Presidential Election Cliffhangers
Close Ones That Changed American History
After Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to be elected President in 1860, his party won 10 of the next 12 contests, usually by wide margins. Although New York's Democratic Governor Samuel Tilden was probably "robbed" of the 1876 election, Grover Cleveland, prevailing in two of his three races, was the only Democrat to interrupt the Republican streak before 1912.
That year, an internal GOP struggle between President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt led to a third party campaign by the latter. Dividing 50 per cent of the popular vote, Taft and Roosevelt enabled the Democratic candidate, Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, to win an electoral vote landslide. Was this a fluke or a return to unpredictable bipartisan contests?
The Close Elections
In 1916, the Republicans were reunited behind former New York Governor and Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. The principal campaign issue was Wilson's neutralist foreign policy stance in World War I, which had been raging in Europe since 1914. The Democratic slogan was, "He kept us out of war," while the Republicans complained that Wilson had been ineffective in defending our nation's neutral rights. On the basis of fairly complete returns, Hughes went to bed reasonably certain that he had been elected. But California went for Wilson by 3000 votes, giving him a 277-254 edge in electoral votes along with a slim popular vote plurality.
It would be 32 years before the American public would be treated to another cliffhanger. An embattled President Harry S Truman, facing Democratic defections on his left to Cold War critic Henry Wallace and on his right to segregationist Strom Thurmond, was widely expected to lose to Republican Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. It wasn't until mid-morning on the day after Election Day that it was clear that Truman , with a plurality of just over 2 million in the popular vote, had won 303 electoral votes too Dewey's 189.
After two blowouts for Dwight D. Eisenhower, his Vice President, Richard Nixon, faced Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960 in a race too close for the opinion polls to forecast a clear winner. Again, Election Night came and went before Kennedy was assured of 303 electoral votes to 219 for Nixon with a paper-thin popular vote plurality of just over 100,000. Eight years later, Nixon was the beneficiary of a comparable squeaker. His plurality of 500,000 secured him 301 electoral votes to 191 for Vice President Hubert Humphrey in a three-way race that included Georgfe Wallace's third party bid.
President Gerald Ford was seeking election in his own right in 1976 after succeeding Nixon post-Watergate. With 50.08 per cent of the popular vote, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter nailed down 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240. Carter benefited from unequalled late 20th century Southern support for a Democratic candidate in the last tight Presidential contest of that century.
The new millennium brought the mother of all close Presidential elections. Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000, but the historic Supreme Court decision on the recount of Florida's ballots gave Texas Governor George Bush a 271-266 electoral vote victory for the latter. Bush's reelection in 2004 over Senator John Kerry was a bit more comfortable. This time he won the popular vote by 3 million and the electoral vote 286-251.
Did It Make a Difference?
It isn't clear that Charles Evans Hughes would have been able to keep the U.S. out of World War I, but his temperament and negotiating skills might have resulted in a different Treaty of Versailles. It is very unlikely that he would have conducted a passionate and divisive campaign, as Wilson did, for a League of Nations that resulted in two decades of relative isolationism.
Dewey would probably have carried on the bipartisan foreign policy that aimed at containing the Soviet Union, but he might have either declined to oppose the invasion of South Korea or might have yielded to pressures in his party to escalate hostilities with Communist China. Nixon would likely have responded less sympathetically than Kennedy to the growing civil rights movement and might have intervened more vigorously in Viet Nam. Humphrey would almost surely have pulled our troops out more rapidly from there. More clearly, he would not have conducted an Administration of plumbers and enemies lists that plunged the nation into a Constitutional crisis.
It's more difficult to perceive might-have-beens from a Ford rather than Carter tenure. And the not-yet-over Bush years may be too fresh for historical analysis, but it's hard to see the environmentally focused Gore opting for a war in Iraq. What his response would have been to the terror attacks on the U.S., no one can tell.
Does every vote count? Yes, at least in some years.
Reference: Presidentelect.org
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