94 Politics and elections
supporter, twice certified results declaring Bush the winner in Florida, but
the state courts continued to sanction recounts in county after county. On
8 December the Florida Supreme Court ordered recounts to continue in a
number of counties. The Bush camp appealed this ruling to the Supreme
Court of the United States, which handed down its decision in Bush v. Gore on
12 December, hours before the deadline. The decision, by a majority of 5–4 of
the Justices, ordered all recounts to cease. Thus, in an opinion which critics
have characterised as ‘deeply flawed’, the judiciary determined the result of
the election in favour of George Bush. The final majority for Bush in Florida
was certified as 537 votes. On 18 December, George W. Bush was confirmed
as the next president of the United States
House and Senate elections
The election of the president takes place every four years, but elections for
one-third of the Senate and the whole of the House of Representatives take
place every two years. Thus when the president is in the middle of his term
of office, just beginning the climb up to the next test of strength at the presi-
dential election two years hence, a large proportion of the legislators come
up for re-election. These mid-term elections differ in many respects from
elections in presidential years, and their results can be of critical importance
to the incumbent president. At the extreme, mid-term elections can result in
a change of control, so that one party controls the presidency and the other
party controls either the House or the Senate, or both Houses, as happened
in 1994, when the Republicans won majorities in both House and Senate and
President Clinton still had two years of his first term to complete. For the
remaining two years a Democratic president may have to cope with a Repub-
lican Congress, or vice versa.
The constitutional gulf between Congress and presidency can result in
situations where a president can be faced with majorities of the opposing
party in the legislature for the whole of his four-year term. In the election
of 1956 the American people returned Republican President Eisenhower to
power with a huge popular majority, but elected Democratic majorities to
the Senate and the House of Representatives. However, the system of gov-
ernment did not crumble, for enough Democrats were prepared to go along
with the Republican president to make the system workable. In the elections
of 1968 and 1972 Republican presidents were elected, but both Houses of
Congress remained in the hands of Democratic majorities throughout their
terms of office. In 1996 Democratic President Clinton was re-elected with a
large majority on the same day that the Republicans won majorities in both
the Senate and the House of Representatives.
If the president’s party also has majorities in one or both Houses of Con-
gress, at the mid-term elections the president’s party usually loses support,
and sometimes the shift of party strength may be considerable. In 1994, in
the middle of President Clinton’s term of office, the Democrats lost fifty-six