1892
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.
Not computable from the sourced votes for this election.
The cheapest set of Cleveland’s states that would have given Harrison a majority is these 7 states (listed in the table below) — 78 electoral votes. Cleveland’s combined margin in these states was 60,452 votes.
A margin is overturned when more than half of it switches sides, so this path would have needed at least 30,232 Cleveland voters to vote for Harrison instead, in exactly those states. Had that happened, the count would have been Harrison 223, Cleveland 199.
| State | EV | Margin | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | 8 | 144 | 0.05 |
| Indiana | 15 | 7,125 | 1.29 |
| Delaware | 3 | 498 | 1.34 |
| Wisconsin | 12 | 6,544 | 1.76 |
| West Virginia | 6 | 4,174 | 2.44 |
| Illinois | 24 | 26,993 | 3.09 |
| New Jersey | 10 | 14,974 | 4.44 |
| Total | 78 | 60,452 |
Margin = the winner’s votes minus the runner-up’s in that state. Points = that margin as a share of every vote cast there.
Flipping California, Indiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Connecticut and New Jersey (Cleveland’s combined margin 38,331 votes) would have left nobody at 223: Harrison 202, Cleveland 220. The Twelfth Amendment would then have sent the choice to the House of Representatives, voting one vote per state delegation.
That costs less than the winning path above because it needs fewer electoral votes: Harrison gains just enough to stop Cleveland, not enough to win.
No single state Cleveland carried was big enough to have elected Harrison on its own.
Electoral votes in parentheses: the block each state cast for Cleveland. This uses electoral votes only, not margins.
Nationally, Cleveland received 5,553,898 votes and Harrison 5,190,799, so Cleveland finished 363,099 votes ahead of Harrison (3.01 points). Cleveland won the Electoral College 277–145.
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 223 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 223 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 223, 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 1892 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 223, the threshold 1892 actually used, out of 444 electoral votes.
- If nobody reaches 223, 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.