1880
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.
New York was the tipping point. Line up the states Garfield carried from widest margin to narrowest: New York’s 35 electoral votes are the ones that took Garfield to 195, past the 185 majority. Garfield carried it by 21,033 votes (1.91 points).
The cheapest set of Garfield’s states that would have given Hancock a majority is Indiana, Oregon, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Colorado — 32 electoral votes. Garfield’s combined margin in these states was 16,824 votes.
A margin is overturned when more than half of it switches sides, so this path would have needed at least 8,416 Garfield voters to vote for Hancock instead, in exactly those states. Had that happened, the count would have been Hancock 187, Garfield 182.
| State | EV | Margin | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indiana | 15 | 6,636 | 1.41 |
| Oregon | 3 | 671 | 1.64 |
| Connecticut | 6 | 2,656 | 2.01 |
| New Hampshire | 5 | 4,058 | 4.71 |
| Colorado | 3 | 2,803 | 5.24 |
| Total | 32 | 16,824 |
Margin = the winner’s votes minus the runner-up’s in that state. Points = that margin as a share of every vote cast there.
One state Garfield carried was big enough on its own to have elected Hancock: New York (35).
Electoral votes in parentheses: the block each state cast for Garfield. This uses electoral votes only, not margins.
Nationally, Garfield received 4,453,337 votes and Hancock 4,451,439, so Garfield finished 1,898 votes ahead of Hancock (0.09 points). Garfield won the Electoral College 214–155.
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 185 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 185 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 185, including a tie, the House of Representatives chooses the president, one vote per state delegation.
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 1880 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 185, the threshold 1880 actually used, out of 369 electoral votes.
- If nobody reaches 185, 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.