Most elections aren’t close. The ones that are tend to change the rules, because the system’s weak points only show up under pressure. Here are the closest contests in U.S. history and what each one left behind.
Presidential elections
1800: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tie. Under the original Constitution, each elector cast two votes without saying which was for president. Jefferson and his running mate, Burr, each received 73 electoral votes. The tie went to the House, which needed 36 ballots in February 1801 to choose Jefferson. The mess led directly to the 12th Amendment (1804), which created separate electoral votes for president and vice president.
1824: The House picks John Quincy Adams. Andrew Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes, but no candidate won a majority in the Electoral College. The House chose Adams. Jackson’s supporters called it a “corrupt bargain” after Adams named Henry Clay secretary of state, and Jackson won a rematch in 1828.
1876: One electoral vote. Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote and was one electoral vote short of a majority, with disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and one elector in Oregon. Congress created a 15-member Electoral Commission, which awarded every disputed vote to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who won 185–184. The informal Compromise of 1877 that followed is generally associated with the end of Reconstruction.
1884: About 1,000 votes in New York. Grover Cleveland carried New York, and with it the presidency, by roughly 1,000 votes out of more than a million cast in the state.
2000: 537 votes in Florida. George W. Bush’s certified margin over Al Gore in Florida was 537 votes. After weeks of recounts and lawsuits, the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore on December 12 ended the recount, and Bush won the Electoral College 271–266. The fallout led to the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which helped replace punch-card ballots and created provisional voting nationwide.
Senate elections
New Hampshire, 1974. The race between Republican Louis Wyman and Democrat John Durkin flipped back and forth through recounts, at one point separated by just two votes. The Senate couldn’t resolve it and declared the seat vacant in August 1975. Durkin won the rerun election that September.
Minnesota, 2008. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman led on election night. After a statewide hand recount and months of court challenges, Democrat Al Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes and sworn in on July 7, 2009 — giving Democrats, briefly, a 60-seat Senate.
House elections
Indiana’s 8th District, 1984. Known as the “Bloody Eighth,” this race between Democrat Frank McCloskey and Republican Rick McIntyre was so disputed that the House investigated it itself. The House seated McCloskey, who had a four-vote margin after its recount, in a party-line vote. Republicans walked out in protest.
Iowa’s 2nd District, 2020. Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks was certified the winner by six votes out of nearly 400,000 cast, one of the closest House races ever. Her opponent, Democrat Rita Hart, asked the House to review the race, then withdrew the challenge in 2021.
The lesson
Close elections are rare, but they happen often enough that every state needs clear rules for recounts and certification — and most of those rules exist because of one of the races above.
Sources
- National Archives, “Electoral College Results” (archives.gov)
- U.S. Senate Historical Office, “The Senate’s Closest Election” (senate.gov)
- Office of the Historian, U.S. House, contested elections records (history.house.gov)
- Federal Election Commission, “Federal Elections 2000” (fec.gov)