1876 United States elections

1876 United States elections

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Election day	November 7
Incumbent president	Ulysses S. Grant (Republican)
Next Congress	45th
Presidential election
Partisan control	Republican hold
Popular vote margin	Democratic +3.2%
Electoral vote
Rutherford B. Hayes (R)	185
Samuel J. Tilden (D)	184
1876 presidential election results. Red denotes states won by Hayes, blue denotes states won by Tilden. Numbers indicate the electoral votes won by each candidate.
Senate elections
Overall control	Republican hold
Seats contested	25 of 76 seats[1]
Net seat change	Democratic +5[2]
House elections
Overall control	Democratic hold
Seats contested	All 293 voting members
Net seat change	Republican +33[2]
1876 House of Representatives election results   Democratic seat   Republican seat   Independent seat

The 1876 United States elections were held on November 7. In one of the most disputed presidential elections in American history, Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio ended up winning despite Democratic Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York earning a majority of the popular vote. The Republicans maintained their Senate majority and cut into the Democratic majority in the House.

This marks one of four occasions where a newly elected president entered office with a divided legislature, occurring again in 1860, 1884, and 1980. 1980 is the only other occasion where the president's party held the Senate, but not the House. A divided Congress also occurred after the 1984 and 2012 elections.

The 1876 presidential election was heavily contested, and saw the highest turnout of voting age population in American history, 81.8%.^{[3] [4]} Democratic Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York won the Democratic nomination on the second ballot of the 1876 Democratic National Convention, defeating Indiana Governor Thomas A. Hendricks and a handful of other candidates. Republicans chose Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes on the seventh ballot over Maine Senator James G. Blaine, Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow, and several other candidates.^[5]

While Tilden outpolled Hayes in the popular vote by a margin of three percent, he had 184 electoral votes to Hayes' 165, with 20 electoral votes in dispute. In Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, each party reported its candidate had won the state amid various allegations of electoral fraud and intimidation of voters. At the same time, in Oregon, one elector was declared illegal (as an "elected or appointed official") and replaced.

To resolve this dispute, Congress formed the Electoral Commission to investigate these electoral votes: this commission awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes after a bitter legal and political battle, giving him the victory with 185 electoral votes to 184. While many Democrats felt that Tilden had been cheated out of victory, the informal "Compromise of 1877" saw Democrats recognize Hayes as President in return for the end of Reconstruction.

Excluding the four-candidate 1824 election, Hayes' margin of victory of one electoral vote has never been matched as of 2024. This was the second of five elections where the winning candidate lost the popular vote, and the only one where the popular vote loser lost by more than one point until the 2016 election.

While the Republicans picked up 33 seats in the House, it was not enough to regain a majority from the Democrats, who had 155 seats to the Republicans 136 (two seats being held by independents).^[6]

The Democrats gained three net seats in the Senate, but the Republicans held onto their majority. Since this election was held prior to ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, these seats were chosen by the state legislatures.^[7]