Five closest US elections: When California, New York were swing states

Voters across 50 states in the US are casting ballots to choose the 47th president of the country in an election that has turned into a neck-and-neck battle between the two main candidates.

So far, election analysts say this year’s presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is too close to call.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily polls tracker, Harris has a 1.2-point lead over Trump nationally. But Trump has begun narrowing the gap in recent days, and has slim leads in the battleground states of North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

Yet it’s not the first time that the path to the United States presidency has essentially seen a dead heat between candidates. Previous closely fought presidential elections have also seen California and New York – not the typical swing states – and also the US Supreme Court play a role in deciding the winner.

Let’s take a look at five presidential races in US history that came down to a few thousand votes:

1824: US House of Representatives weighs in

The 1824 battle for the White House was a turning point in American history as four candidates, all from the same political party, competed for the top post and the US House of Representatives had to pick the winner.

After the death of Alexander Hamilton, America’s first US secretary of the treasury and a founding father in 1804, the Democratic-Republic Party which had defeated Hamilton’s Federalist Party, was confident of its easy path to presidency.

But picking one presidential candidate proved to be hard for members of the party, and John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and William H Crawford, all from the Democratic-Republic Party, campaigned across the country, hoping to become the next president.

When polls closed across all 28 US states (the country now has 50), Jackson was in the lead with 99 electoral votes, followed by Adams who received 84, Crawford who got 41 and Clay who got 37 electoral votes.

But no candidate received a majority.

According to the Twelfth Amendment of the US Constitution, in such a case, “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President”. Moreover, since the Constitution also stated that only the top three in the race move ahead, Clay was disqualified.

For around a year, each candidate lobbied members of the House of Representatives – the lower chamber of the US Congress, including Clay, who was the speaker of the House.

Finally, on February 9, 1825, the House voted to elect Adams as the president of the US, a result that came to form after a critical vote by Clay. According to the US National Archives, he shelved his support for his home state candidate Jefferson, and picked Adams.

Adams, who was also the son of John Adams, the second president of the US, eventually picked Clay as his secretary of state.

This did not go down well with Jackson, and he accused Clay and Adams of engaging in a “corrupt bargain” and sought an election rematch.

During the next presidential election in 1828, Jackson managed to beat Adams and became the president. But his anger towards Clay remained.

According to a US Senate Historical Highlight brief, towards the end of his presidency, when Jackson was asked if he had any regrets, he said: “I regret I was unable to shoot Henry Clay…”

1876: One vote changed the game

Half a century later, the presidential election was decided by one vote in the Electoral Commission – a group created by the US Congress comprising 14 congressmen and a Supreme Court justice, to solve the disputed presidential race.

The 1876 election saw Republican Party candidate Rutherford B Hayes, who had also fought in the US Civil War, up against Democratic Party candidate Samuel Tilden, a politician known for his anti-corruption policies. Moreover, this being an era when the US was just recovering from the 18th-century Civil War and Congress had passed several Reconstruction Acts, one of the goals was ensuring that the voting rights of Black Americans were secure.

But in many southern states like Louisiana, white Americans wanted a return to white supremacy and had been protesting against efforts to enfranchise Black people in the country since 1873. Describing the situation in the south, in his essay Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880, historian WEB Du Bois wrote: “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

By the 1876 presidential election, the Black vote had almost been repressed and this led to the Democratic Party becoming popular among Black voters in the South, especially in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida.

According to White House archives, “The popular vote apparently was 4,300,000 for Tilden to 4,036,000 for Hayes”. However, Hayes’s chances of election depended upon contested electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida. So the Republicans demanded a recount.

After months of uncertainty, in 1877, Congress weighed in and formed the Electoral Commission, which voted in favour of Hayes. After the commission’s vote, Hayes defeated Tilden by one vote: 185 electoral votes to 184.

On winning the elections, Hayes pledged to protect Black Americans’ rights in the South and also encouraged the “restoration of wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government”.

1884: When New York was a swing state

New York has been a stronghold for the Democratic Party in more recent years. But in 1884, the state was a swing state and played a critical role in deciding the winner of the presidential race, which was also marred by a scandal.

Republican candidate James G Blaine was up against the Democratic Party’s Grover Cleveland, who was also the mayor of New York.

Back then, the US was rife with economic drama and filled with corrupt money-making deals. The Democratic Party was popular in the southern states in the US and Cleveland had impressed people in New York with his anti-corruption policies. He and the Democratic Party believed they had an easy path to success.

But just days after Cleveland was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party on July 11, the Buffalo Evening Telegraph reported that he had fathered a son with a woman named Maria Halpin. According to the US Library of Congress, the child had been given away to an orphanage since Cleveland was not certain the child was his. But he helped the child financially until he was adopted.

The Republican Party latched on to this story as its candidate, Blaine, had been painted by the Democratic Party campaign as a liar and politician involved in cash deals.

In turn, according to the Library of Congress, a popular satirical publication called The Judge ran a cartoon of Cleveland titled: “Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?”

While Cleveland was running on the slogan, “Tell the truth”, the scandal dented his support base in New York, the most populous state carrying 36 electoral votes back then.

When polls closed, Cleveland’s lead was narrow in the state and he received 563,048 votes in New York to Blaine’s 562,001.

In the end, the few thousand votes decided by New York together with the combined support of reform Republicans who disliked Blaine helped Cleveland win.

According to White House archives, President Cleveland pursued a policy of not offering favours to any economic groups. He was also said not to particularly enjoy the comforts of the White House.

As president, he once wrote to a friend: “I must go to dinner…but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring, a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis’ instead of the French stuff I shall find.”

1916: California calls the shots

In 1916, a drink in Long Beach, California was what it took to upend the US presidential race between Woodrow Wilson, from the Democratic Party, and Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes.

Back then, the western US state known for its picturesque beaches and redwood forests had 13 electoral votes and was a swing state. Currently, being the most populous state, it has 54 electoral votes – the most in the US.

Moreover, besides presidential candidates, two members of California’s Republican Party – Hiram Johnson and conservative William Booth – hoped to win seats in the US Senate.

According to the History Channel, while campaigning in Long Beach, Hughes was told that Johnson was staying in the same hotel as him but did not engage with Johnson or offer him a drink.

Johnson wasn’t very pleased and did not offer his support to Hughes in California, meaning Wilson won the swing state by around 3,000 votes. Wilson also won the presidency.

2000: US Supreme Court decides

The presidential race of 2000 saw Democrat Al Gore, the vice president of the country back then, and Republican George W Bush, who was the governor of Texas, compete. The contest ultimately came down to Florida — and the US Supreme Court had to weigh in.

On election night, as polls closed across the country, it became clear the 25 electoral votes in Florida, a swing state, would determine the winner. When results from the Sunshine State trickled in, TV networks across the US began announcing that Bush had won the state’s electoral votes. Gore called Bush to congratulate him, but soon withdrew his concession when Bush’s lead in Florida began dropping.

Lawyers from the Democratic Party and Republican Party began a legal fight over the votes, with Gore’s lawyers also demanding a recount.

The battle went to the country’s Supreme Court and, after weeks of uncertainty, the court said the recounts could not be established and voted 5-4 in favour of Bush’s victory.

The Bush versus Gore election continues to haunt the country’s court, which has often stayed away from elections.

In 2013, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who voted with the majority in the Supreme Court, told the Chicago Tribune that the “court took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue. … Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye’.”