The 2020 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump took several suspenseful days of vote tabulation before major media outlets could project a winner. But while the 2020 election certainly kept Americans and the world on the edge of their seats awaiting an outcome, it does not ultimately go down as the closest election in the nation‘s history.
To understand why, one must look at how the United States selects its president – not through a national popular vote, but via the electoral college system outlined in the Constitution. Under this system, each state is allocated a number of electors based on its total number of representatives in Congress. There are currently 538 electoral votes up for grabs across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. To win the presidency, a candidate must secure a majority of at least 270 electoral votes.
Forty-eight states and DC award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state (Maine and Nebraska allocate some of their electoral votes by congressional district). This state-by-state method of allocating electors creates the possibility for a candidate to win the nationwide popular vote but still lose in the electoral college by falling short in key battleground states.
Such a split between the electoral college and popular vote has now occurred five times in US history – most recently in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes nationwide than Donald Trump but watched in dismay as he prevailed in the electoral college by a margin of 304 to 227.
The Compromise of 1877: A Disputed Election Ushers Out Reconstruction
Many historians point to the 1876 contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden as perhaps the most contentious and closest race in US presidential history. Tilden, the governor of New York, won the popular vote over Hayes, a former Ohio governor, by a margin of 3 percentage points. In the electoral college, Tilden secured 184 votes to Hayes‘ 165.
However, the results in four states – Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon – were heavily disputed amid allegations of fraud and voter intimidation targeting newly enfranchised African-Americans in the South during the fraught Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Democrats and Republicans each claimed victory for their candidate in these 19 contested electoral votes.
Since no candidate reached the required 185 electoral votes for an outright majority, the election devolved upon Congress to sort out the disputed tallies. In January 1877, Congress appointed a bipartisan 15-member electoral commission composed of five House representatives, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices to review the competing slates of electors and determine which ones to count.
After several weeks of deliberation, the commission voted along strict party lines to award all 19 contested electoral votes to Hayes, pushing his total to 184 votes and apparently handing him the presidency by a single electoral vote. An informal political deal struck between the two parties, which became known as the Compromise of 1877, played a critical role in the outcome.
Democrats controlling the House of Representatives agreed to confirm Hayes‘ victory on the condition that Republicans cease federal efforts to enforce civil and voting rights in the South, effectively ending Reconstruction. With the withdrawal of US troops from southern states, the era of racist Jim Crow segregation could proceed, disenfranchising most Black voters for generations to come.
As historian Eric Foner writes in his book "Reconstruction: America‘s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877":
"The Compromise of 1877 marked a major turning point in American history. It brought an end to Reconstruction and ushered in a new era in which the federal government essentially abandoned African Americans to the mercies of the all-white South. The civil rights legislation and constitutional amendments of the 1860s remained on the books, but they would not be vigorously enforced for nearly a century."
While Tilden and his supporters reluctantly acquiesced to the Compromise of 1877 in the name of peacefully resolving the election, the outcome left a bitter taste for the majority of voters who had supported the Democrat. The elevation of Hayes to the presidency by a mere one electoral vote, despite trailing substantially in the popular vote amid reports of rampant voter suppression, cast a cloud of illegitimacy over his administration.
As Foner notes, "The Compromise of 1877 resolved the disputed election of 1876, but at the cost of inaugurating an era of conservative domination and black disenfranchisement in the South that would last for decades." The repercussions of this backroom political deal after the closest electoral college vote in history reverberated throughout society and politics for nearly a century.
The 2000 Florida Recount Controversy: "Hanging Chads" and Bush v. Gore
Fast forward to modern times, and the 2000 presidential election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore is widely considered the closest race in recent US history. On election night, the contest was simply too close to call. Gore had won the national popular vote by a margin of about 540,000 votes out of 101 million cast. But the electoral college result hinged entirely on Florida and its 25 electoral votes.
As the votes trickled in from the Sunshine State, the networks first called Florida for Gore, then retracted that projection as the count tightened. Around 2:30 am on the night after the election, with Bush clinging to a slim lead of less than 2,000 votes out of nearly 6 million cast in the state, the networks declared Bush the winner of Florida and the presidency. Gore called Bush to concede.
However, due to the razor-thin margin in Florida, an automatic machine recount was triggered under state law. As the recount progressed over the next few days, Bush‘s lead dwindled to just 327 votes, and serious questions emerged about the accuracy and integrity of the tally. Allegations swirled of voter suppression, ballot design irregularities, and issues with the punch card voting machines used in many Florida counties.
Infamously, the recount turned up a number of ambiguous "hanging chads" – paper fragments clinging to punch card ballots – and "dimpled chads" that machines failed to count as valid votes. With the presidency hanging in the balance, the tedious process of examining questionable ballots by hand and determining "voter intent" sparked a fierce partisan fight.
Gore sued to extend the recount deadline past the statutory cutoff of November 14th in order to hand count more ballots in four heavily Democratic counties: Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia. The Florida Supreme Court agreed and ordered a statewide manual recount of all undervotes: ballots that machines had registered as not casting a valid vote for president.
Bush appealed to the US Supreme Court to halt the recount. In the hugely controversial 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore issued on December 12th, the conservative majority on the high court ruled that the lack of uniform standards for evaluating ballots in the Florida recount violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
The per curiam majority opinion held that "the use of standardless manual recounts" did not satisfy "rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and fundamental fairness." The court ordered the recount to stop, allowing Florida‘s Republican secretary of state to certify Bush as the winner of the state‘s 25 electoral votes by 537 votes.
The extraordinary decision to halt the vote count in Florida and hand the election to Bush remains one of the most politically charged rulings in Supreme Court history. The five conservative justices in the majority had all been appointed by Republican presidents, including Bush‘s father George H.W. Bush. Meanwhile, the four liberal dissenters argued that the court‘s intervention violated state sovereignty and the right of citizens to have every vote counted.
As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in an impassioned dissent: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year‘s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation‘s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
Ultimately, Bush captured Florida‘s 25 electoral votes for a total of 271 – just one more than the 270 needed to win – while Gore finished with 266 electoral votes. Bush became the first president in over a century to take office without winning the popular vote. The bitter recount fight and polarizing Supreme Court decision left millions feeling the election had been unfairly decided, damaging public trust.
Voting Rights and Close Elections Through an Historical Lens
Looking at other tight electoral margins through US history, the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon stands out. Kennedy defeated the sitting vice president by just 0.17% in the popular vote and by an 84-77 split in the Electoral College. Allegations of voting irregularities arose in several states including Texas and Illinois, but Nixon chose not to contest the results.
The tumultuous 1968 election, held in the shadow of the Vietnam War and racial unrest, saw Nixon come out on top over Democrat Hubert Humphrey by 0.7% in the popular vote. The electoral college margin was more substantial at 301-191 for Nixon, with segregationist third party candidate George Wallace capturing 5 southern states and 46 electoral votes.
In the post-Watergate 1976 election, Democrat Jimmy Carter ousted incumbent Republican Gerald Ford by just 2 percentage points and 297-240 in the electoral college. A swing of a few thousand votes in Ohio and Mississippi could have tilted the outcome.
Historically, most US presidential elections prior to the 20th century saw much wider victory margins, in part because of the limited voting franchise. Property requirements, poll taxes, and subjective literacy tests prevented many citizens, especially women and racial minorities, from casting ballots. The electorate comprised mainly white male landowners well into the 1800s.
"In the 19th century, most presidential elections were not especially close, with the winning candidate often receiving more than 60% of the vote," writes Stanford historian Jack Rakove. "This was due in part to the lack of a truly competitive two-party system for much of this period, as well as restrictions on suffrage that limited the size and diversity of the electorate."
The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited denying citizens the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." However, many states, particularly in the Jim Crow South, continued to use ostensibly race-neutral voting restrictions like poll taxes and literacy tests to disenfranchise Black voters well into the 1960s.
The 19th Amendment extended suffrage to women in 1920, but practical barriers remained for many to exercise that right. Not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were discriminatory voting practices like literacy tests definitively outlawed under federal law, ushering in a new era of mass enfranchisement.
"The expansion of suffrage to virtually all adult citizens in the mid-20th century made elections more competitive and prone to close outcomes," explains Rakove. "With a more diverse electorate and entrenched two-party system, small swings in key demographics in battleground states can prove decisive in the electoral college."
As the US electorate grew larger and more representative, certain systemic factors increased the likelihood of close contests. The winner-take-all method of allocating electoral votes in most states turned elections into a game of inches fighting over purple battlegrounds. Partisan polarization and negative campaigning hardened both sides, reducing the number of swing voters.
The 2000 election proved a perfect storm of these dynamics. One team of political scientists estimated that the recount fight could have dragged on until the eve of the inauguration given that reversing the outcome hinged on correctly counting literally a handful of individual votes out of millions cast.
Conclusion
While 2020 certainly made for some nail-biting days of incremental vote counting, Joe Biden‘s ultimate national margin of over 7 million votes (4.5%) and 306-232 electoral college victory over Donald Trump was wider than a number of past elections. The month-long dispute over a few hundred votes in Florida in 2000 and single electoral vote margin in 1876 remain the modern standards for a photo finish.
But these exceptionally close elections should not be thought of as mere historical curiosities or forensic puzzles. The specter of a disputed election decided by a handful of votes in one state, or by courts and party elites rather than voters, strikes at the heart of democratic legitimacy.
"Extremely narrow electoral margins can undermine public faith in the process and lead to anger when one side feels the outcome does not reflect the will of the people," says Rakove. "Divisive recounts and court battles that drag on for weeks threaten a core tenet of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power."
In light of the fallout from recent contested elections, Rakove suggests a range of reforms to bolster the integrity and transparency of the system: "Replacing outdated voting machines, standardizing ballot designs, combating voter suppression, and ensuring robust post-election audits can help avoid a repeat of past crises and strengthen trust."
The historical record makes clear that in a closely divided electorate, the difference between winning and losing the electoral college can come down to just thousands or even hundreds of votes in pivotal states. It‘s a fragile balance in a fractious nation of hundreds of millions. For all their rarity and specificity, the tightest races are never mere footnotes – they reflect the best and worst of American democracy.
Closest Presidential Elections By Electoral Vote Margin
| Year | Winner | Electoral Votes | Electoral Vote Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1876 | Hayes | 185-184 | +1 |
| 2000 | Bush | 271-266 | +5 |
| 1916 | Wilson | 277-254 | +23 |
| 1976 | Carter | 297-240 | +57 |
| 2020 | Biden | 306-232 | +74 |
Sources:
- National Archives and Records Administration, Historical Election Results
- Federal Election Commission, Election Results for the U.S. President
- Rakove, Jack N. "Presidential Selection: Electoral Fallacies." Political Science Quarterly, vol. 119, no. 1, The Academy of Political Science, 2004
- Foner, Eric. Reconstruction Updated Edition: America‘s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2014.
