10/84Number of general elections Walter Mondale has won when not running as an incumbent: 1
3/84Officially declared candidates for the 1984 presidential election: 136
6/84Campaign dollars expected to be spent for each vote cast in the 1984 presidential election: 3.38
3/86Amount Pat Paulsen has raised for his 1988 presidential campaign: $57
10/87Number of states that have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968: 23
Number that have voted Democratic in every election since 1968: 0
12/87Presidential Medals of Freedom awarded by President Reagan: 72
6/87Odds offered by London bookies that a space creature, dead or alive, will land on Earth in the next year: 250 to 1
That Pat Robertson will win the Republican presidential nomination: 50 to 1
12/88Chances that a presidential appointee has received no formal training for the job: 4 in 5
12/88Percentage of presidential appointees who say they have trouble understanding financial disclosure forms: 70
3/88Number of candidates in the Philippines’ January regional elections who were murdered during the campaign: 39
3/88Percentage of the top sixty Republican presidential campaign aides who are black or Hispanic: 0
5/88Members of Colombia’s Patriotic Union party who have been murdered since it was founded in 1985: 600
Number of the party’s 87 mayoral candidates who were murdered in the six months prior to the March elections: 29
6/88Number of presidential elections since 1964 in which the Democratic candidate won a majority of the white vote: 0
8/89Average age of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives: 52
Average age of an American voter: 47
Average age of a member of the Rolling Stones: 46
1/90Number of the 1,614 electoral votes cast in presidential elections since 1980 that have gone to Republicans: 1,440
1/90Percentage of all blacks who voted in the 1984 presidential election who were first-time voters: 11
11/90Number of Democratic presidential candidates since 1932 who received the majority of U.S. newspaper endorsements: 1
2/90Estimated amount it will cost the Nicaraguan government to hold the elections scheduled for this month, per voter: $14
Average monthly income of a Nicaraguan: $25
5/90Total amount of network TV airtime devoted to the national elections in Chile and Brazil last December, in minutes: 2
6/90Tons of weapons Fidel Castro brought with him to Brazil’s presidential inauguration ceremonies in March: 10
7/90Number of votes received by the Beer Drinkers Union in the East German elections held last March: 2,534
Number of votes received by the Unification Now party: 2,396
9/90Portion of network news coverage of the 1988 presidential campaign that focused on the role of television imagery: 1/2
12/91Number of the 6 Democratic presidential candidates who say they support unconditional loan guarantees for Israel: 5
2/91Rank of Richard Gephardt, among Iowans’ first choices for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination: 1
4/91Change, since 1980, in the amount checked off on tax returns for the Presidential Campaign Fund: -$8,500,000
8/91Total PAC funds that went to the 331 candidates challenging incumbents for House seats in 1990: $6,898,631
Total PAC funds that went to the 79 incumbents who ran for re-election unopposed: $13,277,348
9/91Chances that a Democrat cannot name anyone “mentioned lately” as a 1992 Democratic presidential candidate: 3 in 4
1/92Chances that a vote cast in the 1960 presidential election was cast by a suburbanite: 1 in 4
Chances that a vote cast in the 1992 presidential election will be cast by a suburbanite: 1 in 2
1/92Amount that Senator John Glenn still owes creditors from his 1984 presidential campaign: $2,753,252
10/92Number of New York Times articles published this year in which the name Willie Horton was mentioned: 69
Number of articles published during the 1988 presidential campaign in which Horton was mentioned: 33
11/92Amount by which the number of women voting in 1988 exceeded the number of men who voted: 7,000,000
5/92Amount a University of Florida student-government political party spent on election campaigns this year: $16,484.27
5/92Percentage change, since 1988, in the number of Southerners voting in a Republican presidential primary: -7
Percentage change in the number of Southerners voting in a Democratic presidential primary: -20
Total amount of leftover campaign funds that these members will be eligible to keep: $7,324,643
8/92Rank of Bill Clinton, among all Democratic presidential nominees since 1956, in percentage of primary votes won: 1
9/92Amount the Bush re-election campaign has budgeted for focus groups this year: $1,000,000
9/92Chances that an American under the age of 21 voted in the 1972 presidential election: 1 in 2
Chances that an American under the age of 21 voted in the 1988 presidential election: 1 in 3
9/92Number of the five states Al Gore won in the 1988 presidential primaries that are in the South: 5
8/93Percentage change, since 1989, in the average number of presidential approval polls released each month: +100
8/93Chances that an adult resident of Los Angeles is white: 1 in 3
Chances that a voter in Los Angeles’s June mayoral election was white: 2 in 3
9/93Number of the 37 contested elections for seats in state legislatures this year that were won by Republicans: 23
11/94Percentage of Americans who say they would vote for Dan Quayle over Bill Clinton if the election were held today: 31
1/95Number of the four indicted congressmen running for re-election last fall who won: 3
11/95Ratio of campaign funds raised by presidential candidates as of June 1995 to the amount raised as of June 1991: 77:1
11/95Campaign funds raised as of June 1995 by the major Republican presidential candidates: $50,049,048
Estimated number of primaries that had occurred in 1992 by the time major Democratic candidates had raised this much: 41
11/95Percentage of Americans with a household income between $5,000 and $10,000 who voted last year: 23
11/95Price of The New Hampshire Primer, a how-to book on winning the first presidential primary: $9.95
12/95Ratio of Republicans to Democrats elected president since 1900 who lost their bid for re-election: 4:1
12/95Ratio of Republican to Democratic presidential vetoes overridden by Congress since 1960: 14:1
2/95Number of times the word “tsunami” appeared in the New York Times in the month following last fall’s elections: 14
2/95Amount Lyndon LaRouche has collected in contributions for his 1996 presidential campaign: $2,180,730
6/95Ratio of campaign funds raised by Phil Gramm to funds raised by the other Republican presidential candidates combined: 1:1
9/95Number of independent candidates not included on the ballot during Haiti’s elections in June: 112
10/96Percentage change since 1992 in presidential campaign contributions made by the gambling industry: +800
11/96Change since 1980 in the number of people who check the presidential-campaign-donation box on their taxes: -10,000,000
2/96Rank of Bob Dole and Steve Forbes among presidential candidates investors say make them feel “most bullish”: 1,2
3/96Estimated ratio of Steve Forbes’s net worth to all campaign contributions made to presidential candidates last year: 5:1
4/96Number of convicted felons who won election as county sheriff last year in Mississippi: 3
7/96Percentage of American voters who say “there is no chance whatsoever” that they will vote for Bob Dole: 49
8/96Ratio of blank or “spoiled” ballots cast in the Israeli election in June to the number of votes by which it was decided: 5:1
9/96Chance that a campaign story about Boris Yeltsin aired on prime-time Russian TV last spring was positive: 1 in 2
Chance that a campaign story about any other Russian presidential candidate was positive: 1 in 12
11/97Number of presidential nominees for U.S. government positions denied a Senate hearing since 1987: 154
11/97Average number of political ads aired on U.S. TV each day of last year’s election season: 3,585
11/97Number of Thanksgiving turkeys granted a presidential pardon since 1947: 50
12/97Percentage change since 1995 in total soft money raised nationally in the first six months of the election cycle: +29
9/97Number of the 327 eligible voters who voted in the Rock Creek, Kansas, school board election last April: 0
11/98Percentage of current members of Congress who voted for both the Communications Decency Act and the report’s release: 72
11/98Chances that a 1996 campaign contribution of over $200 came from a white man earning at least $100,000 a year: 2 in 3
Chances that a white male donor, making over $100,000 a year, and who gave over $200 to a 1996 campaign “personally knows” a member of Congress: 3 in 4
12/98Chance that a House member voted last June in favor of a constitutional amendment allowing school prayer: 1 in 2
Chance that a member attended Congress’s opening daily prayer on any of the three days preceding the vote: 1 in 29
2/98Gallons of liquor George Washington distributed to his district’s voters before his first election to office in 1758: 160
2/98Number of calls made last October to 888-HARASS-U, the presidential-sexual-harassment hot line: 4,195
3/98Percentage change in murder, rape, and robbery cases in New York City since the election of Rudolph Giuliani: -44
4/98Chance that a woman first elected to the U.S. House or Senate before 1993 was a congressional widow: 1 in 4
5/98Length, in pages, of the Senate’s new report on the financing of the 1996 Democratic campaigns: 1,112
5/98Number of House votes that Representative Jay Kim’s 1997 campaign-finance-fraud conviction will cause him to miss: 0
6/98Number of the 524 subpoenas issued in Rep. Dan Burton’s campaign-finance investigation that have gone to Republicans: 9
6/98Number of Congress members who attended a Capitol Hill hearing last March on the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia: 4
6/98Percentage of African-Americans who wish Bill Clinton could run for a third term: 74
7/98Number of witnesses called in the House campaign-finance investigation who have taken the Fifth: 53
7/98Number of city and state agencies suing New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani over his withholding of public records: 4
8/98Year in which the Tennessee legislature approved the Fifteenth Amendment, granting blacks the right to vote: 1997
1/99Ratio of campaign spending per vote won last year by Newt Gingrich to spending per vote won by Senator Russ Feingold: 9:1
1/99Ratio of the number of state ballot initiatives to limit abortion voted on last year to those advocating animal rights: 1:3
10/99Minimum number of TV markets in which last August’s FCC vote will allow networks to own more than one station: 50
Days after the FCC vote that a TV executive told the [NewYorkTimes|New York Times that he was eager to play the “duopoly game”: 1
10/99Number of days last August that Iowa hosted both the GOP presidential straw poll and the National Hobo Convention: 1
11/99Percentage points by which voter turnout for Russia’s last national election exceeded U.S. turnout in 1996: 21
11/99Margin by which the ten-member Kansas Board of Education voted to drop human evolution from the curriculum this year: 2
Number of presidential candidates besides Bill Bradley who have publicly criticized the Kansas board’s decision: 0
12/99Percentage who say they would vote for Donald Trump for president over Al Gore or George W. Bush: 5
2/99Amount a fourth-grade Denver class has raised since last March to buy and free Sudanese slaves: $35,000
5/99Rank of Bob Dole’s 1996 e-mail list of supporters, among the largest campaign e-mail lists ever created: 1
6/99Number of years after the Soviet national anthem was retired that Russia’s Duma voted last March to reinstate its tune: 7
6/99Last year in which neither a Dole nor a Bush has appeared on the Republican presidential ticket: 1972
7/99Amount that Gary Bauer’s presidential campaign spent on coffee in the first quarter of this year: $6,297.39
8/99Days it took Eleanor Roosevelt that year to decline an invitation to run for U.S. senator from New York: 5
8/99Chance that a New York Times article about Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign this year mentions her husband: 1 in 3
9/99Number of years since an elected New York City mayor went on to win higher office: 131
9/99Amount the Bush campaign spent for one day’s use of a plot of land near the entrance to last month’s Iowa straw poll: $43,500
9/99Percentage of Americans who say Hillary Clinton’s campaign will be more successful if her husband doesn’t try to help: 69
1/00Factor by which Microsoft’s average monthly campaign contribution in 1999 exceeded its monthly contribution in 1995: 8
10/00Number of G.O.P. presidential conventions since 1911 with a larger percentage of black delegates than last summer’s: 5
10/00Estimated voter registration rate among Kosovo Serbs, whose leaders are calling for a boycott of this fall’s elections there: 2
10/00Number of novels by a current vice presidential candidate’s wife wherein a vice president dies in flagrante delicto: 1
11/00Amount Anheuser-Busch contributed as a sponsor of the St. Louis presidential debate this year: $550,000
12/00Change in the number of Russian voters registered in the three months prior to Vladimir Putin’s election: +1,298,090
12/00Ratio of the average duration of an 1858 Lincoln-Douglas senatorial debate to that of a presidential debate this year: 4:1
2/00Percentage of New Yorkers who say they have already decided which Senate candidate to vote for in November: 92
2/00Number of the two memoirs published by GOP presidential candidates last year that use the phrase “toga party”: 2
3/00Ratio of major party presidential primaries to be held before April this year to those held before April in 1984: 3:1
3/00Percentage of the WTO protesters arrested in Seattle last year whose charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence: 92
3/00Percentage of “born again” New Yorkers who have said they will vote for Hillary Clinton for senator: 44
4/00Percentage of eligible Texans who voted for George W. Bush for governor in 1994 and 1998, respectively: 27, 22
5/00Number of presidential decrees Putin issued within two months of taking office last December: 491
6/00Ratio of the amount Americans spent on potato chips in 1996 to spending on federal political campaigns that year: 2:1
6/00Number of times that U.S. president Zachary Taylor had ever voted in a presidential election before taking office in 1849: 0
6/00Weeks before Peru ‘s national election last April that President Alberto Fujimori raised the minimum wage by 18 percent: 4
9/00Number of times Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column has likened a male political candidate’s style to lactation: 3
9/00Number of incumbent vice presidents elected to the presidency between 1836 and 1988: 0
1/01Number of last year’s top ten soft-money donors that contributed to both major parties: 6
1/01Year in which the levered voting machines used in some precincts last November were invented: 1892
10/01Number of “useless laws” that Italy’s new prime minister promised to eliminate if elected: 60,000
10/01Amount of campaign contributions that Sen. James Jeffords has returned since leaving the Republican Party in May: $17,470
Estimated amount of new contributions he has received since then: $45,000
11/01Number of bills to reform U.S. election procedures introduced in state legislatures since last November: 1,775
Percentage voted down, pending, and passed, respectively: 58, 28, 14
11/01Members of Congress who voted against this fall’s resolution to authorize an armed response to September 11’s attack: 1
Members who voted against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to authorize further U.S. attacks on Vietnam: 2
12/01Date on which the results of a 13-member major-media consortium’s 2000 election recount were to be made public: 9/24
Days before this that the New York Times, a consortium member, declared the unreleased results “utterly irrelevant”: 1
Number of consortium members that ran a news story on their decision to delay publicizing the results indefinitely: 0
2/01Chance that a democratic national election held last year was marred by violence or a disputed outcome: 1 in 4
2/01Number of Floridian ex-cons denied the right to vote last November because of felony convictions: 525,000
2/01Chances that an Alabama voter voted against legalizing marriage between blacks and whites last November: 2 in 5
2/01Percentage of women who chose Al Gore or George Bush from among last year’s presidential nominees to be their valentine: 40
Percentage who refused to choose: 44
3/01Ratio of U.S. spending on the bombing of Serbia in 1999 to U.S. spending on Serbian election aid last fall: 80:1
3/01Percentage of Venezuelans voting last December who approved a government-sponsored resolution to oust all union leaders: 62
Percentage of registered Venezuelan voters who voted at all: 23.5
3/01Number of the last 9 presidential elections in which Montana voted Republican: 8
3/01Year in which a political candidate first sued Palm Beach County over problems with hanging chads: 1984
6/01Years after the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill was first introduced that it passed the Senate in April: 5
Total amount raised at the two major-party fund-raisers held in the week before its passage: $9,500,000
6/01Estimated number of blank ballots cast in protest during Israel’s national election in February: 56,000
Days before the election that the Israeli supreme court rejected a request that blank ballots be counted: 4
8/01Months after his election in February that Sharon criticized Palestinians for “sending children to the front”: 2
8/01Chance that a member of the European Parliament voted in January to support E.U. participation in Plan Colombia: 1 in 508
1/02Change since 2000 in the percentage of Latin Americans who say they prefer democracy to other forms of government: -12
10/02Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount: $15,400
10/02Percentage of seats in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections this month that will be reserved for women: 19
10/02Number of the last six U.S. presidents who bested their opponents in the company’s election-year Halloween mask sales: 6
11/02Percentage by which the new campaign-finance-reform law will raise the cap on hard-money contributions: +100
12/02Number of times George W. Bush has said Osama bin Laden’s name in public since July 8: 0
2/02Date of an Economist correction apologizing for ever implying that Bush|President Bush] was elected: 11/17/01
2/02Amount the Pentagon has paid a Washington P.R. firm since then to help sway public opinion abroad: $7,100,000
2/02Ratio of U.S. public high schools named after Abraham Lincoln to those named after Jefferson Davis: 11:1
2/02Minimum percentage of votes in each New York City election since 1988 not counted due to mechanical or human error: 3
Number of May Day demonstrators the city prosecuted last June for “masquerading in public”: 12
3/02Months after George H. W. Bush lost the 1992 election that James Baker began lobbying Kuwait on Enron’s behalf: 5
Days before Enron declared bankruptcy that Baker’s public-policy institute awarded Alan Greenspan its “Enron Prize”: 19
3/02Total voting population of a Denton, Texas, tax district when a development plan was approved there in 1996: 1
Weeks before the vote that the resident was moved there by Dell Computer so that he could approve the plan: 5
3/02Total number of opposition candidates who ran for the 84 seats in Singapore’s parliament last November: 24
4/02Minutes before the President spoke at a jobs program last winter that protesters heard the event had been canceled: 10
Days later that he presented a budget proposal cutting the funding of such programs by 80 percent: 30
4/02Number of the 31 U.S. senators facing reelection this year for whom no challenger has yet been recruited: 6
7/02Percentage of their respective nations’ popular vote won in 2000 by George W. Bush and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez: 48, 60
7/02Chance an American believes that peace in the Middle East will require a military victory: 1 in 2
7/02Amount that Bush’s first 320 appointees spent on campaign contributions in the previous election cycle: $1,590,000
Amount that Bill Clinton’s first 320 appointees spent on campaign contributions in the election cycle prior to Clinton’s election: $1,040,000
8/02Amount the Bush Administration paid this year to buy back oil and gas drilling leases off Florida’s coast: $115,000,000
Factor by which this exceeds the price that the Reagan Administration received for selling them: 7
Months before the Florida gubernatorial election this year that President Bush announced the buyback: 5
9/02Days before Bolivia’s June election that the U.S. ambassador warned Bolivians not to vote for the Socialist candidate: 4
1/03Number of Louisiana’s last three elected insurance commissioners convicted of corruption: 3
11/03Percentage of votes cast in U.S. elections last year that were counted by the largest voting-technology firm: 52
11/03Campaign contributions that one voting-technology CEO raised to become a Bush “Pioneer” this year: $100,000
11/03Average percentage of the Jewish vote won by the Democratic presidential candidate in the 1980s: 59
Average percentage since then: 79
12/03Number of times Democratic presidential candidates used the word “jobs” in their first four debates after Labor Day: 111
Number of times they mentioned Bill Clinton: 36
4/03Amount for which Dow Chemical is suing Indian protesters over a two-hour demonstration held in Bhopal last year: $10,000
6/03Minimum number of times that actor Martin Sheen has been arrested in political protests: 60
Minimum number of times Abbie Hoffman was: 65
6/03Minimum number of times that the demonstrators at this year’s largest U.S. peace rally could encircle the Pentagon: 130
8/03Number of countries to which the U.S. sent troops between 1900 and 1993 for the purpose of establishing democracy: 14
Number that were democracies ten years after the withdrawal of U.S. forces: 4
1/04Number of political candidates murdered during Colombia’s regional election campaigns last year: 26
1/04Minimum number of political parties registered in the United States: 46
Number of them represented in California’s gubernatorial race last year: 6
10/04Number of Ohio election boards being sued over erroneously informing parolees that they may not vote: 21
11/04Chance that a Republican president has not won the popular vote: 1 in 6
Chance that a Democratic president has not: 0
12/04Number of states with a Libertarian Party presidential candidate on the ballot last month: 48
12/04Weeks the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate spent staying in homeless shelters as part of her campaign tour: 2
2/04Roll of the dice with which a Utah mayor won reelection after a tied vote last November: 4, 1
2/04Percentage margin by which a Milosevic-supported candidate won Serbia’s presidential election last November: 12
Percentage by which that election’s turnout fell short of the threshold Serbia requires for lawful elections: 11
2/04Rank of Rwanda among countries with the largest proportion of women in their lower legislative house: 1
2/04Average number of years before reaching the White House that a twentieth-century U.S. president won his first elected post: 14
2/04Percentage of the vote in last November’s New Haven, Connecticut, mayoral race won by the Guilty Party candidate: 15
3/04Percentage of Americans living below the poverty level who voted in the 2000 presidential election: 38
3/04Fine paid by two of John Ashcroft’s PACs for breaking campaign-finance laws during the 2000 election cycle: $37,000
3/04Number of the 420 demonstrators arrested at Philadelphia’s 2000 Republican National Convention who were convicted: 23
Number whose cases are still pending: 9
4/04Percentage of U.S. voters whose 2004 vote will be cast via a computer system producing no paper record: 29
4/04Number of votes cast in New Hampshire’s Republican primary this year for write-in Democratic candidates: 8,092