What happens if candidates get a minimal difference in votes

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Elections in the United States usually take place with a very small advantage. The candidate who received the 55% of votes is considered to have won a landslide victory, and even a smaller difference in votes is considered as decisive, writes ShareAmerica.
But sometimes the election results are very close. And since in fact the presidential election consists of 51 individual elections (50 states plus DC), similar results can be obtained in different ways.

In such cases, it is useful to recall the election rules:
• The number of electoral votes in each state depends on the state’s share of the total population of the country.
• All states (except 2) cast all the votes of their electors to the candidate with the highest number of votes in the state.
• To win a presidential election, a candidate must collect a majority of the electoral votes, that is, the 270 votes.
• If no candidate gets a majority of the electoral college, a new president is elected by the House of Representatives by a state delegation, each state having an 1 vote.

The decision is made by the House of Representatives.

In 2 cases, the House of Representatives did determine the outcome of the presidential election, but for very different reasons.
• The 1800 election of the year revealed an omission in the Constitution. Initially, it was assumed that every elector gives 2 votes for the president, while the candidate who gained the most votes becomes president, and the runner-up vice president. When Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Barr came together for the presidential election, everyone knew that Jefferson was running for president, and Barr for running vice president, but all their electors voted for both candidates. As a result ... a draw! After serious debates, the House of Representatives duly elected Jefferson. Subsequently, the 12-I Amendment to the Constitution introduced a separate vote on the candidature of the president and vice-president.
• In the 1824 year, no candidate received a majority of the electoral college. But 4 who took the place in terms of the number of votes cast, Henry Clay supported John Quincy Adams who took 2, who consequently won the elections in the House of Representatives.

Voices against electoral votes

The 1824 election of the year revealed one oddity in the electoral college system: sometimes the candidate who received the most votes lost in the electoral college. That is what happened with Andrew Jackson in the 1824 election of the year. (Jackson won the 1828 and 1832 elections.) The same happened in the 1876 year (Rutherford Hayes won the presidential election without gaining a majority of votes), in the 1888 year (Benjamin Harrison won) and in the 2000 year (George W. Bush ).
Often the opinion is expressed that the most fair system is a simple counting of all votes across the country. This argument was also discussed by the 1787 Convention of the Year, which adopted the draft Constitution. But in the concept of the founding fathers, the new federal form of government is nothing more than the union of states into a federation.
It is also important to understand that candidates are trying to get the majority of votes of the electoral college, and not the majority of the votes. For example, if the goal was to get a majority of votes, candidates would try to gain an advantage primarily in the populous “safe states” that vote without fail for a candidate from one party - states such as California (population of 39 million; votes for Democrats with 1992 year) and Texas (27 million; Republican state since 1976 year). Instead, the main focus is on achieving victory, even with a minimal advantage, in competing "vacillating states."

Some states may change the outcome of the election.

In some elections, candidates have almost equal chances because of the very close results of voting in the vacillating states. For example, in the 1960 election of the year, an advantage of only 8858 votes in Illinois determined the victory of John F. Kennedy.

In other cases, the electoral college strengthens the scale of a candidate’s victory in an election. In 1968, Richard M. Nixon, who lost Kennedy in the 1960 elections of the year, won by less than 1%, but defeated his main opponent in the electoral college with the result of 301-191 (the third candidate received 45 electoral votes).

Win with a minimum margin

And a very recent example is the Bush triumph in the state of Florida: the advantage of 537 votes from almost 6 millions of votes determined the outcome of the 2000 presidential election of the year between George W. Bush and Al Gore. It was a typical election case with a minimal gap: Gore won by the total number of votes, but lost by an electoral vote. The election outcome was decided not in those states where one candidate won an impressive victory (in California, Gore had an advantage in 1,3 million votes, and in Texas, in Bush — even more), but in a state where the results were so close that the recounts 5 weeks, and in the end the winner had to be determined by the decision of the Supreme Court.
The 2000 election of the year demonstrated the power of the country's democratic institutions, and at the same time the voter’s confidence in these institutions. Despite such close results of the vote and the unprecedented sharpness of the struggle, the Americans were confident of the upcoming peaceful and orderly transfer of power - and so it happened.

“I consider it my duty,” said Gore, speaking after the Supreme Court’s decision, “to recognize the newly elected president and do everything possible to help him strengthen the unity of the American people in fulfillment of the great dream that our Declaration of Independence proclaimed and which our Constitution supports and protects” .
The representative of the Democratic program of the Carter Center, David Carroll, paid tribute to the candidates themselves, who "in case of loss accept results, and in case of victory, behave generously towards the loser."

See also:

Elections of America's Future: ForumDaily Live Webcast

Who do you think will win the presidential election? - ForumDaily survey

Google and YouTube will broadcast the election in 30 languages

Electors from Washington said they would not take into account the majority opinion

Which banks will work on election day

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