One of the main reasons that leads many not to vote is the argument that “my vote, alone, doesn’t count, it doesn’t decide the outcome of an election!” I always disagreed with this and went to vote committed and expecting surprises. And this year we may have many. In US History there are several cases that contradict this reasoning: 500 votes in Florida at the turn of this century; 1 isolated vote in the Electoral College 150 years ago; a total confusion, which could be repeated, 200 years ago. In 2024, we can again demonstrate that it is not simple and see the future of one of the greatest powers in the world fall or depend on the hands of a few hundred voters (or “big voters”, if the uncertainties last until winter ) or… vote counters.
Before the year 2000, many debated whether the millennium or century began in that year or just in 2001, the year George W. Bush was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America (“POTUS”). The correct answer was 2001, since, in the Gregorian calendar, the first century is from the year 1 AD to the year 100 AD, the second century from the year 101 AD to the year 200 AD and, by extrapolation, the 20th century runs from the year 1901 to 2000, only after the beginning of the 21st century did we have five elections, all of them “supposedly” predictable: (i) W. Bush v. Kerry, in 2004; (ii) McCain v. Obama, in 2008; (iii) Obama v. Romney, in 2012; (iv) H. Clinton v. Trump, in 2016; and (v) Trump v. Biden, in 2020.
The quotation marks around “supposedly” are related to the fact that everyone was betting on Hillary Clinton’s victory in 2016, but also to the reality that most 2020 polls point to a much more considerable distance in the votes between Biden and Trump, which is not materialized, opening space for a “contested” election at surreal levels, which still left deep wounds in American democracy today. In both elections, the Republican candidate (or his supporters) was underestimated, and the polls failed to capture the red wave (the color of the Republicans). The same did not happen in the 2022 or 2018 midterm elections, in which Trump was not on the ballot.
However, on the eve of 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, we all believed we knew who the next POTUS would be. It is true that there were moments when Kerry came closer to Bush or Romney to Obama, but they were momentary… although perhaps they served to make some bet on them, with greater vehemence than they did with Hillary Clinton, in 2016, whose victory speech we all took as guaranteed. Trump had already surprised us by winning the Republican primaries, Brexit had already surprised us that summer, the November elections were not uncertain…
We have to go back to the year 2000 to see such tight and uncertain polls for an American election like the ones we have in 2024. There, a Democratic Vice President, Al Gore, popular among young people and celebrities, was running against a more “ rustic” (to use one of the various epithets with which he was given). The Clinton presidency was already very worn out (and this would have affected Gore), Bush was presenting himself as a “man of the people” (despite being the son of Reagan’s Vice President and, later, also President H. Bush, connoted with a more “intellectual” wing of the Republican party), but, then, the polls captured the “sentiment of the population”. On the eve of the 2000 elections, we could bet that everything would be tight.
What we couldn’t bet on was that the first results would be announced giving Bush the victory, but while Gore continued in his limousine to give his defeat speech, the television channels went back and the results from Florida were pending and Gore made a reversal. march, starting weeks of discussion, dependent on countless recounts until the STF ordered the counting to stop (the Associated Press came to do a final recount and Bush effectively won by 567 votes). The transition of power and portfolios was not exactly smooth: if the elder Bush left a beautiful letter for Bill Clinton, Gore’s team ripped the letters “W” from the keyboards and, more seriously, some crucial information to prevent September 11th. 2001 may have been lost.
In this aspect, the “Trump administration”, perhaps due to the most shocking images of January 2021, “turned against its president” and many joined forces with the Biden team, especially in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic, which, in that time, still deserved special care.
“Close” or “tight” results tend to heat up tempers and lead to electoral contestation (the Democrats, in Georgia, contested many of the most recent results, vehemently and even with protests in the streets, led by a spectacular Stacey Abrams who, later, contributed to an electoral mobilization that may have given this state to Joe Biden in 2020).
Precisely two hundred years ago, in 1824, a “Trumpist” candidate (from his hair to his ideas) was defeated in one of the closest elections ever. This presidential election was marked by competition between four candidates from the same political party, the Democratic-Republicans. The death of Alexander Hamilton led to the implosion of the Federalists, leaving opponents with an easier path to the presidency. However, the challenge was to choose a candidate among the regional factions of that party. At this time, there were no primary elections, national conventions, or any organized way of nominating a presidential candidate. Thus, each regional faction supported a different man: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford, all with great resumes to be president (they were no longer the “Founding Fathers”, but a kind of “Founding Sons”). After votes were counted in the 24 states, Andrew Jackson had the most electoral votes (99), followed by Adams (84), Crawford (41), and Clay (37).
The Constitution says that if no candidate receives a majority of the electoral college votes (in 1824, the “magic number” was 131, today it is 270), then the vote is taken in the Chamber of Deputies. According to the 12th Amendment, only the top three finishers in elections advance to the House, leaving Clay out of the race. What followed were months of lobbies and negotiations as each state decided which candidate to support. The decisive moment came when Clay, who was serving as Speaker of the House, went against the wishes of his home state of Kentucky and supported Adams over Jackson. Adams ended up winning the House vote and, consequently, the presidency.
Accounts from that time may assuage those who believe that fiery speeches are new to our times: Jackson was furious when Adams chose Clay as his Secretary of State, and in public he called Clay “Judas” and accused Adams and Clay of engaging in a “corrupt deal” to steal the election (“ring bells” for anyone?). In fact, we can say that Jackson got the last laugh when he defeated Adams in the next presidential election in 1828. However, there were months (years?) of uncertainty and the US persevered.
140 years ago, the election between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine was decided by 1,047 votes in New York and 148 years ago, the election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden was decided by 1 vote in the Electoral College. Even today there are historians who discuss the details and validity of procedures to reach these results.
We could have another “historic” election and complicated times if the polls, unlike what happened in 2020 and 2016, are capturing the correct sentiment of the American population and the swing states (Arizona – 11, Georgia – 16, Michigan – 15, Nevada – 6, North Carolina – 16, Pennsylvania – 19 and Wisconsin – 10: these numbers are the “big voters” that each of the respective States has, making reaching the “magic number” of 270 electoral votes an easy sum. , you will see that we have almost 100 votes here, out of 538, almost all of them “allocated” in states that have consistently voted “blue” or “red” since the last big election in which Ronald Reagan managed to paint the map almost entirely in one color .
Perhaps the best translation for these “closest elections” 2024 is a “close election”, hopefully they don’t leave America and the world in a bind, but until then, it’s not easy to predict the future presidency. The Senate seems likely to turn Republican (many more Democratic seats are at stake and there are good Republican candidates in the race), and the Chamber of Deputies should also remain red, albeit with a not very strengthened majority. But… does anyone want to bet?
