# What was the closest political election ever? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 13, 2004, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710 "2004-04-13T02:12:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![chefIL11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chefIL11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chefIL11)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/1 "2004-04-13T02:12:46Z")
How many votes seperated the winner from the loser? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/2 "2004-04-13T02:18:19Z")
There was once an election for a Montana state legislator where both candidates were tied. As in, the exact same number of votes. The winner was literally decided by the flip of a coin. Personally, I think that Nevada’s method for resolving tied elections is much cooler. There, the candidates play a single hand of five card stud. It’s equivalent to a coin toss, but it has so much more style, don’t you think? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/3 "2004-04-13T02:18:58Z")
You may want to define this more rigorously. There are huge numbers of elections decided by a single vote, and the smaller the number of people who vote the more likely this becomes. For that matter, in small elections ties are common and then some procedure must be devised for deciding a winner. As I see on preview **Chronos** has already said. ---
**Author:** ![chefIL11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chefIL11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chefIL11)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/4 "2004-04-13T02:23:58Z")
sorry for the broad question: Close races on large levels… presidential, congress or state general assemblies. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/5 "2004-04-13T03:00:11Z")
OK, then, let’s dip into the Fun Fact Pool o’ Weirdness! > **[Interesting Fun Facts and World Records](https://www.lawyerment.com/facts/)** > > Interesting Facts and World Records categorised by Legislature, Judicial, Military and Defence, Political, Royalty and Head of State, Social. > [@](#): > > The Closest Election > On 18 January 1961, in Zanzibar, Afro-Shirazi Party won by a single seat of the seat of Chake-Chake on Pemba Island had been gained by a single vote. The closest general elections ever occurred in the world. > > On 7 August 1979 in Mississippi, USA, Robert E. Joiner was declared the winner over W.H. Pyron with 133,587 votes to 133,582. That’s the narrowest recorded percentage win in an election. The loser got more than 49.999% of the votes for the office of Southern District Highway Commissioner. And on a larger scale: [http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Closest\_election\_in\_Senate\_history.htm](http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Closest_election_in_Senate_history.htm) > [@](#): > > The closest election in Senate history was decided twenty-eight years ago this month, on September 16, 1975. The 1974 New Hampshire race for an open seat pitted Republican Louis Wyman against Democrat John Durkin. > > Although Wyman enjoyed a lead during the campaign, the Watergate scandals and the August 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon made it a tough year to run as a Republican. On election day, Wyman barely won with a margin of just 355 votes. > > Durkin immediately demanded a recount… Durkin agreed to Wyman’s proposal for a new election. The Senate declared the seat vacant and the governor appointed former Senator Norris Cotton to hold the seat for six weeks until the September 16 balloting. > > A record-breaking turnout gave the election to Durkin by a 27,000-vote margin. ---
**Author:** ![Frame\_Dragging](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/53a042/32.png) [@Frame\_Dragging](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frame_Dragging)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/6 "2004-04-13T03:21:02Z")
The race for governor of Minnesota in 1962 had a margin of 91 votes. 1.3 million votes were cast and the winner was the challenger, Karl Rolvaag (D), who’d unseated incumbent Elmer Andersen. Rolvaag didn’t get to assume office until mid-March of 1963 after four months of recounts and court battles. Four years later Rolvaag was defeated by Harold LeVander. Rolvaag was then appointed ambassador to Iceland by LBJ. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/7 "2004-04-13T20:11:55Z")
Some municipal elections here and there may have had very small (or nonexistent, i.e., dead tie) margins, but the US Presidential election of 2000 (Gore vs Bush) still trumps them: a) An election involving hundreds of people that comes down to a margin of a tiny handful of people is less tight than an election involving hundreds of millions of people that still comes down to a margin of a tiny handful of people. b) Viewed (simplistically) in terms of straight-up popular vote, you could make the case that the margin of victory was a negative margin. Less than zero. c) Viewed (more accurately) as the sequence of “Chinese boxes” or “Russian dolls” that US Presidential elections actually are, the cascade of razor-thin margins involved as you unpack – electoral college, electoral college with Florida in contention, Florida, Florida a / Florida b / Florida c / etc. estimates / recounts and the extent to which they differ, and, finally (even though by this time it was administrative rather than a standard part of the actual vote) the decision margin on the Supreme Court bench – was astonishing. Every penny we pitched landed on edge at the exact same distance from the wall. We’ll not likely see another race so close in our lifetimes. * * * pre-emptive anti-hijack hijack: I have no political axe to grind in this thread. My opinion of our current President is available to anyone who wishes to do a search, but my opinion of the vote itself is that it was a statistical dead heat, a tie, not capable of being reconciled; the margin of error of our counting tools exceeded the margin of difference. ---
**Author:** ![aahala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@aahala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aahala)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/8 "2004-04-13T20:52:31Z")
“Landslide Lyndon” Johnson won his first US Senate nomination in 1948 by a mere 87 votes. For more than a month it was thought his opponent had won, then a ballot box was discovered. The discovered ballots went 202-1 for Johnson. Another surprise – the majority in that precinct had voted in the exact order as their names appeared on the county tax roll. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/9 "2004-04-13T21:25:27Z")
With regard to the US 2000 Presidential election, is it not true that even had Gore won Florida, there were enough states which might have gone to Bush on a recount to maintain the result? ---
**Author:** ![aahala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@aahala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aahala)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2004, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-closest-political-election-ever/239710/10 "2004-04-13T21:53:49Z")
> [@qts](#): > > With regard to the US 2000 Presidential election, is it not true that even had Gore won Florida, there were enough states which might have gone to Bush on a recount to maintain the result? Yes. The Gore states won Wisconsin(11) .22%, Iowa(7) .32%, NM(5) .06% and Oregon(7) .44%. Bush got 271, needing 270 for a win. Had he lost Florida, then he needed to win Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon. 271! If he had lost Florida, won Wisconsin and NM and either Iowa or Oregon but not both, we have a TIE.