It is often said and written that the presidential election that will take place on Tuesday in the United States is one of the most ambivalent in the history of the country. The outcome of the previous election was also uncertain until the last moment, to such an extent that Donald Trump did not admit – and still does not admit – his defeat by Joe Biden, cultivating an extremely divisive climate. However, there have been other electoral contests in the USA where the result was decided marginally.
In his election 2000America and the world watched anxiously as Florida’s votes were counted and lawsuits rained down until the Supreme Court ended the process five weeks after the election, handing Republican George W. Bush the victory. After three recounts and by a margin of 517 votes, Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in Florida, secured the state’s 25 precious electoral votes and narrowly edged Al Gore by 271 electoral votes to 266. Nationally, Al Gore came out on top by a half million votes but the electoral system worked in favor of Bush.
The match was also ambiguous 1960 between Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard Nixon. After the party conventions, Nixon had a lead of almost 6 points, but Kennedy gnawed away at the difference by winning impressions in a total of 4 telefights (from September 26 to October 21) and took a 3-point lead. Four days before the election, the Republican candidate managed to narrow the poll gap to one point, but the tide had turned against him in crucial states. Kennedy won by a margin of 112,000 votes (out of a total of 68 million) while the electoral college margin was much larger as he secured 303 and Nixon 219 electoral votes.
The 1880 Republican James Garfield was elected the twentieth president of the United States. Garfield, who had received the presidential nomination after 35 inconclusive votes at his party’s convention, beat Democrat Winfield Hancock by just 1,898 votes (out of a total of 8.89 million), but won the college of commissioners 214 to 155. His tenure was short-lived, he was assassinated four months after taking office.
Four years earlier, in his election 1876as America was still trying to heal the wounds of the civil war between North and South, Republican Rutherford Hayes was elected president after a political bargain, in a highly tense atmosphere, with voter intimidation and counting irregularities. In the first electoral vote count, Democrat Samuel Tildon (who won the popular vote by a margin of 250,000 out of a total of 8.3 million) had 184 electors and Hayes 165, with another 20 electors contested from four states (Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon). Congress appointed a special committee that looked into the allegations and decided to give Hayes all 20 seats, giving him the presidency with one electoral vote. As a result of this political compromise, Hayes agreed to end the policy of reconstruction and integration of the southern states in the US, which continued for decades the regime of racial segregation in the American South.
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