| 11th | 44% | 53% | Jim Davis |
| 12th | 55% | 43% | Charles Canady |
| Adam Putnam | |||
| 13th | 52% | 45% | Dan Miller |
| 14th | 59% | 38% | Porter Goss |
| 15th | 53% | 44% | Dave Weldon |
| 16th | 46% | 52% | Mark Foley |
| 17th | 15% | 84% | Carrie Meek |
| 18th | 61% | 38% | Ileana Ros-Lehtinen |
| 19th | 30% | 69% | Robert Wexler |
| 20th | 36% | 63% | Peter Deutsch |
| 21st | 62% | 37% | Lincoln Diaz-Balart |
| 22nd | 39% | 58% | E. Clay Shaw Jr. |
| 23rd | 19% | 79% | Alcee Hastings |
Technically, the voters of Florida cast their ballots for electors, representatives to theElectoral College. In 2000, Florida was allocated 25 electors because it had 23congressional districts and 2senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 25 electors who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the most votes in the state is awarded all 25 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as afaithless elector.
The electors of each state and theDistrict of Columbia met on December 18, 2000,[15] to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead, the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.
The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All were pledged to and voted for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney:[16]
In 2012,David Siegel, the owner of the Florida-basedWestgate Resorts hotel corporation, admitted to surveying his 8,000 Westgate employees, including many in Florida itself, and taking steps to make voting in the election easier for those who favored Bush and harder for those who favored Gore, which may have provided the amount of the votes needed for Bush, who only won the state by 537 votes, to secure the win in Florida.[17]
Siegel said in an interview:
"Whenever I saw a negative article aboutGore, I put it in with the paychecks of my 8,000 employees. I had my managers do a survey on every employee. If they liked Bush, we made them register to vote. But not if they liked Gore. The week before [the election] we made 80,000 phone calls through my call center—they were robo-calls. On Election Day, we made sure everyone who was voting for Bush got to the polls. I didn't know he would win by 527 votes. Afterward, we did a survey among the employees to find out who voted who wouldn't have otherwise. One thousand of them said so."[18]
Shortly before admitting this, Siegel acknowledged beforehand that his role in Bush's 2000 election victory "may not necessarily have been legal."[19]
Election fairness was a major problem that had gained much attention in the 1990s; for example, the 1997 Miami mayoral election was tainted by scandal.[20] According toThe Palm Beach Post, "State lawmakers decided to weed out felons and other ineligible voters in 1998 after a Miami mayoral election was overturned because votes had been cast by the convicted and the dead."[21]
This initiative occurred without sufficient protection of voting rights. In particular, from summer 1999 to spring 2000, Florida's voter list was subject to an unusually high number of problems. "The state's highest officials responsible for ensuring efficiency, uniformity, and fairness in the election failed to fulfill their responsibilities."[22] The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that an "overall lack of leadership in protecting voting rights was largely responsible for the broad array of problems in Florida during the 2000 election."[22]
Michael Moore in his 2001 bookStupid White Men described allegations of efforts to deny black citizens in Florida the right to vote. As a result of the state's contract withDatabase Technologies, "173,000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls"[10] and after an elections supervisor inMadison County was barred from voting; she and others "tried to get the state to rectify the problem, but their pleas fell on deaf ears."[10]
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(November 2021) |
The presidential election in Florida was closely scrutinized after Election Day. Due to the narrow margin of the original vote count, Florida Election Code 102.141 mandated a statewide machine recount, which began the day after the election. It was ostensibly completed on November 10 in the 66 Florida counties that used vote-counting machines and reduced Bush's lead to 327 votes. According to legal analystJeffrey Toobin, later analysis showed that a total of 18 counties—accounting for a quarter of all votes cast in Florida—did not carry out the legally mandated machine recount, but "No one from the Gore campaign ever challenged this view" that the machine recount had been completed.[23] Once the closeness of the election in Florida was clear, both the Bush and Gore campaigns organized themselves for the ensuing legal process. On November 9, the Bush campaign announced they had hiredGeorge H. W. Bush's formerSecretary of StateJames Baker and Republicanpolitical consultantRoger Stone to oversee their legal team, and the Gore campaign hiredBill Clinton's former Secretary of StateWarren Christopher.
perfect tie.
State and district results of the2000 United States presidential election | ||
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