The United States has a recent history of extremely close presidential elections.
In 2016, Donald Trump won against Hillary Clinton by less than 80,000 votes between Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (Washington Post).
In 2000, George Bush famously won against Al Gore by only a few hundred votes in the state of Florida.
This question resolves YES if 100,000 votes or less (i.e. the total vote difference between the top two candidates) distributed over any number of states/districts, would have made the difference between one presidential candidate or the other winning by electors to the Electoral College.
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Related questions
Surprised this question is at exactly 50% on so many traders.
Gone ahead and made more questions for higher and lower numbers:
- 200,000 votes
- 50,000 votes
- 10,000 votes
- 1,000 votes
@Conflux Took a look at the results as recorded on Wikipedia to verify. You're right.
Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232, so Trump could have flipped the result with 37 electoral votes. Biden won 37 electoral votes from Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, but the difference between Trump and Biden's vote totals in these districts combined was 65,006 votes (so less than 100,000).
The source you link is also correct, but the 32,507 number is if you flip votes, so it's double counting (e.g. the difference between Trump and Biden in Arizona was 10,457, but Trump only needed 5,229 Biden voters to instead vote Trump to flip it).
@cash Ah, I see. Makes sense! The site I linked was a blog post that I myself wrote a few years ago, so I thought it was correct, but I wasn't sure if I'd calculated the same stat.