Final answer to the "Who's On Heart" competition

It took six months, thirteen days, 914 rounds of the game, and 1263 unique incorrect guesses, but finally, the remaining voice to the "Who's On Heart" competition was identified (past posts here and here). The person? Former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.

I was shocked twice this morning, the first occasion being to discover that the competition was over, and the second was learning that the last voice, the person saying "on", was Al Gore. After subsequently hearing "on" a couple more times and listening to it in context with the rest of the spoken sentence I could tell that the voice was Gore, although he was not someone I had ever considered for the voice. Kevin Taylor was the person to correctly guess Gore and he has won an impressive £60,000 with his answer.

As far as I'm concerned, I am satisfied with the competition: Tina Turner, Al Gore, and Joely Richardson are a diverse trio and I think they were a well-chosen group. Not everyone agrees, unfortunately, as I have read trolling comments in regards to Gore being one of the three (some people saying that he's not a celebrity to a few others whining about the person being an American politician rather than a British one), but most people don't seem to have a problem and are glad the competition is now over.

The three voices, both the individual words and the sentences they were used in, can be found on the Heart website: here's the link for Tina Turner, for Al Gore, and for Joely Richardson.

United States presidential elections 2000 and 2004

Here are some statistics about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in the United States that I find interesting. In 2000, then-Governor George W. Bush won the presidency by winning the electoral vote but losing the popular vote; meanwhile, then-Vice President Al Gore lost the electoral vote but did win the popular vote. Bush won 271 electoral votes and 50,456,002 popular votes while Gore won 266 electoral votes (though should have won 267 but there was a faithless elector in Washington D.C.), and 50,999,897 popular votes. Florida was highly disputed in that election, and had the state been given to Gore he would have won both votes.

In 2004, then-President Bush was running for re-election, and his challenger was Senator John Kerry (D-MA). Bush won this election, this time winning both the electoral vote (286) and the popular vote (62,040,610); while Kerry only won 251 electoral votes (he should have won 252, but an electoral voter in Minnesota accidentally voted for Kerry's running mate instead) and 59,028,444 popular votes. The margins of victory here, while a little too close for comfort, are more significant than in 2000; however, the state that was most disputed in this election was Ohio, although not to the extent Florida was.

Had Kerry won Ohio, Bush would have been narrowly defeated in the electoral college with 266 votes to Kerry's 272 (or 271 when factoring in the Minnesota voter, making the result 271-266 as it was in 2000, but this time it would have been the winner who would have lost a vote), but won the popular vote by more than three million voters. Bush would then have had the record of being the first person to have been elected president without winning the votes of the people, and subsequently voted out after losing in the electoral college but winning the larger share (and even majority) of the popular vote. I am not sure if that would be a record anyone would want to hold, but I suppose it would be better than having the record of winning every state in one election to end up losing them all in the next.

Of course, this outcome did not happen, but I do find these statistics fascinating. I also find it interesting that both Gore and Kerry did not receive the total amount of electoral votes they should have (one because of the faithless elector making a protest, the other from an error), and that had Bush lost Ohio in 2004 he would received the same amount of electoral votes as Gore.