The state-level presidential results decided by the narrowest margins, from 1976 to 2024 — the races inside the race.
Florida in 2000 is the closest a state has come to a tie in a presidential election: 537 votes separated the top two, 0.01 points, George W. Bush over Al Gore. New Mexico in 2000 (366 votes) and Missouri in 2008 (3,903 votes) are next. A presidential election is really fifty-one separate contests, and these are the ones that came down to a rounding error.
What is the closest presidential result in a single state?
Florida in 2000: 537 votes between the top two candidates, 0.01 points, George W. Bush over Al Gore. New Mexico in 2000 (366 votes) and Missouri in 2008 (3,903 votes) follow. Each row is one state in one election year, so a state can appear more than once.
Why does the margin matter more in some states than others?
Because electoral votes are awarded by state. A 537-vote margin decided Florida in 2000 and with it the presidency, while a margin ten thousand times larger in a safe state changed nothing. That is why the closest state results, not the closest national ones, are where presidential elections are actually settled.
What years does this cover?
1976 through 2024, the span of the state-by-state presidential returns PolitiFinder holds. The national popular-vote records, which run to 1824, are on the closest presidential elections page.
Every state result in every presidential election from 1976 to 2024, ranked by the gap between the top two candidates in that state. The District of Columbia is included, so 51 results per election. Ranked on the percentage-point margin, with the raw vote gap breaking ties: vote shares are stored to two decimal places, so several results sit at 0.01 points and only the vote count separates them. State-level returns come from the dedicated presidential state-results table and are never mixed into any candidate’s career vote total.
Compiled by PolitiFinder · published June 14, 2026 · sources: Data & sources · data last verified September 9, 2026.