The five closest N.C. presidential races

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:57:12 -0400

Over the past century, North Carolina has rarely been a battleground.

Since 1908, the average margin of victory in the presidential race here has been 18 percentage points, and the median has been 12.4 points.

The closest race out of those 25 elections was Bill Clinton's challenge to incumbent President George H.W. Bush in 1992. As a Southern governor running on the economy, Clinton campaigned heavily in the state, but he was helped by a strong third-party showing by Ross Perot.

Bush only won by 0.79 percentage points, beating Clinton 43.4 to 42.7 percent. (Perot got 13.9 percent of the vote, the third-best showing for a third-party candidate in North Carolina after George Wallace in 1968 and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.)

The next closest race was 1956, when Democrat Adlai Stevenson edged Dwight Eisenhower by 1.32 percentage points despite losing the national election.

In third place was Ronald Reagan's 2.12 point win over Jimmy Carter in 1980. In fourth place, John Kennedy's 4.22 point win over Richard Nixon in 1960. And in fifth place, Bob Dole's 4.69 point win over Clinton in 1996 despite losing the national election.

Otherwise, North Carolina was reliably Democratic from 1908 to 1964, and reliably Republican from 1968 to 2004 (with the exception of Carter's post-Watergate win in 1976.)

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The five closest N.C. presidential races