The United States presidential election of 1984 was the 50th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1984. The contest was between the incumbent President Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate, and former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic candidate.

Reagan carried 49 of the 50 states, becoming one of only two candidates to do so (the other was Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election). Reagan touted a strong economic recovery from 1970s stagflation and the 1981-82 recession, as well as the widespread perception that his presidency had overseen a revival of national confidence and prestige.

Although Mondale received 40.6% of the popular vote, electoral votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis in each state, resulting in a lopsided electoral vote count. Mondale's only electoral votes came from the District of Columbia, which has never given its electoral votes to a Republican candidate, and his home state of Minnesota, which he won by a mere 3,761 votes.

The United States presidential election of 1960 was the 44th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. The Republican Party nominated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, while the Democratic Party nominated John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. The incumbent President, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, was not eligible for re-election after being elected the maximum two times allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment; he was the first President affected by that amendment. This was the first presidential election in which voters in Alaska and Hawaii were able to participate, as both had become states in 1959.

Kennedy received 112,827 (0.17%) more votes than Nixon nationwide and although Nixon won the popular vote contest in more individual states (26 to 22), the electoral votes held by those various states, when cast, gave Kennedy an Electoral College victory of 303 to 219. Nixon was the first candidate in American presidential electoral history to lose an election despite carrying a majority of the states.

The 2006 United States midterm elections were held on Tuesday, November 7, 2006. All United States House of Representatives seats and one third of the United States Senate seats were contested in this election, as well as 36 state governorships, many state legislatures, four territorial legislatures and many state and local races. The election resulted in a sweeping victory for the Democratic Party which captured control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and won a majority of governorships and state legislatures from the Republican Party.

The victory of the Democratic Party in the 2006 Congressional elections was a major milestone for an additional reason: it saw the election of the first woman to serve as the Speaker of the House. Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, became the highest-ranking woman in the history of the government of the United States upon her election as Speaker in January 2007. In the United States, the Speaker is not only the presiding officer and leader of the majority party, but the Speaker also directly follows the Vice President of the United States in the line of succession to the presidency. It was also the first election in U.S. history in which the losses for one side were so lopsided that the victorious party did not lose a single incumbent or open seat in Congress or governor's mansion.