Talk:List of close election results

message: Should we exclude elections that didn't have at least 1,000 total votes cast? For example we now have Akulliq, Nunavut (2008) 0/463 and Ranklin Inlet South, Nunavut (2013) 0/344. 
Also, we would otherwise have to include for example all 258 instances where the US Senate was tied (and the US vice-president had to break the tie).
Jimsmith1978 (talk) 06:58, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Those aren't elections. Timrollpickering 21:50, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exclude elections that didn't have at least 1,000 total votes cast?

message: It is fairly common in UK local elections for exact ties to occur where two candidates receive exactly the same number of votes. Such an incident occured, for example, in the Osterley ward of the London Borough of Hounslow in 1998. In such cases, the Returning Officer uses 'any random method' to award the casting vote to one of the candidates and thus determine the winner.
A couple of such incidents occur in every set of local elections (i.e. every year) and they'd probably be too numerous to list in this table. Perhaps a List of tied elections article should be set up? --81.19.57.170 10:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK local elections 

message: This article says Marcus Morton won the Massachusetts gubernatorial election of 1839 by two votes. The article on Marcus Morton says that he won by one vote. According to snopes at http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/onevote.asp the election was by one vote. Nightkey (talk) 17:50, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the snopes article says that Morton recieved 51,034 votes out of 102,066 cast. Doing the math, his opponent must have received 51,032 votes -- 2 votes less than Morton. While one vote may have changed the ultimate outcome, the margin was 2 votes, and while it may be correct to say that "he won by 1 vote," the table's listing of the elector margin is correct. - Sethant (talk) 19:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marcus Morton 

message: According to http://www.election.demon.co.uk/marginal.html there have been 135 seats in the UK parliament decided by under 100 votes since 1918; assuming an average turnout of 40,000, there are possibly as many as 50 majorities of under 0.1% in that list. Given that it isn't that rare after all, I'm wondering if the criteria for this article ought to be tightened? Or perhaps it needs to take account of the size of the vote; is a margin of 0.1% in a vote of 10 million people more impressive/unusual than 0.1% in a vote of 10,000? This would also take care of the local elections mentioned above, where the electorate is even smaller. Thoughts? — sjorford++ 17:02, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK parliament elections 

message: At the moment this list is a bit of a grab-bag and demonstrates a fair degree of geographic bias. I'd like to put some work into improving it, in particular to expanding the results for some other countries such as Australia. Before I do, however, I wonder whether we might be better off splitting the list out into countries/regions. I can see the list getting unwieldy fairly quickly, if indeed it isn't already. I also note the IP's comment 1 August 2006 and agree that close elections are significantly more common at the local level. Consequently I propose to limit the list to national and state/province elections only, which would exclude such items as ABC Unified School District. Debate 木 20:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Endorse the restriction. If it gets unwieldy, suggest we cut out the "least marginal" elections. MikeHobday (talk) 21:16, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Endorse restriction. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Great to see quick responses! Can I assume from this that the proposal to split the list into countries/regions also has support? Debate 木 23:00, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not at this stage from me. I agree the list will get unwieldy, but prefer the approach of restricting entries by significance of election (as above) and by majority, rather than by country. No problem with your creating List of narrow elections in Australia for individual countries. MikeHobday (talk) 07:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

text: The restrictions are reasonable, but the intro says the significance of this list is to address the issue of when and where individual votes matter. That issue applies more often in local elections than state and national, because there are more local elections and they have fewer voters. To begin to address this without making the table too long, I added a short section at the end where there is room to give simple counts and percents of close elections at all levels. I hope others will add more geographic variety. Numbersinstitute (talk) 02:41, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  List organization and scope 

message: Currently some elections where the two were exactly equal are listed as 1 vote majorities on the basis of however the tie was broken. I think it would be better to list these as 0 vote exact results, as the tie breaking vote is separate from the normal ballot - winning an election by having one more person supporting you is different from winning on a coin toss. Timrollpickering (talk) 10:30, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems reasonable. Debate 木 11:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead heats 

message: Need to find good references for the following:
Federal elections
* Ballaarat 1919 1 vote (13,569/13,568) votes 0.00369%
* Werriwa 1914 7 votes 0.027%
* Macquarie 1917 9 votes 0.033%
* Stirling 1974 12 votes 0.022%
* Hawker 1990 14 votes 0.021%
* Brisbane 1917 15 votes 0.038%
* Wannon 1954 17 votes 0.046%
* Corio 1975 20 votes 0.032%
State elections (very incomplete)
*Victorian_Legislative_Council 1985 Nunawading Province (draw, name drawn out of a hat)* court later orders new election
*South Australian House of Assembly 1968 Millicent (draw, casting vote of returning officer)* court later orders new election
Debate 木 11:38, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Australia: to do list 

message: I concede that this might not be the best place to discuss this, but since I did not see one that already existed, I figured I would see if there was any interest in making such a list. My (current) concept of such a list would ignore Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong Il 100% turnout/100% of the votes received "elections" in favor of those that were at least nominally-contested in a democratic setting.
I welcome your thoughts. 24.149.110.44 (talk) 15:44, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corresponding list of lopsided elections? 

message: The elections were not narrow.  The margins of victory may have been.  There has to be a better title.  The best I can come up with is "List of elections decided by narrow margins".  Any other ideas?  --  202.142.129.66 (talk) 04:28, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've moved it to "List of close election results".  Cheers.  -- Jack of Oz  ... speak! ...  12:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "Narrow elections"?

message: The current introduction claims that the close Canadian results are due to boundaries being set by an independent commission without party interference - but so are the boundaries in many other countries. And there's no source given for it. Could it be that the high number of Canadian entries is actually down to one of the following:
#As a federal country with thirteen provinces & territories, plus a common habit of short hung parliaments and early elections, Canada has a disproportionately high number of results overall?
#The Canadian electorate has a lower proportion of strong party identification compared to similar countries and so elections are far more volatile, throwing up many more close results?
#The boundary commission goes out of its way to make seats marginal?
#Canadian past election results are easier to access than those for many other countries?
#Some or all of the above?
Timrollpickering (talk) 11:49, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this content is rather silly. I'm deleting it. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 05:39, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro 

message: Count and preference distribution has just finished in the House of Representatives seat of  Fairfax, in the Australian Federal Election, 2013. Margin is 7 votes, out of a total of 84,667 formal votes (or 89,173 including informal votes), which is 0.00827% (or 0.00785% including informal votes). Because of the narrow margin an automatic recount is under way.
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-17496-160.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-01/electoral-commission-orders-recount-for-seat-of-fairfax/4992130
Not sure if this article wants the total of formal votes, or the absolute total that includes informal votes. For clarification, formal votes are valid votes that were cast, informal votes are votes that were cast but can't be counted for a variety of reasons, such as them being illegible, blank, incorrectly filled out, etc.
14.2.28.244 (talk) 12:49, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another one to add to the list 

message: Another tie: Mississippi legislative district 79 -- total of 9178 votes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/us/mississippi-house-race-comes-down-to-one-deciding-straw.html?_r=0
Dtilque (talk) 07:59, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mississippi legislative district 79, 2015 

message: I would add the Austrian legislative election, 1999 where the difference between FPÖ and ÖVP was only 415 votes (total of 4,695,225 votes = 1:11,313 or 0.0088%). They were the 2nd and 3rd placed parties, but their rank order was highly relevant as the following cabinet coalition consisted of those two parties.----Bancki (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Austria 1999 

message: While the results are not yet finalized (we have yet to count absentee votes), BC has one riding with the BCNDP declared victorious with a 9 vote margin over the BC Liberals.  There are 87 ridings in total, and the current count is 43 BC Liberals, 41 BCNDP and 3 BC Greens.  If that 9 vote margin riding flips, it hands the BC Liberals a majority government with 44 seats.  At present, with 43, they will have to form a minority government.
While a 9 vote gap is not particularly special in Canadian politics (apparently), the fact that this change could actually spell the difference between how the province is governed, rather than just more or less one MLA for a given party suggests that this is one of the closest elections in history (assuming the absentee vote doesn't significantly disturb the balance).
Does anyone else know if any of the other entries on this list were actually deciding factors in the overall election results?
24.69.201.248 (talk) 23:04, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  BC, Canada Provincial Election 2017 

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message: The British Columbia general election, 2017 has a mere 1,566 votes/0.8% separating the Liberals from the NDP, and has been refered to as the closest election in BC history.. On the other hand, there were more than two parties running, and the popular vote doesn't determine seats in BC. What does everyone think? Kawnhr (talk) 15:39, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should the 2017 BC election as a whole count? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Does this election (Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district special election, 2018) merit inclusion in the article?  Thanks.  32.209.55.38 (talk) 04:46, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district special election, 2018 

message: Does this election merit inclusion in the article? The first vote had no candidate gettin a majority, so a run-off was held in which both candidates got exactly 721 votes. A third vote was held in which one candidate won by 1%.
Source: https://www.izbori.hr/arhiva-izbora/data/lokalni/2017/izabrani/i_06_17_0000.pdf (pages 42-44)
The election is also mention in the Cities table of this article
--95.168.124.179 (talk) 22:29, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stari Grad mayoral election, 2017 

message: The term currently redirects here, but it may be notable on its own. There are plenty of mentions in passing of the term, but I am struggling to find any in-depth discussion and analysis. Some sources: Unpublished manuscript from 2011, the term used in a title of an academic paper from 1971;  another paper from 1960, here is something from 2017 on . Overall, I think the lead of this list should be split into a proper article. Thoughts? Ping User:Volcycle (on a side note, recent Polish presidential elections should be added here: , and most people considered 48.5/51.5 from last one close too 2015 Polish presidential election, so was 1995 Polish presidential election, others had at least 2-3% difference, some much more). PS. Anyway, digging into the scholarly works a bit more, the more common term I get more hits for is election closeness:   --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:55, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[close election]] 

message: Isn't the current definition ("a margin of victory of less than 0.1%") of close WP:OR? Many other elections with a bit wider margins were often called close. Of course, increasing the margin makes the list bigger and bigger, but I think it should be considered for at least 1% if not 2% of a difference. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:05, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of close 

message: I think, due to a lot of these elections having recounts, there should be a percentage difference shown between the inital count and the final count
.
Nexxl (talk) 18:51, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should we add a column for "Margin of Recounts"? 

message: The race for the fourth at-large Boston City Council seat was decided by a single vote in 2019. I'm just not quite sure which category this falls under. -A-M-B-1996- (talk) 17:12, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to categorize 2019 Boston City Council election 

message: I'm not thinking of posting this yet as there is a recount pending, but would 2024 California's 16th congressional district election qualify if the recount came with the same results or sufficiently close result? I ask this because this tie wasn't to determine the winner but which of the next two who would qualify for the next round; should it remain tied, all three would advance to the the general election. In general, would primary or first-round elections and/or elections with a tie lower than first but with a significant effect qualify for this list? T.c.w7468 (talk) 02:34, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  2024 California's 16th congressional district election primary (2nd/3rd place tie in two-round election)?