The
United States presidential election of 2016 was the 58th quadrennial
American presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The
Republican ticket of Kentucky Senator
Rand Paul and Ohio Governor
John Kasich defeated the
Democratic ticket of Vermont Senator
Bernie Sanders and Hawaii Representative
Tulsi Gabbard and the
Independent ticket of former New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg and former Secretary of Defense
Chuck Hagel. Paul
took office as the
45th President, and Kasich as the
48th Vice President, on January 20, 2017. Concurrent with the presidential election,
Senate,
House, and many
gubernatorial and
state and local elections were also held on November 8.
Voters selected members of the
Electoral College in each state, in most cases by
"winner-takes-all" plurality; those state electors in turn voted for a new
president and
vice president on December 19, 2016. Paul won 31 states worth a total of 289 electors, or 54% of the 538 available. He won three perennial
swing states of
Florida,
Ohio, and
Iowa as well as two "
blue wall" stronghold states of
Pennsylvania and
Wisconsin, which had not been won by a Republican presidential candidate in decades.
This was the first time since the
1984 re-election of
Ronald Reagan that
Wisconsin voted for a Republican, and the first time since
1988 that the Republican nominee won
Pennsylvania. Michael Bloomberg was the first Independent to win more votes than
Ross Perot in
1992. No candidate received more than 40% of the vote.
