The District of Columbia is a political division coterminous with Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. Since the enactment of the
23rd amendment to the Constitution in 1961, the district has participated in 15
presidential elections
A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is President.
Elections by country
Albania
The president of Albania is elected by the Assembly of Albania who are elected by the Albanian public.
Chile
The pr ...
. The amendment states that it cannot have more
electoral votes than the
state with the smallest number of electors. Since then, it has been allocated three electoral votes in every presidential election.
The Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to:
*Democratic Party (United States)
Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to:
Active parties Africa
*Botswana Democratic Party
*Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea
*Gabonese Democratic Party
*Demo ...
has immense political strength in the district. In each of the 15 presidential elections, the district has overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic candidate, with no
margin
Margin may refer to:
Physical or graphical edges
*Margin (typography), the white space that surrounds the content of a page
*Continental margin, the zone of the ocean floor that separates the thin oceanic crust from thick continental crust
*Leaf ...
less than 56.5 percentage points. It has been won by the losing candidate in 8 of the 15 elections.
In the
2000 presidential election,
Barbara Lett-Simmons, an elector from the district, left her ballot blank to protest
its lack of voting representation in
Congress. As a result,
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
received only two of the three electoral votes from Washington, D.C.
In 2016, 85.7% of the registered voters approved a statehood referendum. In recent times, there have been various statehood movements in the District of Columbia, which advocates making the district a state.
The district is a signatory of the
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an
interstate compact in which signatories award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national-level popular vote in a presidential election, even if another candidate won an individual signatory's popular vote. it has not yet
gone into force.
Presidential elections
Graph
The following graph shows the margin of victory of the Democratic Party over the Republican Party in the 15 presidential elections the District of Columbia participated.
See also
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Elections in the District of Columbia
The District of Columbia (a political division coterminous with Washington, D.C.) holds general elections every two years to fill various D.C. government offices, including mayor, attorney general, members of the D.C. Council, members of the ...
**
**
United States Senate elections in the District of Columbia
The District of Columbia is a political division coterminous with Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. According to the Article One of the Constitution, only states may be represented in the United States Congress. The Distri ...
*
List of United States presidential election results by state
Notes
References
Works cited
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{{United States presidential elections