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The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. Populist candidate, Speaker of the House Al Gore, in coalition with the Socialist Party and the Kosuto Bloc, handily defeated John McCain of the Democratic Party and Jim Edgar, the former governor of Centralia of the Republican Party to become the next president of the United States. Gore was the first Populist elected since Pat Schroeder in 1972.
Incumbent president Arthur Fletcher had pursued a vigorous economic agenda, which included unprecedented surplus packages towards trade unions per his demands to make the Republicans a more left-wing party. However, his age came under scrutiny, and he angered the party's centrist faction by increasing tariffs on foreign imports. Jim Edgar, the governor of Centralia, ran a primary campaign against him, and managed to pull off an upset victory using the convention's butterfly ballot process. Not wishing to split the party as such would likely damage their chances in the congressional elections that year, Fletcher declined to run on another third-party ticket. The Democratic primary nominated John McCain, a member of the General Assembly from Van Buren, with the former Mayor of Kansas City Herman Cain as his running mate. The Populists nominated Al Gore, a representative from Tennessee and the party's vice-presidential choice in 1992. The environmentalist Ralph Nader was made his running mate. The Socialists and Kosuto Bloc, facing internal divisions and an inability to find suitable candidates, agreed to form a coalition government with Gore, and held the convention at the Socialist headquarters in Fort Dearborn. This was thus the first election in which the vice presidential choice of a coalition was not of a separate party affiliation with the main nominee.
Gore ran on a platform focusing on electronic direct democracy, wishing to use online platforms and the Welt-Empfänger to further presidential campaigns, taking inspiration from Ross Perot of Comancheria. The Democratic Party led a hawkish campaign, with McCain calling for a surge of troops into Vizifold in response to continued political instability there. The Republicans rarely campaigned outside of the Northeast and in Edgar's home state of Centralia, resulting in a lack of major national appeal. As had been predicted by polls beforehand, Gore won the election, winning the vast majority of the country and outpacing McCain by 17 states. Despite this, McCain broke the brief dominance of the Kosuto Bloc over the politics in his home state of Van Buren. Gore would be inaugurated as president on January 4, 2001.