1888
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 Harrison carried from widest margin to narrowest: New York’s 36 electoral votes are the ones that took Harrison to 218, past the 201 majority. Harrison carried it by 13,002 votes (0.98 points).
The cheapest set of Harrison’s states that would have given Cleveland a majority is New York — 36 electoral votes. Harrison’s combined margin in this state was 13,002 votes.
A margin is overturned when more than half of it switches sides, so this path would have needed at least 6,502 Harrison voters to vote for Cleveland instead, in exactly that state. Had that happened, the count would have been Cleveland 204, Harrison 197.
| State | EV | Margin | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 36 | 13,002 | 0.98 |
| Total | 36 | 13,002 |
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 Harrison carried was big enough on its own to have elected Cleveland: New York (36).
Electoral votes in parentheses: the block each state cast for Harrison. This uses electoral votes only, not margins.
Nationally, Harrison received 5,443,892 votes and Cleveland 5,534,488, so Cleveland finished 90,596 votes ahead of Harrison (0.83 points). Harrison won the Electoral College 233–168.
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 201 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 201 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 201, 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 1888 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 201, the threshold 1888 actually used, out of 401 electoral votes.
- If nobody reaches 201, 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.