CounterfactualNot a historical record
1789
What if these states had gone the other way?
In 1789, George Washington (Independent) won 69 electoral votes to John Adams's 34, with 35 needed for a majority. Move a state and the count moves with it.
What if · 1789
Only one candidate carried a state this cycle
What it would have taken
Counterfactual arithmetic from each state’s recorded popular vote. It measures how close the result was; it does not predict what voters would have done.
The tipping point
Not computable: state popular votes are not yet sourced for any state in 1789.
The narrowest path for John Adams
John Adams carried no state in 1789, so there is nobody on this map to hand states to.
One state on its own
John Adams carried no state in 1789, so no state can be handed to John Adams here.
How these are defined
- Flip
- Exactly what a click on the map does: the electoral votes a state cast for the candidate who carried it move to another candidate. District and faithless electors stay as cast.
- Margin
- The winner’s votes minus the runner-up’s in a state, from the state’s recorded popular vote. Points are that margin divided by every vote cast in the state.
- Tipping point
- Order the states the winner carried from widest margin to narrowest and add up their electoral votes; the tipping point is the state where the running total first reaches a majority. Its margin here is over the next-best candidate in that state.
- Narrowest path
- Of every set of states the winner carried, the one that would have given the runner-up at least 35 electoral votes with the smallest combined margin. Found by an exact search, not by taking the closest states in order. A tie or any result short of 35 does not count as a win.
- Switched voters
- One voter changing sides moves a margin by two, so a margin of N is overturned when more than N ÷ 2 voters switch. The minimum is the sum of that, state by state. Real elections never move this neatly; this is arithmetic, not a forecast.
- No majority
- When nobody reaches 35, including a tie, the House of Representatives chooses the president, one vote per state delegation.
How this toy works
The map is a toy: anything you flip on it is invented. Clicking a state hands its electoral votes to the next candidate on the 1789 ballot, then to the next, and finally back to the candidate who really carried it — nothing here changes what happened.
- Only the block of electoral votes a state cast for its own winner moves. District and faithless electors stay as cast, because individual electors — not the state — cast them.
- The majority line is 35, the threshold 1789 actually used, out of 138 electoral votes.
- John Adams finished 1789 with 34 electoral votes, but none of them came from carrying a state — individual electors cast them, and before the Twelfth Amendment each elector cast two undifferentiated ballots. No state on this map can be handed to John Adams, so the tally does not list those votes.
- If nobody reaches 35, the Twelfth Amendment sends the choice to the House of Representatives — which is how 1800 and 1824 really ended.
- The address bar carries your scenario, so a link you copy opens on the same map. Reset, or a link with no scenario, restores the real result.