After the ball dropped America was already on its way with the upcoming Presidential election, no body knew how life changing this election truly was and what was coming for America and her people. The 2000 Presidential Election was between Al Gore at the time the current Vice President under the outgoing Bill Clinton and the Governor of Texas George W. Bush son the former President George H.W. Bush. This election was truly special in American history because it is considered one of the closet elections in U.S. history and the fourth of five presidential elections in which the winning candidate lost the popular vote. Al Gore got the nomination of his party fairly easily with only one challenger former Senator Bill Bradley. While Bush was seen as a favorite at the beginning of the Republican primary but had a larger field of challengers and had a contentious battle for the nomination with Senator John McCain but Bush would prevail. Gore chose fellow Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman has his VP running mate and Bush chose Dick Cheney former Defense Secretary as his pick. During the election both Bush and Gore focused mainly on domestic issues including tax relief, the budget, social insurance programs and others. Gore mainly criticized Bush for his lack of experience, and Republicans mainly attacked Gore for being Clinton’s VP with much resentment for Clinton. This is due to the Clinton sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky and others which brought about his subsequent impeachment, Gore avoided campaigning with the President for the most part during the election. For the most part during the election all the polls had it very close but nobody knew just how close it was going to be.

Election day November 7, 2000 over 100 million Americans headed to their polling stations to elect the next president of the United States unaware of the circus that was about to occur. At the end of the night it was unclear who won the election, with the state of Florida electoral votes undecided on a winner. This recount started a month-long series of legal battles, which went all the way to the Supreme court and made their contentious ruling of 5–4 of Bush v. Gore, ruling in Bush’s favor this then ended the recount. With it ended Bush won Florida by a margin of 537 votes or 0.009%. Bush won 271 electoral votes which is just above the magic number of 270 to win the presidency this despite Gore having 543,895 more votes which was 0.51% of all votes casted. It is truly amazing how close this election was and how much it truly did change American history the number of what ifs that come with the 2000 election are endless but we can’t change history only learn from it. This scenario of the loser of the popular vote but winning the elector college and the Presidency has only happened five times in American history and wouldn’t happen again until 2016 with the election of Donald Trump. Like the famous Mark Twain quotes goes “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”.