After the 1996 presidential election, the Commission on Presidential Debates set new candidate selection criteria. Nader was blocked from attending a closed-circuit screening of the first debate despite having a ticket, and barred from attending an interview near the site of the third debate (Washington University in St. Louis) despite having a "perimeter pass". Nader later sued the CPD for its role in the former incident. A settlement was reached that included an apology to him.
Notable expressions and phrases
- Lockbox/Rainy Day fund: Gore's description of what he would do with the federal budget surplus, which was repeated many times in the first debate.
- Fuzzy math: a term used by Bush to dismiss the figures used by Gore. Others later turned the term against Bush.
- Al Gore invented the Internet: an interpretation of Gore's having said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet," meaning that he was on the committee that funded the research leading to the Internet's formation.
- "Strategery": a phrase uttered by Saturday Night Lives Bush character (portrayed by Will Ferrell), which Bush staffers jokingly picked up to describe their operations.
Results
Ballot access
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Presidential ticket
! Party
! Ballot access
! Votes
|-
|Gore / Lieberman
| | Democratic
| 50+DC
| 50,999,897
|-
|Bush / Cheney
| | Republican
| 50+DC
| 50,456,002
|-
|Nader / LaDuke
| | Green
| 43+DC
| 2,882,955
|-
|Buchanan / Foster
| | Reform
| 49
| 448,895
|-
|Browne / Olivier
| | Libertarian
| 49+DC<sup>★</sup>
| 384,431<sup>★</sup>
|-
|Phillips / Frazier
| | Constitution
| 41
| 98,020
|-
|Hagelin / Goldhaber
| | Natural Law
| 38
| 83,714
|}
<sup>★</sup>Although the Libertarian Party had ballot access in all fifty United States plus D.C., Browne's name only appeared on the ballot in forty-nine United States plus D.C. The Libertarian Party of Arizona opted to place L. Neil Smith on the ballot in Browne's place. When adding Smith's 5,775 Arizona votes to Browne's 384,431 votes nationwide, that brings the total presidential votes cast for the Libertarian Party in 2000 to 390,206.
Florida recount
thumb|Official [[Palm Beach County, Florida Votomatic voting machine used in the November 7, 2000 U.S. Presidential Election, on display at the Florida Historic Capitol Museum, Tallahassee, Florida]]
On election night, it was unclear who had won, with Florida's electoral votes still undecided. The returns showed that Bush won Florida by such a close margin that state law required a recount. A month-long series of legal battles led to the highly controversial 5–4 U.S. Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore, which ended the recount with Bush winning Florida by 537 votes, a margin of 0.009%. The Florida recount and subsequent litigation resulted in major post-election controversy, with some analysis suggesting that limited county-based recounts would have confirmed a Bush victory whereas a statewide recount would have given the state to Gore.
With the exceptions of Florida and Gore's home state of Tennessee, Bush carried the Southern states by comfortable margins, including Clinton's home state of Arkansas, and also won Ohio, Indiana, most of the rural Midwestern farming states, most of the Rocky Mountain states, and Alaska. Gore balanced Bush by sweeping the Northeastern United States (with the exception of New Hampshire, which Bush won narrowly), the Pacific Coast states, Hawaii, New Mexico, and most of the Upper Midwest. This was the only presidential election since 1988 where the Republican candidate carried any of the six New England states.
As the night wore on, the returns in a handful of small-to-medium-sized states, including Iowa, Oregon and New Mexico (Gore by 355 votes) were extremely close, but the election came down to Florida. As the final national results were tallied the following morning, Bush had clearly won 246 electoral votes and Gore 249, with 270 needed to win. Two smaller states—Wisconsin (11 electoral votes) and Oregon (7)—were still too close to call, but Florida's 25 electoral votes would be decisive regardless of their results. The election's outcome was not known for more than a month after voting ended because of the time required to count and recount Florida's ballots.
Between 7:50 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. EST on November 7, just before the polls closed in the largely Republican Florida panhandle, which is in the Central time zone, all major television news networks (CNN, NBC, FOX, CBS, and ABC) declared that Gore had won Florida. They based this prediction substantially on exit polls. But in the vote, Bush began to take a wide lead early in Florida, and by 10 p.m. EST, the networks had retracted their predictions and placed Florida back in the "undecided" column. At approximately 2:30 a.m. on November 8, with 85% of the vote counted in Florida and Bush leading Gore by more than 100,000 votes, the networks declared that Bush had carried Florida and therefore been elected president. But most of the remaining votes to be counted in Florida were in three heavily Democratic counties—Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach—and as their votes were reported Gore began to gain on Bush. By 4:30 a.m., after all votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush's margin to under 2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their declarations that Bush had won Florida and the presidency. Gore, who had privately conceded the election to Bush, withdrew his concession. The final result in Florida was slim enough to require a mandatory recount (by machine) under state law; Bush's lead dwindled to just over 300 votes when it was completed the day after the election. On November 8, Florida Division of Elections staff prepared a press release for Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris that said overseas ballots must be "postmarked or signed and dated" by Election Day. It was never released.)
thumb|right|Florida Supreme Court during the recount
Most of the post-electoral controversy revolved around Gore's request for hand recounts in four counties (Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia), as provided under Florida state law. Harris, who also co-chaired Bush's Florida campaign, announced she would reject any revised totals from those counties if they were not turned in by 5 p.m. on November 14, the statutory deadline for amended returns. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline to November 26, a decision later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court. Miami-Dade eventually halted its recount and resubmitted its original total to the state canvassing board, while Palm Beach County failed to meet the extended deadline, turning in its completed recount results at 7 p.m., which Harris rejected. On November 26, the state canvassing board certified Bush as the winner of Florida's electors by 537 votes. Gore formally contested the certified results. A state court decision overruling Gore was reversed by the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered a recount of over 70,000 ballots previously rejected as undervotes by machine counters. The U.S. Supreme Court halted that order the next day, with Justice Scalia issuing a concurring opinion that "the counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner" (Bush).
thumb|Gore-Lieberman supporters outside the [[U.S. Supreme Court]]
On December 12, the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore issued a 5–4 per curiam decision that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling requiring a statewide recount of ballots was unconstitutional on equal protection grounds, and in a 5–4 vote reversed and remanded the case to the Florida Supreme Court for modification before the optional "safe harbor" deadline, which the Supreme Court decided the Florida court had said the state intended to meet. With only two hours remaining until the December 12 deadline, the Supreme Court's order effectively ended the recount, and the previously certified total held.
Legislative action
Even if the Supreme Court had decided differently in Bush v. Gore, the Florida Legislature had been meeting in Special Session since December 8 with the purpose of selecting of a slate of electors on December 12 should the dispute still be ongoing. Had the recount gone forward, it would have awarded those electors to Bush, based on the state-certified vote, and Gore's likely last recourse would have been to contest the electors in the United States Congress. The electors would then have been rejected only if both houses agreed to do so.
Media recounts
From the beginning of the controversy, politicians, litigants, and the press focused exclusively on undervotes, in particular incompletely punched hanging chads. Undervotes were the subject of much media coverage, most of the lawsuits, and the Florida Supreme Court ruling.
Later, a larger consortium of news organizations, including USA Today, The Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, The Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers conducted a full recount of all machine-rejected ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. It found that Bush won under stricter standards and Gore won under looser standards.
Finally, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, sponsored by a consortium of major U.S. news organizations, conducted the Florida Ballot Project, a comprehensive review of ballots collected from the entire state, not just the disputed counties that were recounted. Based on the NORC review, the media group concluded that if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, Gore would have won Florida by 60 to 171 votes. The standards chosen for the NORC study ranged from a "most restrictive" standard to a "most inclusive" standard.
According to factcheck.org, "Nobody can say for sure who might have won. A full, official recount of all votes statewide could have gone either way, but one was never conducted." CNN and PBS reported that, had the recount continued with its existing standards, Bush would likely have still tallied more votes, but variations of those standards (or of which precincts were recounted) could have swung the election either way. They also concluded that had a full recount of all undervotes and overvotes taken place, Gore would have won, though his legal team never pursued such an option. The post-controversy recounts revealed that "if a manual recount had been limited to undervotes, it would have produced an inaccurate picture of the electorate's position." Gore failed to win the popular vote in his home state, Tennessee, which both he and his father had represented in the Senate, making him the first major-party presidential candidate to have lost his home state since George McGovern lost South Dakota in 1972. Furthermore, Gore lost West Virginia, a state that had voted Republican only once in the previous six presidential elections. This was the first time since 1948 that Democrats won the popular vote in three consecutive elections. This is one of only four U.S. presidential elections in which the winner did not carry any of the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; the others were 2004, 1916 and 1884. The 2000 election was also a rare instance in which the party controlling the White House lost a presidential election when the U.S. economy was not in a recession, the 1968 election being the most recent one. It is also the only election since 1968 where the popular vote was decided by under 1%.
Before the election, the possibility that different candidates would win the popular vote and the Electoral College had been noted, but usually with the expectation of Gore winning the Electoral College and Bush the popular vote. The idea that Bush could win the Electoral College and Gore the popular vote was not considered likely.
This was the first time since 1928 when a non-incumbent Republican candidate won West Virginia. The Electoral College results were the closest since 1876, making this election the second-closest Electoral College result in history and the third-closest popular vote victory. Gore's 266 electoral votes are the highest for a losing nominee. The 537-vote margin in Florida is the closest for a tipping point state in history. Bush was the first winning Republican since William McKinley to win with under 300 electoral votes. He was also the first son of a former president to be elected president himself since John Quincy Adams in 1824.
Bush was the first Republican in American history to win the presidency without carrying Vermont, Illinois, or New Mexico, as well as the second Republican to win the presidency without carrying California after James A. Garfield in 1880, and Pennsylvania, Maine, Michigan, and Connecticut after Richard Nixon in 1968, as well as the first winning Republican not to receive any electoral votes from California as Garfield received one electoral vote in 1880. Bush was the first Republican to win without New Jersey or Delaware since 1888. As of 2024, Bush is the last Republican nominee to win New Hampshire. This marked the first time since Iowa entered the union in 1846 in which the state voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in four elections in a row and the last time until 2020 that Iowa did not vote for the overall winner. Bush is the second Republican to win the presidency without Iowa (his father was the first, in 1988). This election was the first time since 1976 that New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Illinois, New Mexico, Michigan, and California voted for the losing candidate, as well as the first since 1980 that Maryland did so, the first since 1948 that Delaware did so, and the first since 1968 that Pennsylvania did so.
There were only two counties in the nation that had voted Republican in 1996 and flipped to the Democratic column in 2000: Charles County, Maryland, and Orange County, Florida, both rapidly diversifying counties, neither of which has voted Republican since.
This was the last time until 2024 in which an incumbent vice president ran for president. This was also the last time a Republican received any electoral votes from the Northeast until 2016. This and the following election were the only ones since 1980 in which the winner received fewer than 300 electoral votes (less than 55% of the total). Bush is the most recent candidate with gubernatorial experience to win the presidency. This is the most recent election in which both major-party nominees were under age 60.