A handful of votes can decide a seat — and through it, sometimes a chamber. State legislative races are won and lost on margins narrower than rounding error in any congressional or presidential contest. The closest race in our database was decided by a single vote.
This page collects every general or special election we have recorded that was decided by under 3 percentage points. Use the chart to see which cycles produced the most nail-biters (a function of both political competitiveness and how many seats were on the ballot). Then browse the full list below, sortable by margin to surface the closest races first. Click any row to expand the full election card.
Close Races by Cycle
Number of state-level general/special elections decided by under 3 points each year, split by margin band.
Browse All Close Races
All Close Races
| Year | State | District | Winner | Runner-Up | Margin | Votes Apart | Type |
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Methodology
A "close race" is a general or special election where the winner's margin over the runner-up was under 3 percentage points. We compute margin as the percentage-point gap between the top two candidates' shares of the total vote — not the gap between winner and second-place by raw votes (though that figure is also shown in the "Votes Apart" column, where data is available).
What's included. General elections (single-winner and multi-member), special elections, and general runoffs across all state legislative and statewide offices. Primaries are excluded because primary closeness is driven by very different dynamics (low turnout, ideological self-selection) than general election closeness.
Coverage window. 2010 forward, the period where our 50-state coverage is substantially complete. Pre-2010 close races exist in our database for some states but aren't comprehensive enough to chart alongside the post-2010 period.
Why margin and not votes. A 50-vote difference in a state House district of 20,000 voters is a different kind of close race than a 50-vote difference in a statewide race with 3 million votes. Margin normalizes — but we show raw votes too because in close races, the absolute number is often the more memorable figure (and the relevant one for recount eligibility, which is generally vote-count-based).