The last time the polls were this close heading into election day, it was 1976 and Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was trying to unseat the incumbent President Gerald Ford.
Pollsters are calling Tuesday’s contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump a virtual dead heat, with Harris leading Trump by just one point nationally, 49 to 48, in the New York Times’ polling aggregator.
Famed pollster Nate Silver described the race as closer than a coin toss, while Frank Luntz said it will all come down to voter turnout.
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Almost 50 years ago, Carter and Ford were locked in a similarly tight battle, with the Gallup Poll showing Ford leading Carter 49 percent to 48 percent among likely voters. In the end, Carter won by more than 2 percentage points and beat Ford 297 to 240 in the electoral college.
Before that, in 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon also faced off in an anxiously close race. Going into the election, Kennedy also led Nixon by just one point in the Gallup poll, 49 percent to 48 percent.
In the end, Kennedy managed to defeat Nixon by just 0.17 percent of the vote, or about 112,800 votes out of more than 68.3 million cast, though the Electoral College results weren’t even close.
Interestingly, the closest election in history—George W. Bush’s 2000 victory over Al Gore—didn’t have such dramatic polling numbers. On election day, Bush was leading Gore by a comfortable 3 percentage points, 46 percent to 43 percent.
He ultimately carried by the election by just 537 votes in Florida, winning the Electoral College but losing the popular vote, after the Supreme Court famously blocked a Florida recount.
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