Several states have consistently seen close margins in major statewide elections: [From Presidential statewide margins of victory of five percentage points or fewer, 1948-2024]
- Arizona
- Georgia
- Michigan
- Nevada
- North Carolina
- Pennsylvania
- Wisconsin
But other states have had competitive statewide races where the winner received less than 56% of the vote since 2020. Here are some of them:
- Alaska 2022 2020P
- Colorado 2020
- Florida 2024 2020P
- Iowa 2020
- Kansas 2022G
- Maine 2024 2020
- Maryland 2024
- Minnesota 2020
- Mississippi 2020
- Montana 2024
- Nebraska 2024
- New Hampshire 2024 P/H/G 2020P
- New Jersey 2024
- New Mexico 2024 2022 2020
- New York 2022G
- Ohio 2024 2022
- Oklahoma 2022
- Oregon 2022G
- Texas 2024 2022G 2020S 2020P
- Utah 2024G 2022
- Virginia 2024P
Note: many of the above won with less than 50%. Especially if you take the number of votes received of those registered instead of those who voted, much less the population. Some examples from here in Texas, which is generally considered a GOP stronghold because the GOP has been narrowly winning elections for the last 3 decades:
In 2018, just 52.72% of the 15,793,257 registered voters voted.
Of the 8,371,655 votes
Cruz got 4,260,553, 50.89% of the votes, or 26.9% of registered voters, or about 15% of the population.
Beto got 4,045,632, 48.33%
3rd party 65,470, 0.78%
In 2022, of 8,065,054 votes from 17,672,916 registered voters:
Abbott got 4,437,099, 54.76% of the votes, or 25% of registered voters, or about 15% of the population.
Beto got 3,553,656
3rd party 110,028
Note ~200K voted for Abbott but not for others down ballot, and ~100K voted for Beto but not down ballot.
Looking at the 2026 primaries with 18,657,918 registered voters:
Paxton won the primary runoff with 4.74% of registered Texans voting for him. 885,949 to 501,725 votes. Interestingly, in the primary election, Paxton got 878,564 to Cornyn's 910,382 and 377,964 for other GOP. So in the runoff, effectively, Cornyn lost almost half his voters along with all the other voters staying home, but Paxton only lost a few. Generally, this is attributed to Trump endorsing Paxton at the last minute. The real question is that good or bad for Paxton?
The Dems, by contrast, received 2,319,187 total primary votes to the GOP's 2,166,910. While the Dem primary was close, the second-place candidate quickly shifted to support the winner, avoiding a runoff. This would seem to indicate this Senate seat is in play, with many GOP voters unwilling to vote for Paxton while Dems appear to be more focused on winning than they have been in decades.
