Cook Political: Trump was only 65,009 votes away from winning -- despite Biden's 7 million vote lead

[Drunken Irishman]

32. There's people who believe Kennedy actually lost the popular vote in 1960 due to Alabama's voting...

I don't know if I share it.

But you're right that in the last something years, it's hurt the Democrats.

I will say 2000 is a crapshoot. That election was so close nationally (Gore won the popular vote by a mere 547,398 votes) that really, the electoral college/popular vote difference wasn't terribly in favor of Bush (especially since Al Gore lost the electoral college by 537 votes in Florida - or, if you want to get crazy, 7,211 votes in NH (had he won NH, Florida would have been irrelevant). The closeness of the popular vote there I think reflected on the electoral college, which was, probably more than at any point in the last 100-plus years, a true toss-up.

I can't think of any scenario in modern presidential history where the election came down to so few votes in just one state.

Every other example, like 2004 and 2016 and 2020, either include a candidate needing a significant amount of votes in one state to flip the EC (Kerry lost Ohio by 118,000 or so - and had he won it would've won the White House despite losing the popular vote by three-million) or a less than 100,000 across additional states to win (in 2016, Hillary still needed to eke out wins in PA, MI and WI, while Trump would have needed to win three-plus states).

Another close election was 1976, where Carter won the popular vote by two-points and 297 EV. But again, you'd need some radical changes to flip that race.

1960, too, as despite people focusing on Illinois, even if Kennedy had lost Illinois, he would have won the presidency.