As stated at History.com, in the 2000 election, George Bush and running mate D!ck Cheney (1941-), a former congressman and U.S. defense secretary under George H.W. Bush, defeated Vice President Al Gore (1948-) and his running mate, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (1942-) of Connecticut, by a margin of 271-266 electoral votes, though Gore won the popular vote by 48.4 percent to Bush’s 47.9 percent.
The 2000 election was the fourth election in U.S. history in which the winner of the electoral votes did not carry the popular vote.
His final total of 50,456,062 was more than half-a-million votes short of Al Gore's total of 50,996,582. Liberal consumer advocate Ralph Nader, running on the ballot of the Green Party, received nearly 2.9 million votes, and Patrick J. Buchanan, running as a conservative populist, garnered about 439,000 votes.
Bush ran for the presidency vowing to be a "compassionate conservative," but by the time Al Gore conceded and Bush made his acceptance speech from the Texas statehouse, the trait of Bush's that Americans were most familiar with was his competitiveness.
Of interest, after the grueling 36-day Florida recount battle, Al Gore finally conceded the presidency to George W. Bush on December 13, 2000.
But the controversy surrounding this unprecedented election and its aftermath did not end there. So, who really won? What the Bush v. Gore studies showed featured at CNN.