The Nation Decides
Electoral votes, the popular vote, and how every state moved
President · Reconstruction & the Gilded Age
1876
Hayes def. Tilden, 185–184
won the presidency, lost the popular votevote totals summed from county returns
Electoral college — 185 to win (369 electors)184 D · 185 R
Popular vote50.9% · 47.9% · other 1.2% · margin D+3.0
8,433,423 votes counted (summed from counties)
Electoral map — one tile per state · coloured by county-summed popular vote
R+40D+40third party won
Per-state electoral vote detail is staged from 1976; earlier years show the national college in the bar above, and states are coloured by their county-summed popular vote.
The swing from last time
Change in each state’s margin since 1872 · ← toward Republicans · toward Democrats →
The Map Beneath the Map
Three thousand counties, and the demography of the divide
Every county that cast a ballot, shaded by its margin. Hover any county to read it; click to open its 156-year profile. Scrub the timeline above and the map redraws in place. Vote counts exist for all forty elections; the demographic lenses begin in 2000.
County margin
Drawing three thousand counties…
R+40D+40no returns
Who voted for whom? The survey record begins with the 1948 ANES — there is no comparable individual-level account of the 1876 electorate.
Notes on this election
- Disputed returns in FL, LA, SC, and OR were settled by the Electoral Commission; the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction. Tilden won the popular vote by 3 points — the largest PV margin ever for an EC loser.