Is This The Closest Presidential Election Race in History?

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remain in a close race for the White House, with less than 40 days to go until the election.
Recent polling averages have given Harris a slim lead nationally over Trump, well within the margin of error, and many battleground states remain toss-ups. The narrow gap between the candidates has prompted experts and commentators to say this is the closest presidential election history in decades, if not more than a century.
It is an “incredibly close election,” Amy K Dacey of American University told Newsweek.
Dacey, the executive director of the university’s Sine Institute of Policy & Politics, added that there would “be narrow margins in the battleground states, and every vote will matter to each candidate.”
Professor Matthew Foster, a lecturer at American University’s School of Public Affairs, also deemed the race a “dead heat statistically” with “so much uncertainty” it makes it difficult “to predict a winner.”
The September ahead of Election Day is notably a month when polls can get closer, because it’s when “voters begin thinking about their vote more and more seriously,” according to retired USA Today political reporter Richard Benedetto.
Boston University Professor Thomas Whalen added that voters “pay more attention” to the election after Labor Day, and stressed the importance of the presidential debate often being in September, which captures the attention and interest of the public as the election date draws nearer.
This year 67 million people watched the debate between Harris and Trump, and “she mopped the floor with him,” Whalen said, and “made a permanent impression” while Trump’s performance will be “impossible to erase.”
Have any past elections been this close at this point in the race though? Newsweek explored historic polling trends and data to find out.
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. John F Kennedy faced Republican Vice President Richard Nixon in an election that Kennedy won by 0.17 percentage points.
Throughout the campaign, both candidates were close in the polls and throughout August and September it was a dead heat, according to Gallup.
In October, Kennedy began to edge away from Nixon, securing a 4-point lead. However, as the month went on, Nixon gained momentum and cut Kennedy’s lead to one percentage point in a poll taken four days before the election, according to the National Constitution Center.
Gallup’s final poll had Kennedy two points ahead. He won 303 Electoral College votes with a popular vote margin of less than 113,000.
In the race between Republican Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter, the two candidates were tied at 39 percent each at around this time more than four decades ago, Gallup polls show.
At times throughout August and September, there was merely a one-point gap between the candidates before they were tied in one survey with around 40 days left of the race.
While Carter took an early lead on Reagan, at the end of October Reagan fought back in the polls winning with nearly 51 percent of the vote and 489 Electoral College votes in a landslide victory.
Reasons for the former Democrat turned Republican’s victory was thought to be because Carter’s stance on energy conservation was unpopular, and he spent much of the campaign throwing jibes at Reagan to unsuccessfully paint him to be an extremist.
The 2000 election is notable for the fact that no winner was declared on election night because the race was too close to call in Florida.
The outcome of the election was decided by a controversial recount in the state, which was ultimately stopped by the Supreme Court, handing the presidency to Bush with 271 Electoral College votes to 266 (a candidate needs 270 to win). Gore however won the popular vote by about 500,000.
During September that year, the polling gap between the two candidates closed gradually in the latter half of the month, meaning that around this time 24 years ago, the two opponents were tied at 45 percent each, according to Gallup.
While Gore had been on top at the start of September, in the first few weeks of October his support began to decline and Bush’s increased, so much so that at one point in October, Bush had a 13-point lead on Gore.
The final margin between the two was 0.5 percentage points.
There were a number of times when President George W Bush and his Democratic opponent, then-Sen. John Kerry, were basically neck-and-neck in the polls; at the end of June and July gaps between the two candidates closed before then diverging once more, according to Gallup.
There was no daylight between the two at the start of September, but Bush opened up a wide lead for most of the month, with 52 percent, before they converged again as October started and Kerry briefly had a 1-point lead.
As Election Day neared they both had 49 percent of the vote, and it was in the final stretch that Bush managed to pull ahead and win the election with a 2.4-point margin.
Bush’s strategy in the election proved effective as it focused on two main issues, the economy and the Iraq war, according to CBS News.
Per the outlet, to counteract his opponent’s campaign, Bush reportedly focused on raising the issue of terrorism in the U.S. after 9/11 and emphasized his personal strength in combatting it.
He also expressed stronger feeling towards traditional moral values than Kerry, and he was reportedly the only candidate to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
When Democratic President Barack Obama faced Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, September was again a month of narrow polling gaps.
On September 5, they were tied with only 0.1 percentage points between them, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average. The gap then widened throughout the month, and towards the end of the month Obama was pushing ahead.
The gap closed once more on October 8 when there was only 0.5 points between them, before Romney then edged ahead of Obama the next day and held his lead for 10 days.
There was yet another tie on October 31, when both candidates had 47.4 percent each. In the end, Obama won with 51.1 percent of the vote to Romney’s 47.2, nearly halving his margin of victory from 2008.
Another very close race was between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016.
On September 26 of that year, Clinton was ahead of Trump by 2.3 points in the polls, a gap which widened until the end of October, according to RCP.
Trump then regained some support after an FBI probe into Clinton’s emails announced that it had found some emails appearing to be “pertinent.”
The investigation started after Clinton had set up an email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, which critics argued gave her control of what information entered the public domain, although no charges were ever filed against her.
The final polling average from RCP gave Clinton a 3.3-point lead over Trump, but the Republican went on to win the Electoral College with 304 votes.
His Democratic opponent won the popular vote by a 2.1-point margin, which was roughly 2.8 million more votes.
The race between Harris and Trump could remain a toss-up right up until Election Day, and the outcome could see a close margin of victory similar to the examples above.
Reflecting on what the two candidates should now be doing to win, American University’s Amy K Dacey told Newsweek that this year there is “an engaged youth electorate that can help to be a determining voice in the election,” as 83 percent of those participating in a Sine Institute poll said “they were concerned about the state of democracy,” so appealing to the future generation could be an important avenue for the candidates to generate more energy from.
According to Dacey, Harris’ “vision of optimism” resembles aspects of elections 16 years ago, and so the vice president “will need to build a conversation with voters for this cycle” and not “rely on past winning strategies” to make sure she is successful in 2024.
Richard Benedetto warned that Harris’ refusal to do interviews could “hurt” her campaign efforts as the “public wants their presidential candidates to be more human and less robotic.”
He added that he thought Harris has “a built-in advantage in this race” because “while the news media are not crazy about her, they clearly can’t stand Trump.”
According to Benedetto, Trump needs to “find ways to appeal to independent voters in swing states” who are still “on the fence,” by convincing them that “he is more than just a populist with a good schtick” and win them over “with some solid, detailed government proposals rather than just clever rhetoric and feel-good slogans.”
“The candidate who gets hot at the end is likely to win,” he added.
Boston University’s Thomas Whalen warned of the impact on polling of the so-called October surprise, a term coined to described a unexpected political event that happens in the month before a presidential election.
Past October surprises have included Trump’s Access Hollywood tape in 2016, allegations in 1992 that George H W Bush was more closely tied to the Iran-Contra affair than previously thought, and Hurricane Sandy making landfall on the East Coast just days before the 2012 election. Obama was praised for his response to the crisis by Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
The term gained prominence during the 1980 election. At that time, the U.S. was dealing with the Iran Hostage Crisis, where 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage in Iran. There was speculation that Carter, seeking re-election, might secure the hostages’ release in October—just before the election—to boost his chances of winning. Ultimately, the hostages were not released until January 20, 1981, the day of Reagan’s inauguration, but the idea that a last-minute development could sway the election led to the popularization of the phrase.
“You’ve got to wonder how crazy this election has been so far whether we will have October Surprise 2024,” Whalen said.
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about the 2024 election? Contact [email protected]