US Presidential Election



The US presidential election will be held on Tuesday, November 3. Current forecasts by almost  all psephologists  say that Joe Biden is favored to win the election, with virtually no chance for the incumbent Donald Trump.

With  the election less than 10 days away, here's a look at some presidential elections that went down to the wire: 

The 2016 US campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton can be considered to be among the ten closest in  in the country’s history with Trump losing the popular vote by 3 million but winning the electoral college 304-227.

Here are the other 9 other presidential races that came down to the slimmest of margins:

9. Benjamin Harrison over Grover Cleveland (1888)
Electoral college vote: 233 to 168
It was the third of five U.S. presidential elections (and second within 12 years) in which the winner did not win the majority of the national popular vote.

8. George W. Bush over John Kerry (2004)
Electoral college: 286 to 251
George W. Bush’s re-election bid wasn’t as close as the 2000 election, but it was definitely tighter than people remember. Bush took 50.7 percent of the popular vote and is the last Republican candidate so far  to win more than half the votes.

7. Thomas Jefferson over John Adams (1800)
Electoral college: 73 to 65 
Adams narrowly beat Jefferson in the 1796 election, but it was the vice-president’s turn to triumph four years later as he broke the Federalist party's hold on the presidency.

6. John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon (1960)
Electoral college vote: 303 - 219
The 1960 United States presidential election was closely contested.  It was the first election in which an incumbent president was ineligible to run for a third term because of the term limits established by the 22nd Amendment. It is also the last election so far where the winning candidate lost Ohio. Kennedy's popular vote margin was the narrowest in the 20th century. The 1960 presidential election was the closest election since 1916.

5. Woodrow Wilson over Charles Evans Hughes (1916)
Electoral college: 277 to 254
The decisive state in this election ended up being California, which incumbent president Woodrow Wilson won by just 3,773 votes.

4. John Adams over Thomas Jefferson (1796)
Electoral college: 71 to 68
After two terms as president, George Washington refused a third term, which opened the door to the first U.S. presidential election where political parties played a role. Adams won nine states to Jefferson’s seven and took 71 electoral votes, one more than was needed for a majority.

3. George W. Bush over Al Gore (2000)
Electoral college: 271 to 266
Bush lost the popular vote, but won Florida’s 25 electoral votes after a controversial recount that saw him win the state by only 537 votes.

2. Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel Tilden (1876)
Electoral college: 185 to 184
Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden won 50.9 percent of the vote to Hayes’ 47.9, but the Compromise of 1877 awarded 20 votes from states to Hayes, which gave him a margin of victory by just one electoral college vote. In exchange for the ruling, Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the south.

1. John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson (1824)
Electoral college vote: 99 (Jackson) - 84 (Adams) – 41 (Crawford) – 37 (Clay)
This election was decided in the House of Representatives. It featured four candidates drawing sizable totals in the electoral college. But though Jackson won the most electoral votes, the special election in the House of Representatives was won by  Adams. Thirteen states cast their vote for Adams, compared to seven for Jackson and four for Crawford. Jackson would defeat Adams four years later, unseating him from the White House.

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