Too Close to Call: Seven Close American Elections

2024 will be a very close election. We look at seven different presidential contests that were won with razor thin margins.  

Transcript

Too Close to Call: Seven Close Elections in the United States

October 2024

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it depended on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in the Senate.

Orson Welles

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

HL Menken

Dave Roos, writing for History.com, notes, "So if you're starting to question if your vote really counts, consider that sometimes a presidential election can be decided by just a few thousand votes—actual votes, not electoral ones—or even a few hundred." We shall look at seven examples of this.  

Part of me does not like close elections.  I remember that FDR's landslides in 1932 and 1936 enabled the New Deal, one of the most misunderstood periods in American history.  The advent of WWII got us out of the economic malaise, and I would argue it was the New Deal that put the Great in the great depression.  Lyndon Johnson also had a massive landslide in 1964, and though we got civil rights legislation, we also got terrible housing policies, unsustainable entitlement costs, and the Public Broadcasting System.  That last one cannot and should not borne.  Yet Reagan's 1984 landslide gave us 24 years of unparalleled growth and prosperity. They also gave him a mandate.  In these years, every president, from W. Bush to Joe Biden, who won close elections, claimed a mandate despite clear evidence that nearly half the nation does not approve of wholesale change.  

And I get why media types or even humble small podcasters like razor-thin elections.  Every nuance, utterance, and potential October surprise provides fodder for the writer and the reader alike.  And since 1988, except for Obama's first win, we have had down-to-the-wire recounts in some states, and we dispute the results of presidential elections.  

One of the recurring themes of this podcast is opposing the concept that everything we see is somehow new. Too close-to-call elections have been with the American people since the inception of the Republic, and here we look at seven such presidential contests.   

Election of 1800

With George Washington running in the first two races, there was really no doubt about the winner. I was surprised that John Adams, the number two electoral college vote recipient, did better than I had thought, with 77 vs. Washington's 132.  The next election, 1796, saw the first competitive election with Vice President Adams running against Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Though Adams only won the Electoral College by three votes, he won the popular vote with 53% of the total.  Keep in mind that in this election, women, African Americans, or those who did not own property were all prohibited from voting.  

But it was the next election, a highly acrimonious affair that featured the first time the election was decided in the House of Representatives. Rematch elections are always slightly different, as the candidates know their opponents' strengths and weaknesses. They also have the scars, bruises, and resentments of previous attacks.  

One of the fun aspects of elections in the early Republic was that the second vote-getter became Vice President. Think of cabinet meetings if Hillary Clinton sat in on Trump sessions or Trump attended Biden events as the sitting vice president. That was Jefferson as vice president with President Adams.  

In American history, the Presidential Election of 1800 was hugely significant. It marked the first time in an election where a challenger defeated an incumbent leader. Trump January 6, 2021 event aside, we are accustomed to this.  But for an 18th-century man, including ones steeped in the classics, losers were often seen to say screw it, raise an army, and have a go at the capital.  I am not necessarily a fan of Adams.  However, as the first incumbent to lose the office, his abdicating authority marked a precedent as crucial as Washington's stepping down.  

In addition to the victory of a challenger against the incumbent, the election of 1800 led to a tie majority vote. Only after a contingent election in the House of Representatives was Thomas Jefferson officially elected president, albeit after thirty-five gridlocked ballots. However, the election's closeness was separate from Jefferson and Adams because the latter got only the 3rd most electoral votes, such as the low ebb of Adams' popularity.  Instead, it was Aaron Burr, famed for murdering Alexander Hamilton and immortalized by composer Lin-Manual Miranda.  Burr was not a competitor to Jefferson but, in many regards, his campaign manager.  But by getting the same number of electoral votes, the election came to a close contest in the House, which needed all those ballots to determine a winner, which was no sure thing for the father of the Declaration of Independence because of a political fluke.  

It was the outgoing House of Representatives, controlled by the Federalist Party, that just saw its president lose, that was charged with electing the new president. Jefferson was the great enemy of the Federalists, and a faction of Federalist representatives tried to block him and elect Burr.  Imagine that if the current Trump Harris has the same 270, it would go to the House. I will not go into all the details of how that is determined, but let us say that such a scenario would make the house races even more interesting.  

Burr, who clearly ran as Jefferson's lieutenant, was under pressure to step out of the way and though silent on the matter of the electoral college, refused to do so.  Eventually, the electors chose Jefferson (and not necessarily because of lobbying on the part of Hamilton, as is implied in the pseudonymous musical).  

A significant influence wrought by the election of 1800, one which is still prevalent today: the creation of a two-party system. Since the Electoral College was not created to handle the complexity of political parties influencing the selection of presidential candidates, reform became necessary. In 1803, a proposed amendment that would restructure the presidential elections was presented before Congress. It was subsequently ratified by fourteen of the then-seventeen states in the Union. The Amendment was enacted for all presidential elections from 1804 onward. One of its first provisions was to divide presidential and vice-presidential elections.  No more chief rivals sitting in the next seat down. 

Election of 1824

Regarding the US presidential elections, the 1824 one was unusually crazy. There were four major candidates, none of whom won enough electoral votes, which meant, according to the US Constitution, the House of Representatives had to pick someone for president. Then, less than two weeks before the House decided, a newspaper published an anonymous letter alleging two of the candidates had made a "corrupt bargain" with each other.

The three presidential candidates involved in this scandal were Senator Andrew Jackson, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, and Speaker of the House Henry Clay. "The Constitution says that if no candidate receives a majority of electoral college votes (in 1824, the magic number was 131), then the vote goes to the House of Representatives. According to the 12th Amendment, The top three electoral vote-getters moved on to the House, so Clay was out of the race." Adds Roos.

The corrupt bargain was allegedly between Adams and Clay.  The latter happened to be a power broker in the House, so if he swung the election towards Adams, then Clay would get to be Secretary of State, or so enemies of both men suggested.  This office was a little different back then. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Adams had all served as Secretaries of State before becoming president, so the logic went that Clay would likely succeed Adams in the Oval Office after two terms.  They all underestimated Jackson, who campaigned against the bargain and won overwhelmingly in 1828. As Adams biographer Robert Remini notes, "The friends of Jackson erupted when they heard the news." Jackson himself, in his usual understated style, said, "Clay voted for Adams and made him president, and Adams made Clay Secretary of State…the Judas of the west has closed the contract and will receive his 30 pieces of silver. His end will be the same," ominously concluded Jackson.

Was there an actual bargain?  There is no direct evidence in the form of a letter or other document.  Rather, Clay probably liked Adams better for the role of president as a supporter of his American system.  Clay would also have noted that Adams' base of support was New England, but Jackson was of the West and South, also Clay's patch.  Not a formal deal, but probably a tacit understanding.  

Election of 1876

We imagine our politics to be messy and fraught with spite, but we have nothing on postbellum America.  For sheer messiness, corruption, and outright voter suppression, 1876 is a good example.  

According to Sheila Blackford, writing for the invaluable Miller Center, "In the presidential election of 1876, Democrat Samuel Tilden ran against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. At the end of election day, no clear winner emerged because the outcomes in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were unclear. Both parties claimed victory in those states, but Republican-controlled "returning" boards would determine the official electoral votes.

Republicans and Democrats rushed to those three states to influence the counting of the votes. The returning boards determined which votes to count and could throw out votes if they deemed them fraudulent. The returning boards in all three states argued that fraud, intimidation, and violence in certain districts invalidated votes and threw out enough Democratic votes for Hayes to win. All three returning boards awarded their states' electoral votes to Hayes."

But there was a deal in the offing.  One of the issues that interested Democrats was the restoration of their control of Southern state governments, and thus white supremacy, in the South.  The most important step to this vision was the removal of the last of the federal troops who protected Southern republicans, and especially African American voting rights.  The Compromise of 1877 was an informal agreement between southern Democrats and allies of the Republican Rutherford Hayes to settle the result of the 1876 presidential election and marked the end of the Reconstruction era. 

Again, there is no document we can cite: remove the troops, and we will not block Hayes.  Yet the Republican Hayes did, in 1877, withdraw federal troops from the South.  The butterfly effect is a concept from chaos theory that describes how small changes in a system can lead to big differences in the future.  Okay, withdrawing troops from the South was no small thing, yet the ripples would last well over 100 years.  Without federal troops to protect African Americans, much less enabling them to vote, the white-dominated Democratic Party was in control.  Preventing African Americans from voting or even achieving a level of prosperity would prevail in the Bellum South until the 1950s.  It was not until after the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s that full voting rights were restored.  Not coincidentally, Republican Nixon's election of 1968 and his landslide in 1972 occurred only after voting rights were partially restored.  Even a highly popular figure like republican Teddy Roosevelt, who won a landslide in 1904, carried every single state except those below the Mason-Dixon line.   

Election of 1884

Incumbent President Chester A. Arthur bowed out of a bid for re-election, leading to a contest between New York Gov. Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine, a former US Senator from Maine. Accusations of voter fraud in New York from both parties meant that final results were not certified until mid-November; however, Cleveland ultimately proved victorious and began the first of his two non-consecutive terms.

In 2024, Harris and Trump have basically set up camp in Pennsylvania.  There are, of course, six other swing states (AZ, NV, GA, NC, MI, and WI). However, New York State would determine the winner for the 1880, 1884, 1888, and 1892 elections by swinging twice for both parties.  Unlike today, the New York of the late 1800s, the most populous state in the Union at the time carrying 36 electoral votes, often came down to a few thousand votes, as was the case in 1884. That year, the election of Grover Cleveland represented the first time in 24 years that a Democrat prevailed.  And this was one of the dirtiest campaigns in a fairly muddy period.   In one scandal, Cleveland, whose supporters praised him for his moral rectitude, was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock and abandoning the mother. Republican-leaning newspapers ran a mocking cartoon of a young boy crying, "Ma, Ma, Where's my Pa?"

However, the scandal that has an odd parallel today is the coining of the terms Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.  In 1884 terms, the phrase was meant to denigrate Democratic constituencies, including the Irish, other Catholics, and southerners in recently re-admitted states.  As a cartoon in the Daily Kos notes, "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.  But those who DO learn history are doomed to watch others repeat it." 

Similar to a Trump surrogate recently castigating Puerto Ricans (I will not dignify the unfunny and actual statements here), in an event in New York City on October 29, attended by Blaine, preacher Dr. Samuel Burchard spoke first and proudly declared, "We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." It is moments like these that I wish I could roll my Rs. Alas, no.  

"As the Lord sent upon us an ass in the shape of a preacher and a rainstorm, to lessen our vote in New York," wrote Republican candidate James G. Blaine two weeks after he had lost the presidential election of 1884, "I am disposed to feel resigned to the dispensation of defeat." Thanks in no small part to Buchard's speech, Cleveland had carried pivotal New York by 1,049 votes and, with them, the 36 electoral votes that decided the election. Looking haggard after his six-week, 400-speech tour of the West, Blaine ignored the blatant insult to Irish Catholics and expounded on the "conclusive issue" of the campaign, the protective tariff.

In high glee, the Democratic Executive Committee—which had "watching scouts" to take down every word Blaine uttered—saw Burchard's alliterative phrase quoted in the next day's issue of the New York World. No time was lost in splashing it on posters and handbills for distribution throughout the city.

Three days passed before Blaine distanced himself from his supporter's offensive remark. "I have refrained carefully and instinctively from making any disrespectful allusion to the Democratic party," he protested. In reference to his Catholic mother, he added, "I should esteem myself of all men the most degraded if under any pressure, or under any temptation, I could in any presence make a disrespectful allusion to that ancient faith in which my mother lived and died."

It was too late. Irish Catholic voters, who tended to like the charismatic Blaine and who appreciated his propensity to "twist the tail" of the British lion, had second thoughts about straying from the Democratic fold. Blaine afterward declared that he had won "thousands upon thousands" of Irish votes in New York and would have had many more "but for the intolerant and utterly improper remark of Dr. Burchard, which was quoted everywhere to my prejudice and in many places." He would have carried New York by ten thousand votes, Blaine insisted, "had Dr. Burchard been doing missionary work in Asia Minor or Cochin China." 

The difference is that the Trump guy was a comedian, a bad one, but a comedian nonetheless. We have just seen Tony Hinchcliffs "joke" about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.  Here we have a Trump surrogate who clearly got carried with the Madison Square Garden crowd of 20,000. If he had given a scintilla of thought to his jokes and his support of Trump, he might have taken about 10 seconds to search Pennsylvanian Puerto Ricans.  The learning is there are over 200,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, a state Trump lost in 2020 by just 81,000 votes.  But wait! There's more.  This week, Joe Biden emerged from his final months of presidential slumber to say that, in fact, Trump's supporters were garbage.  Not a D-team Don Rickles, but the leader of the Dems and selector of Harris for VP.  

Will any of this be the ever-regretted Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion of its day?  We will not know yet, but if so, unlike Blaine, Trump will not concede. 

Election of 1916

Frequent Listeners know that I lay much of our current-day ills at the feet of a popular president (not in my estimation), Teddy Roosevelt.  Roosevelt served seven years as President (most of McKinley's term after the 25th president was assassinated, and a 2nd term in his own right. Had TR followed Washington's example and stepped down, then more than likely, his successor, William Taft, would have also served two terms. But TR is the Eminem president who, like the Detroit-based rapper, thinks the world is "just so empty without me." So he ran again in 1912 and gave us Wilson. 

What followed was the most progressive president to date and one of the top three in our history.  The constitution?  Needed major revisions. Government?  Bigger is much better.  The American people? Bees (I am not making that up), and African Americans? Inferior.  This is Wilson's legacy.  

Thus, when Wilson ran in a straight-up election in 1916, it was one of the closest in American history.  With World War I raging in Europe, Africa, and Asia, Wilson was determined to remain neutral and even campaigned on the line "He Kept us out of War." Biographer HW Brands also notes that Wilson "had the advantages of incumbency and a friendly Congress." 

Held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. The Democratic Wilson narrowly defeated former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Charles Evans Hughes.  States Roos, "In 1916, Hughes's job was to appeal to both the progressive and conservative factions of the Republican party, and he had his work cut out for him in California. That year, two California Republicans vied for a seat in the Senate: progressive Hiram Johnson and conservative William Booth. The Hughes campaign needed to appeal to California Republicans backing both men in order to carry the state. Just months before the election, Hughes made an unpardonable error. While on a campaign visit to Long Beach, California, Hughes stayed at the same hotel as Johnson but didn't invite the California politician for a drink or even a chat. Hughes swore that he had no idea Johnson was at the hotel, but Johnson insisted he was snubbed. Fuming at the insult, Johnson refused to campaign for Hughes in California.

Without Johnson's support, the presidential race in California between Hughes and Wilson was incredibly tight. When the votes were finally tallied, Wilson received 465,936 votes, and Hughes got 462,516, a difference of 3,420 votes or 0.34 percent of all votes cast in California.

California's 13 electoral votes gave the 1916 election to Wilson, who won 277 to 254.

With such a small margin of victory in California, the Hughes campaign hired lawyers to dig up evidence to argue for a recount.

"But ultimately, Hughes and the Republicans said, 'We can't find anything,'" says Foley. "Three thousand votes in California made the difference."

Another wrinkle in the Harris-Trump imbroglio is the involvement of super podcaster Joe Rogan.  I, too, am a podcaster, but that is like comparing a country cottage to the Empire State Building.  Trump is going on Rogan's show and will go to Texas, Rogan's studio.  Harris would also like to but wants Rogan to come to her.  So, nothing is in stone.  It says volumes about our current politics that it is not a Senator like Johnson who might determine our election but a podcaster.  

Election of 1960

On November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected. In the popular vote, his margin over Nixon was 118,550 out of nearly 69 million votes. His success in many urban and industrial states gave him a clear majority of 303 to 219 in the electoral vote. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president, the first Catholic, and the first president born in the twentieth century.

Arguments persist about vote counting in two states, Illinois (where Kennedy won by 9,000 votes) and Texas (where Kennedy won by 46,000 votes). If Nixon had won those two states, he would have defeated Kennedy by two votes in the Electoral College.

In Illinois, there were rampant rumors that Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley used his political machine to stuff the ballot box in Cook County. Democrats charged the GOP with similar tactics in southern Illinois. Down in Texas, there were similar claims about the influence of Kennedy's running mate, Lyndon B. Johnson, over that state's election.

On Wednesday afternoon, November 9, 1960, Nixon officially conceded the election to Kennedy. He told his friend, journalist Earl Mazo, that "our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis." (Mazo had written several articles about voter fraud after the 1960 election, which he stopped at Nixon's request.)

In later years, Nixon also claimed in an autobiography that widespread fraud occurred in Illinois and Texas during the 1960 election. Ah, Illinois. Vote early and vote often.  

Election of 2000

Blaine, Hughes, and even Nixon all conceded close elections. Obviously, since then, candidates have other ideas.  Hillary Clinton believed she won the 2016 election.  She maintains the 2016 Election 'Was Not On the Level': 'We Still Don't Know What Really Happened' and that Trump was an "illegitimate president."  Trump famously disputed the 2020 election.  But these were not the first of this generation.  From 1964 through 2012, the election total was far enough out of reach that there was no dispute.  There was a half-hearted attempt on the part of the Democrats in 2004 in which John Kerry conceded the election within 24 hours of the vote.  The election of 2000 was the exception.  

The 2000 presidential election pitted Republican George W. Bush, governor of Texas and son of former US president George H.W. Bush, against Democrat Al Gore, a former senator from Tennessee and vice president in Bill Clinton's administration. Because Clinton had been such a popular president, Gore had no difficulty securing the Democratic nomination, though he sought to distance himself from the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton's impeachment trial.

On election day, Gore won the popular vote by over half a million votes. Bush carried most states in the South, the rural Midwest, and the Rocky Mountain region, while Gore won most states in the Northeast, the upper Midwest, and the Pacific Coast. Gore garnered 255 electoral votes to Bush's 246, but neither candidate won the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory. Election results in some states, including New Mexico and Oregon, were too close to call, but it was Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, on which the election outcome hinged.

Based on exit polls in Florida, the news media declared Gore the winner, but as the actual votes were tallied, Bush appeared to command the lead. When 85 percent of the vote had been counted, news networks declared Bush the winner, though election results in a few heavily Democratic counties had yet to be tallied.

This resulted in 36 days of counts, recounts, and re-recounts accompanied by lawsuits, politicking, and vast media coverage. The result in Florida was so close as to trigger a statewide mandatory machine recount according to the Florida Election Code. The Gore campaign then requested that the disputed ballots in four counties be recounted by hand. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline for the recount and ordered a manual recount. The Bush campaign appealed the decision, and the US Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

In the resulting case, Bush v. Gore, the US Supreme Court ordered that the recount be stopped. The incomplete recount was halted, and Bush was awarded Florida's electoral votes and declared the president-elect. The Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore was controversial because the 5-4 vote was along partisan lines, meaning the justices appointed by Republican presidents (with the exception of Justice David Souter) ruled in favor of Bush, and the justices appointed by Democratic presidents argued in favor of Gore. Another point of controversy in the 2000 election was the fact that George W. Bush's brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor of Florida at the time of the recount, although no evidence of wrongdoing surfaced. Al Gore eventually conceded the election to Bush but disagreed with the US Supreme Court's ruling. Bush won Florida's electoral votes by a margin of only 537 votes out of almost six million cast (0.009%) and, as a result, became the last Republican to win two terms, and in 2004, the popular vote.  

Bush biographer James Mann noted of Bush "The Bush-Gore race and the prolonged post-election controversy had an impact on the Bush presidency that was profound and enduring.  The battle left both Bush and his Democratic opponents with a series of misimpressions that would be damaging, in various ways, to each side." 

Whenever there is an election, there is a logical focus on electoral votes to be won, not those already in the win or loss column.  Despite this reality, I despise when someone writing from CA or FL says their vote does not count.  Of course, it does. Without CA, no Democrat could win; the same is true for FL on the GOP side. Just as a vote in Georgia did in 1884, even though that state was guaranteed to go Democrat while New York was a swing.  If only the small Republican rump voted in Georgia in the late 1800s, and no Democrat, the state would have been won by a Blaine or Benjamin Harrison and not by Cleveland.  The deep blue and red states matter to build to the total. But because we, and logically, the candidates, focus on those undecided states, a place like Pennsylvania gets the attention.  What was once hard-nosed campaigning in the streets of New York City or San Francisco today occurs in and around Philly and Pittsburg.