Dan Snow's History Hit - Will This Be America's Closest Election Ever?

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

The 2024 US Presidential election is just around the corner, and it seems like the result is balanced on a knife's edge. As the polls continue to roll in, pundits are predicting the closest US election ever. But we history lovers are always wary of the word 'ever', and so in this special Explainer episode, Dan gets under the hood of the US electoral system. How does it work, and is this truly the closest election in American history?Written and produced by Dan Snow, and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

I'll tell you what, folks, it is close. The US presidential election of November 2024 is on a knife edge. I'm recording this with a few days to go, and it is a coin toss. There are seven states in the union that will decide who the next president will be, the so-called swing states. Those few states are the only ones that can realistically be expected to go either way. Alaska, New York, South Dakota, not in play. They're predictable. We know how they're going to vote. But those seven, they could vote for Trump. They could vote for Harris. And in all

seven, with a few days to go, as of this recording, the poll suggests the two candidates are running within two percentage points of each other, inside the polling margin of error. So unsurprisingly, people are calling this the closest election ever, and perhaps they're right. But we history lovers, whenever we hear the word ever, our history spider senses fire off, don't they? Ever? Ever is a long time. In US terms, ever means we're going to reach back to the first contested presidential election in 1796. There have been 57 since then. So if this is going to be the closest, well, we've got a pretty large data set to compare it to. And sure enough, when we do so, we discover some close races. Some really, really close races. And this is a podcast about them. In making it, I have been

astonished at the capacity of our American cousins to deliver races time after time that are ridiculously close. We're talking a few hundred votes across that vast landmass tipping it one way or the other, with absolutely enormous consequences, obviously, for everyone in America, and more recently, for everyone outside it too. Everybody on the planet, and those few who are off it. There have been some elections decided by a hair's breadth, so I will make one prediction about this election. It will not be the closest ever. It may not even get into the top three, for reasons you're about to hear. This is Dan Snow's history hit, and this is the story of close US presidential elections. Get ready to bite those

nails. Enjoy. First up, folks, we do need to talk about what close means. The unbearably exciting cephalogical action is coming up. I promise, do not turn this podcast off. But first, we have to do the definition thing. The strange thing about election systems is that they don't just count raw votes and award victory to the person who gets most of them. Sometimes they do. If you look back at the first democracy, Athens, on the Pnyx, in the assembly on that hill next to the Parthenon, you have an

up or down motion. And a majority of adult, male, free Athenian citizens just gets to cast a vote. If more of them vote for it, it's happening. If they vote against it, it's not. But that's the way it works in some modern systems and things like representative democracies. In those, we have a myriad of different ways to translate raw votes into assemblies, parliaments, congresses, or into executive offices. Now, France, for its president, uses a pretty direct form of democracy. Simple headcounts. More people voted for Macron than Le Pen. Job done. Doesn't matter where those people live. Doesn't matter how many regions of France vote for one or another. It's all about the raw headcount.

It's not like that in America or Britain, obviously, where we have our own archaic system. So when we talk about close, it's actually quite an interesting idea. Because some of the races I'm going to tell you about aren't actually that close. They're only close given the choices made by the founders, by the framers of the constitution, and how those constitutional arrangements have been interpreted and enacted since. As a result, in America, strangely, there are famously close races that weren't really that close, and there are blowouts that weren't that one-sided. In 1968, for example, Richard Nixon blew the doors off the Electoral College. He smoked Herbert Humphrey, but his winning margin in raw votes

was only half a million in an electorate of nearly 75 million. Now that's pretty close, but the election wasn't close. And that's because in US presidential elections, there is a mechanism for translating raw votes into electoral outcomes, and it's called the Electoral College. I'm certain everyone knows about this, but let's do a very, very brief recap. As with every other part of the Constitution, those who drew it up were very careful to balance the desire of former colonies, those who drew it up were very careful to balance the desire of former colonies, now states, a place like Virginia and Delaware and Rhode Island, to maintain their own power,

their own identity, but somehow harmonize that with the desire to create a cohesive nation state. And the smaller states were a bit nervous. They didn't want to swap King George for a US president elected by a huge number of voters in the much more populous states. So to make sure the vast numbers of people living in 18th century New York and Philadelphia and Boston didn't just swamp the votes of everyone else living in smaller states and townships, the framers decided that the American system would protect the interests of the latters. So the most obvious way they did that was they created a Senate with two senators from every state, no matter how big or small. So today the million South Dakotans have the same representation in the Senate as the 40 million

Californians. But then that's balanced by the House of Representatives, in which the composition better reflects the raw population of the US. So there's only one solitary representative for all those South Dakotans, and there are 52 for those Californians. For the presidency, well, the framers took a little bit of A, a little bit of B. Despite Alexander Hamilton's urging for a simple, direct, popular vote, the framers decided the states would still be the essential building block for the vote count. People would vote by state, and each state would get to vote for a panel, a little group of electors. The bigger the population of the state, the more electors they would get to send to a big meeting called the Electoral College. And we should note here that

states in which slavery was legal would have their enslaved population count for three-fifths of a person. So it boosted their population. It meant that they could have a bigger number of electors. Although naturally those enslaved people couldn't vote. So in reality it just meant that the rich white guys in places like Georgia and Virginia just got to send more electors to the Electoral College than their equivalent in New Jersey. So once the voters from the state had cast their ballot, they'd chosen their electors, there would then be a big gathering of these electors from all over, and they would then choose the best person to be president. choose the best person to be president. The idea was that the state would send its sort of wisest and best citizens. They could all have a nice debate, have a cup of tea, and work out who the best man for the job was. It was democratic in flavour, but the framers of the constitution hoped that the electoral college would leaven out some of the worst aspects of democracy. So the irrational,

the sudden impulses of the crowd, the fashion. They would be restrained by these sensible greybeards motivated by republican virtue. They would weed out any populist demagogues, for example. Wouldn't want any of those. So let's go back to the first real contested election in US history, 1796. And you've got relatively, well, very small numbers of voters, nearly all rich white guys, and they cast their votes. Now, the electorates in places like Delaware and Tennessee were minuscule. They got to send three electors each to the Electoral College, because that's the constitutional minimum, no matter how many people live there. Massachusetts sent 14 electors to the Electoral College, and we should say Massachusetts had 10 times the population of Tennessee, but you'll notice it certainly did not get 10 times the number of electors, more like three times.

And Massachusetts also got fewer electors than, say, Virginia, which sent 20 electors because of its very large population, swollen by disenfranchised enslaved people who made up around a third of the population. And if that all sounds a bit complicated, I hope you come away just with the simple idea that the link between voters, someone actually voting, and an electoral outcome is already a little bit convoluted. Now in 1796, John Adams ends up winning, but quite soon you can see the inevitable happened.

Electors don't act as free agents. These solemn greybeards don't get to actually decide who the president's going to be because they become almost immediately delegates. Voters know who they're casting their vote for. They want Jefferson, say. And they don't want the Electoral College messing about and making their own decisions. So very soon it becomes a rubber stamping operation. Although, and I'll just quickly put this in there, if this is a very, very close election in the Electoral College vote,

look out for a faithless elector. Someone who chooses to exercise their ancient right to just decide on the day of the Electoral College. In 2016, for example, a Texan, Christopher Supran, was a Republican member of the Electoral College and he voted for John Kasich, President, not Donald Trump. Now, many states do have laws in which they bind their electors and require them to vote along party lines, but I'll tell you, if it's 270 electoral votes to 269, which it could well be, then hold on to your hats for some electoral college action. I'm sure the response of the American legacy in social media will be one of measured sobriety. So the president emerges from

the electoral college, not the public vote. And that's actually not a million miles away from Britain, where the prime minister is the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons. And the eagle-eared among you will have realised there are definitely permutations whereby the winner of most constituency seats in Britain, or the winner of most electoral college votes in America, does not necessarily have to have won the most actual votes. Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1951, having won fewer votes than the Labour Party. Trump became President in 2016, having won fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. And that really brings us back to close elections, because 2016 was not close on paper. Trump won 304 electoral votes to Clinton's 207. It was an impressive win.

But Hillary won nearly 3 million more votes nationally. And if you look at the votes that really matter in the swing seats, it was a very narrow victory. Trump scraped it. He won by a total of 80,000 votes across three states. He won Michigan by nearly 11,000 votes. He won Pennsylvania by 47,000 votes. He won Wisconsin by just 22,000 votes. Those three wins gave him a big 46 electoral votes. But if she'd won those three states, she'd have had the win.

And on top of that, if she'd won around 100,000 more votes in Florida to add to her 4.5 million that she did win, we'd be talking about a Clinton landslide. So, close can mean different things. In some ways, Trump-Clinton might be as close as we'll see for a while. If 35,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin flip their votes out of an electorate of nearly 130 million, then Madam President would just be finishing her second term, potentially. That's close. Right, now having given you all that background, hopefully not confused any of you too much, let's get into it. Let's talk about some super close elections. I think we should probably

start with 1824, because it was so close that actually no one won. Initially, at any rate, the campaign was a bit of a free-for-all. You've got President Monroe stepping aside after two terms, like Washington, very demure, very dignified. His vice president was very unpopular, heavily indebted, drank like a fish. He was certainly in no state to run. So the result was a vacuum, and that vacuum actually destroyed the existing party system, which was literally a party system because there was really only one party. Brilliantly, appropriately, it was called the Democratic Republicans. You can see why it was one party. And in this election, various figures from all the different factions of that party emerged to run for president.

It was the end. It was the end. I love this. It was the end of the so-called era of good feelings. Yes, that is actually a thing. That is actually an era in US politics. And in this election, it would come to a dramatic end because the wrath of party was back. There were six contenders, two dropped out pretty soon, four stayed the course. There was the Secretary of the Treasury, there was the Speaker of the House, the Secretary of State, who was the eldest son of a former president, and the one and only, old Hickory himself, the man who had routed Britain's finest, Britain's redcoats on the banks of the Mississippi, a frontiersman, a gunslinger, a slave owner, a lawyer, a brawler, a conqueror, Andrew Jackson. He was the first really serious candidate who did come from the eastern seaboard.

He was the first trans-appellation man to run for the presidency. He was a man of the people. He pulled himself up by his own smarts, his own wits, and he would go on to found the Democratic Party. Now, he did get most votes. He got 99 Electoral College votes, but you need 131 for the win. And so, in accordance with the 12th Amendment of the US Constitution, it went to the House of Representatives to be decided. Henry Clay had come fourth. He was out of the running, but he just so happened to be Speaker of the House, so he's quite an influential man,

and he hated Andrew Jackson. I think the quote he used to use, he said words to the effect that killing a bunch of Englishmen in New Orleans hardly qualifies you for the difficult and complicated duties of the presidency. Poor old Henry Clay, how wrong he was. It turns out that presidents would be elected

over the next two centuries with much thinner resumes than that. And so the man who came second, John Quincy Adams, he dangled a deal in front of Clay. If he could fix it in the House, if he could broker a deal in the House that would get Adams elected, well then Clay could become his Secretary of State in return, which was a bigger deal even than it sounds now. It's a very important job now, but that was typically, at the time, the job held by the man who was expected to be the next president. Clay got the job done. John Quincy Adams was made president. Clay became his Secretary of State. Andrew Jackson called it the corrupt bargain. It was a fix. The election was stolen. And Jackson rode that message hard for the next four years.

And sure enough, he came back four years later, routed Adams, and took the presidency, launching one of the most consequential presidencies in American history. Next, 1876. I think this one is worth dwelling on, 1876, possibly the closest election ever, by some measures, obviously. It was so close that there was a very real fear that there could be two presidents, there could be a resumption of civil war, and it's also an election that might have powerful lessons for what is about to happen in the US. The 1876 campaign was fought as the country was reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. Yes, the Great Depression. Americans called the economic dislocation that followed the financial crisis of 1873,

they called it the Great Depression. It was only renamed in the early 1930s when that name was transferred into an even greater one. But the deeper background obviously was the Civil War for 1861 to 65. So finishing just over a decade earlier, it was effectively fought over the issue of slavery because it was fought to establish whether or not states had the right to secede from the Union if the Congress of that Union, if the American government passed legislation that was existential to the identity of those states. So in the case of the states that did try and secede, in the case of the southern states, that meant the issue of

slavery. They were so worried the federal government would in some way abolish slavery, they chose to secede from the Union rather than tolerate that fundamental transformation in the culture and the economy of those states. Though southern states had been defeated, the slave system had been destroyed. Don't forget nearly three-quarters of a million Americans were killed north and south. It still remains by far the bloodiest war in US history. In the late 1860s and the early to mid 1870s, the former states, the Confederacy, were effectively occupied territory, and they had to meet certain tests in order to be readmitted to the Union. And those tests are part of what we call Reconstruction, alongside the actual business of Reconstruction, where these defeated regions would be rebuilt, but their society would be

reordered too, based not now on the institution of slavery, but of equality between the races. Black Americans would be full Americans. They would be endowed with the rights and the legal standing and the opportunities of any white-skinned descendant of the Mayflower hanging about on Plymouth Rock. But white communities in the South

are fighting this tooth and nail. They're carrying out acts of terrorism and they're murdering black politicians and black activists and they're suppressing the black vote. Black men were being inexorably pushed out of Southern politics. So there's this very complicated picture. Which states do you readmit to the Union? Which states do you exclude? How aggressively do you push the issue of African-American rights? Or do you just ignore it all, accept that they're going to be relegated into a second-class status, but just readmit all those states, get the USA back, united, and on the road? These are the debates that swirled around in the early 1870s.

Ulysses S. Grant was a president. He served two terms. People begged him to serve a third. He was the titan. He'd been supreme commander of the US Army. He had delivered victory for the North, for the United States of America. And he'd spent his two terms walking this tight rope. But he decides not to run again, I think in part because he's genuinely exhausted from that. So he leaves. He shuffles off the political stage, and you have a clear field. And Samuel Tilden runs the Democrats. They're very strong in the southern states, where the Republicans are tarred with being the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party of occupation, of abolition of slavery, of racial equality. And so these gerrymandering white southern political elites are all Democrats, to a man. Now the Democrats

though also have strength in the North. They're also strong in the state of New York, which is handy because it's the most popular state in the Union. They've got a potent combination. Now come the election of 1876, it's clear that Samuel Tilden is winning more of the popular vote than his opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes. He's a straightforward Republican. He's an abolitionist. He was the governor of Ohio. He was wounded five times in the Civil War. He's a hero. He's a solid choice. But he is losing the popular vote. And because these things took time, this is playing out over days and weeks. With a few states left to declare, and weeks. With a few states left to declare, Samuel Tilden has won enough states to bring him one electoral vote short of the majority. He has won New York by 3%, which, as you're about to hear

in the rest of this podcast, is a healthy margin for New York. He has won a majority of the popular vote, although obviously that's a stat that is marred with problems. There have been enormous irregularities in voting in the southern states. There's been threats, there's been violence, there's been intimidation. Hundreds of black Republican voters have been murdered across the southern states in this election campaign. But within that context, Samuel Tilden is winning. He wants to be declared the next President of the United States. He has 184 electoral votes. He needs 185. And there are four states where the winners haven't yet been declared. It's super close. There are people

wrangling. There are lawsuits. There are recounts. All chaos. All Tilden's got to do is get one of those four states, and he becomes president of the USA. Three of those states are in the American South. The other one's Oregon. So Tilden's got quarter of a million more votes than his opponent. You'll be surprised to learn that Florida was one of those holdout states where there's the mother of all fights going on about whether votes have been counted correctly or incorrectly. The Democrats are saying they're ahead, the Republicans are saying that there's been irregularities and there's problems with the vote counts, and it should be handed over to a board of canvassers. Now on the board of canvassers in the state of Florida there are two Republicans and one Democrat. So what do you think is going to happen to that board of canvassers. Now, on the board of canvassers in the state of Florida, there are two Republicans and one Democrat.

So what do you think is going to happen to that board of canvassers? They go through all the votes to the point where the Democratic total falls below the Republican total. They effectively bin about 2,000 Democrat votes, or they find an equivalent number of Republican votes, and they proceed to declare that Rutherford B. Hayes has won the state of Florida by 900 votes. At this point, the various Democrat grandees are flooded to Florida.

They go nuts. They end up putting together their own committee and certify a different count of electoral votes. This is not an authorized body, but they do it anyway. And so on December the 6th, when all of the states are obliged to turn in their votes to Congress for certification, well, Florida ends up sending two different slates of electors. One from the Board of Canvassers, which has a Republican majority, the other by the group of Democrats who give themselves a fancy title. They say that Tilden has won, so suddenly Congress now has to deal with the fact there are two versions of Florida's electoral votes. And they get double returns from the other contested states too.

So if they follow one version, Rutherford B. Hayes is the president, if they follow the other, Tilden will become president of the United States of America. So Congress decides to appoint a commission to adjudicate the contrasting balance, to work it out, to say who has actually won in these four states.

That commission clearly has to be equally balanced between Republicans and Democrats, but there has to be an equal number, otherwise they'll just be a deadlock. So there are 15 people on it, and the swing vote is, surprise, surprise, a Republican. So the committee votes along party lines, shockingly, and awards all the contested elections in these four states

to the Republicans. The election goes to Rutherford B Hayes. So by one vote on a committee, eight to seven, Hayes is given the Electoral College win of just one Electoral College vote. I don't think you're going to get any closer than that, folks. And if you dig a little deeper, you can see it was just very, very close. Say, for example, South Carolina. If Tilden had been given South Carolina, he would have won the Electoral College. The commission determined that South Carolina had been won by the Republicans by 889 votes. So in the election of 1876, eight and a half million votes cast. It all came down to 889. The Democrats absolutely

refused to accept this outcome. They threatened to have a parallel inauguration on the day of Rutherford B. Hayes' inauguration. Civil war once again is in the offing. It's a scary time. But instead of fighting, the Republicans and Democrats cut a deal. The Democrats will accept the Commission's findings. They will accept Hayes as president on the condition that Reconstruction is ended. U.S. government troops will be withdrawn from those southern states. Efforts to build a society of racial equality will be ended.

Political power in those southern states will be de facto handed over to those white, affluent, property-holding, former slave owners. The Republicans will win the presidency, but they will be forced to abandon their dream of making African-American equality a reality. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. We're talking about close elections. More coming up. You can be sure of that.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes.

Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. And you can see the impact in the next close election, which is 1880.

You think you've seen close elections these last few cycles in the 21st century, but let me tell you, the 1870s and 80s were wild. Rutherford B Hayes did not seek re-election. He pledged to only serve one term. So the party went and found a relative unknown to run instead. It was quite the process. There was the longest Republican convention ever. Roscoe Conkling of New York, what a great name, battled it out with James Blaine of Maine. I always remember him. And in the either, none of them won. James Garfield, who had never sought the nomination, he was selected on

the 36th round of ballots. On the Democrat side, you've got Winfield Scott Hancock. Now, he was an ideal candidate for the Democrats. He was a Union war hero, so he'd fought for the North in the war. He'd been wounded at the climax of Gettysburg. He'd helped to repel Pickett's charge on Cemetery Ridge. So no one could doubt his patriotism, his attachment to the USA. But he'd been one of those men who'd always believed in the rapid reincorporation of those southern states into the Union. He was not that bothered by reconstruction. He wanted to get the South back in no matter that it was under white supremacist leadership. So he would run for the Democrats. And the election was close. My God, it was close.

Both candidates, James Garfield and Winfield Scott Hancock, both won 19 states. They both got 4.4 million votes. Hancock won California by 94 votes. Garfield won New York by 21,000 votes, 1.9% ahead of the opposition. There were six states where the margin was less than 2%. In the end, then, this is mind-blowing. The popular vote totals of the two main candidates were separated by 1,898 votes. That is 0.1 of a percent. The smallest margin

in the national popular vote count ever recorded. You'll be unsurprised to hear. But in the Electoral College, in fact, Garfield's victory was much larger. He won 2.14 to 1.55. Now, perhaps strangely, the Democrats chose not to get too excited about contesting this particular election.

Perhaps the carnage of four years earlier had made people step away from the brink. However, poor old James Garfield wouldn't get much time in the job because he was shot less than four months after his inauguration and died a couple of months after that. Which brings us to the next very, very close election, which was the next one. 1884. We're only skipping four years ahead again. I've looked. 76, 80, now 84. It's insane.

New York really was the Wisconsin of the 1880s. Again, it would all come down to the Empire State this time round in 1884. The Democrats really had one job in this whole period. The South were all voting Democrats. Boom, done. It was locked up. As I said earlier, they still hadn't forgiven

the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, for the war and what they styled the occupation that followed. So there's a Democrat, you get the South for free. All you've got to do, all you've got to do is take New York with its shiny 36 electoral votes. It's the most populous state. And the Democrats do brilliantly. They select the perfect guy, Grover Cleveland. He was the governor of New York. He was a fearless crusader against corruption. He was celebrated and popular. This time, James Blaine of Maine, he got the nod, the Republican candidate. But he looked to be out of it because he was thought to be personally corrupt. He'd once written a letter, I love this, he'd once written a letter to a business owner promising to exert his political influence in return for cash payments. And that

letter had ended, burn this letter. If you're ever writing that, you've got to think, are you one of the good guys? Perhaps because of that behaviour, there was a faction of Republicans who vowed they could never vote for him. They were called mugwumps, they styled themselves. They were the never Trumpers of the day. And this election was fought on sort of personal probity, on reputation. of the day. And this election was fought on sort of personal probity, on reputation. Cleveland had a reputation for rectitude, but there was a scandal. In July, Cleveland was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock and abandoning the mother. And there were even suggestions of sexual assault. So there was vicious satire everywhere, the cartoons, and there were pictures of little boys crying, Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? And that became

a Republican chant. James Blaine of Maine and the Republicans were gaining. But then there was an October surprise. There was a preacher, James Blaine of Maine, attended a religious event, and there was a preacher who was generally ban-mouthing, being very rude about mugwumps, and he roared, we are Republicans and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with a party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism and rebellion. Well, that really put the cat among the pigeons. Romanism refers to the Catholic faith of the Irish. And this preacher, in the presence of James Blaine of Maine, had just called all Democrats rebels, drunks, and guilty of being Lord of the Pope over their loyalty as Americans. This energised New York Catholics

at exactly the wrong time. And so it all came down to the Empire State. In New York, when the results were counted, there were very close to 563,000 votes for Grover Cleveland, and there were 562,000 for James Blaine of Maine. The difference between them was around 1,150 votes. So out of 1.1 million votes cast in New York, the Democrats won by 0.09 of a percent. Nationally, it wasn't the biggest electoral college blower ever. It was pretty close, 219 to 182. But in raw votes, that was 4.91 million to 4.86 million. That's about 50,000 votes. So their popular vote shares had just 0.6

of a percentage point between them. If New York had gone the other way, the election would have gone the other way. Simple as that. I should say Michigan and Connecticut were also less than 1% races as well. This time it was Republicans on the losing side. They did not contest the result. But when Republicans now shouted, Ma, Ma, where's my pa? The Democrat crowds could now respond, he's gone to the White House, ha ha ha. Although, wasn't that funny for them? Because he would be the only Democrat elected to the White House between 1861 and 1913. That's a terrible run. But that's not to say they didn't come close. Let's shift forward to the next presidential election of 1888, and we can see

that this succession of nail biters had not yet come to an end. The roller coaster was still in full flight. While president, Grover Cleveland had married the 21-year-old Frances Folsom, and she remained the youngest ever First Lady. In fact, she died in 1947. But that didn't appear to help him. In fact, it may have hindered. Who knows who can judge

another person's marriage? Because in 1888, Grover Cleveland lost. But, but he won the popular vote. He got 95,000 more votes of the 11 million cast. He lost three states by less than 1%. And guess what? It all came down to Cleveland's home state of New York, which he lost this time by 14,000 votes, or 1.1 percent. Those 36 electoral college votes from New York would have given him the presidency. The winner was Benjamin Harrison. One of his team had been found buying votes in the swing state of Kentucky, which is why there was a belated move to secret ballots after this election. I like 88 because what the young Mrs Cleveland lacked for in age, she did not lack in sass. Because as she left the White House, she told the staff to look after it

because she'd be back in four years. And to be fair to her, she was. But thank goodness I don't tell you all about it because 1892 was a relative blowout. Big electoral college win in which Grover Cleveland came back to win by over half a million votes, three percent of the popular vote, and that was the biggest margin since 1872. Isn't that crazy? 84 and 88 had been three elections. In each, there had been less than 1% between the two candidates. In 1992, though, Grover Cleveland won New York by a mighty 3.5%. Never in doubt, baby. Cleveland is therefore the only president, so far, to serve two non-consecutive terms. You're listening to Dan Snow's History.

We're talking about close elections. More coming up. groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Next, we're going to streak ahead to 1916. It came hot on the heels of 1912, when Teddy Roosevelt had blown the race apart by running as a third-party candidate. He'd been the Republican president from 1901 to 1909.

He'd fallen out with the Republican Party. He'd mounted a very successful third party run. He'd managed to come second, but by splitting that Republican vote, he'd handed a huge win to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. So now Wilson faced a united Republican Party under a senior statesman, a former actually Supreme Court justice who stepped down to take up the job as candidate, Charles Evans Hughes. Wilson, for his part, campaigned on the fact that he'd been the president who'd kept America so successfully out of the First World War.

And this election's got one of those wonderful for want of a nail in the battle was lost moments. Just months before the election, Hughes, the Republican, made an unpardonable error. He was visiting Long Beach, California, and he ended up staying in the same hotel as the progressive Republican governor, Hiram Johnson, who was running for Senate. During that stay, he did not invite Johnson for a drink or a chat. Now Hughes, to be fair to him, absolutely insisted. They had no idea Johnson was staying at the hotel. It was complete coincidence. He didn't know it was happening.

But Johnson flew into a rage. And it seems that Johnson then kind of refused to campaign for Hughes in California. And so without Johnson's support, the presidential race in California was super, super tight. On election night, the difference between them was 3,420 votes or just 0.34%. It was close. But in nearly all US states, it's winner takes all.

But in nearly all US states, it's winner takes all. So all 13 of California's electoral votes went to Wilson, who won the election with a very narrow electoral college win of 277 to 254. California was decisive. And actually, the national popular vote was pretty close as well. Wilson got 600,000 more votes out of 18.5 million cast. So in the end, it all came down to California, and California came down to 3,500 votes. The Hughes campaign hired lawyers to dig up evidence to argue for a recount, but he just couldn't find the grounds to reopen that count. If Hughes had met Johnson for a drink, he might have been US president

during the First World War. He would have bestowed the world stage to colossus. He would have put his stamp on the Paris peace talks. He may well have changed the course of the 20th century. But he didn't. He shuffled off into obscurity. It's worth pointing out, actually, that Hiram Johnson did win his Senate seat by 300,000 votes. So there were plenty of Johnson-Wilson split-ticket voters. Extraordinary. There is probably a lesson here somewhere about candidates snubbing powerful, popular governors in the key swing state. We may be hearing more about that topic in the next few weeks. From 1916, we journey to 1960. Now, this is a weird one.

It's a weird close election because actually it was a pretty handsome Electoral College win, but my God, it was a close result. Just listen to this. It's the election that gave us everyone's favourite US election fact, which is probably a myth. It's the John Kennedy versus Richard Nixon election. It was youth versus experience. JFK was 43. He was glamorous. There were campaign pictures of him stripped to the waist at the helm of his wartime fast patrol boats in the Pacific. Nixon was quite different. He was a whole four years older, but he'd been Eisenhower's vice president. He'd been around for a while. Also during the campaign, he injured his knee on a car door and spent a fortnight off the campaign trail. And partly because of that, he was not in fighting fit form. He looked ill at ease on camera

when they met in the first ever televised candidate debate. Nixon looked sweaty, he looked weak, he looked uncomfortable, he refused makeup. His suit blended in, unfortunately, with the backdrop. He looked a bit like a ghost, in fact, so much so that after the debate, his mother had immediately rung him on the phone and asked whether he was sick. The infamous Chicago mayor, Richard Daley, said, my God, they've embalmed him before he even died. The myth that I referred to earlier, the one that everybody will tell you, is that radio listeners gave the win to Nixon, whereas TV viewers awarded it to JFK because Nixon didn't look so great.

Now, in fact, there's no evidence that that happened. What is true, actually, is their vice presidents did respond like that. Kennedy's vice president, Johnson, listened to it and thought Kennedy had lost. Henry Cabot Lodge watched it and thought Nixon had lost. So perhaps that's where the old story comes from. It was an interesting election.

There had been a recession in 1957-8, which had damaged the incumbents, damaged the Republicans. Eisenhower, the outgoing two-term Republican president, wasn't super helpful. I don't think he liked Nixon that much. A journalist asked Eisenhower if he'd give an example of a major idea of Nixon's that he'd heeded. And Eisenhower had said, if you give me a week, I might think of one. The Dems quickly turned that into a campaign ad. Nixon also was not a terrific campaigner. He came up with a stunt, which sounds quite cool on the

surface, to visit all 50 states. He was going to campaign in all 50 states. But that did mean he spent the last weekend before the election in Alaska, and a lot of time in places that he had absolutely no chance of winning or where he was guaranteed to win. On the other hand, Kennedy barnstormed the marginals, the swing states. On the day of the election, this is so weird, on the day of the election, Nixon voted early. Then he drove to his mum's house to make sure she'd remember to vote for him. And then he decided to leave the United States for America. Yes, he drove south in California. He crossed the border into Mexico. He went to Tijuana and ate a delicious Mexican meal at the best place in town, as advised by a border officer.

by a border officer. It's wild. As the results came in, it became clear that Kennedy had beat Nixon by less than two-tenths of one percentage point. 0.17% was all that was between them in the popular vote cast. It was the smallest popular vote margin in the 20th century. Kennedy had 113,000 more votes than Nixon out of nearly 70 million cast. Small footnotes, in Hawaii there are about 100 votes in it and furious court battles. And Hawaii wasn't alone. Kennedy carried 12 states by three percentage points or less. Nixon won six states by similarly narrow margins. So close was the popular vote that a switch of less than 10,000 votes in Illinois and Missouri, both won by Kennedy by less than 1%, would have left Kennedy and Nixon both on 269 Electoral College votes, both short of the majority required to win, And it would have forced the House of Representatives to step in and anoint a new president. You can just see how razor thin it is if you look at it another way.

Kennedy won five states by a margin of less than 1%. Hawaii, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, by less than 1%. If those had all flipped and ended up on Nixon's side, he would have won the Electoral College. He would have won the election and been president. Nixon has another hypothetical path to victory. If less than 30,000 people spread across Illinois and Texas had changed their votes from Democrat to Republican, Nixon would have been president with exactly 270 votes. And if Nixon had been president, president for the Bay of Pigs? President for the Cuban Missile Crisis? Well, history may well have been very different indeed.

Nixon gave a speech three days after the election stating he would not contest the result, even though there was widespread evidence of fraud, particularly in Illinois. He believed it would be bad for America. Perhaps more importantly, Eisenhower believed it would be bad for America. And everyone believed it would be bad for global democracy. It was an enormously statesman-like moment on the part of Richard Nixon. I'm going to look at one more close election now, and that is obviously the year 2000. George W. Bush against Vice President Al Gore. So many stories, so many stories. In the campaign, George Bush said the problem with Democrats is they just, they wanted to intervene too much overseas.

Think about Somalia. It cost American lives and hadn't achieved as much as was hoped. I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building, said George W. Bush. Yeah. He also called for less partisanship in Washington. And during one of the presidential debates, he made this clarion call on foreign policy. If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us. But if we're a humble nation, but strong,

they'll welcome us. Words to live by, George W. Bush. On the night itself, Al Gore won New Mexico by just 355 votes. He won Iowa by a smidgen, Oregon by just 6,000 votes. But it all came down to Florida. Whoever won Florida would win the election. Simple as that. The exit poll had said it would go Democrat. The early vote was Republican. Al Gore even phoned Bush to concede. But then the counts showed Bush's lead narrowing.

Al Gore unconceded. And then there was basically the mother of all legal battles. Everyone involved, Florida courts, the Florida Assembly. There were 36 days of intense legal wrangling, excruciating ballot recounts. In the end, the Supreme Court of the United States of America stepped in and ordered a stop to the Florida recount. It was a 5-4 split decision in the Supreme Court. Four of those conservative justices had been appointed while George W. Bush's dad was either vice president or president. When that recount was stopped, out of nearly six

million votes that had been cast in Florida, Bush was ahead by a margin of 537 votes. That's 0.009% of the total votes cast in Florida. And that narrow margin gave George Bush Florida's electoral college votes, taking him to 271 votes. One vote over the 270 threshold that would put him in the White House. Now that, my friends, is a close election. It's worth pointing out, by the way, that Al Gore won the popular vote. In all, half a million more people voted for him nationally than voted for George Bush. But of course it doesn't count. And there's another wonderful for want of a nail, the King lost the battle moment in that Florida election too. In Palm Beach County was a butterfly ballot, a way of formatting the ballot paper that does seem to have misdirected over 2,000 votes

from Al Gore, people who intended to vote for Al Gore, who accidentally voted for the third-party candidate Pat Buchanan. And so those votes seem to have tipped Florida and the US presidential election to George W. Bush with consequences so momentous that I don't think I need to lay them out here. But my goodness, we are still living in the shadow of that Florida electoral outcome. So everybody, that was a rampage through the closest elections in US history. Five times

the popular vote winner has lost the election. Five times the margin between the two candidates has been less than 2% of the popular vote. 14 times the candidates have been separated by around 3% of the popular vote. That's a quarter of all US presidential elections. Now the US Electoral College has been only very, very close on about four or five occasions for reasons that we've discussed, but it's still given us a couple of 50-50 thrillers. So will this election be the closest ever? Probably not. Will it be unusually close?

Not particularly. Either way, I, of course, will be absolutely glued to it. I've cleared the schedule for weeks to come. I mean, it just makes you think. Imagine watching drama or fantasies of an evening. Imagine watching that stuff when real things, when actual history is available. What a world. Thanks for listening, everyone.

See you next time. you