The Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, former Vice President Al Gore lost the presidency by losing the electoral contest, although he won the popular vote. This has happened only three other times in U.S. history—in 1824, 1876, and 1888.

Born on March 31, 1948, in Washington, DC, while his father was serving as U.S. senator from Tennessee, Gore grew up in the nation's capital and in Carthage, TN. Earning a B.A. in government from Harvard University in 1969, Gore served in the U.S. Army as a journalist in Vietnam and went on to marry Mary Elizabeth (Tipper) and have four children: Kristin, Karenna, Sarah, and Albert III.

Al Gore was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976 and served until he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984, where he represented Tennessee until winning the vice presidency under President Bill Clinton in 1992. In the election of 2000, Gore lost to Governor George W. Bush of Texas in one of the closest and most controversial presidential elections in twentieth-century American history.