The thinnest line to power since 2004: the presidency in 2020, decided in WI by 0.6 points
For each election shown, the seat that decided who held power: the state that cast the 270th electoral vote for the winner, the race that gave the Senate majority its deciding seat, and the 218th House seat for the majority. Each dot is the margin by which that deciding seat was won. The lower the dot, the closer Washington came to going the other way.
Swipe the chart sideways to see all of it.
How to read it. Colour is the side that won control. Margins are points of all votes cast in that state or district, the winner over the runner-up; a dot above fifteen points is drawn at the top, with its true margin written beside it. Seats are ranked from the winner's safest down: the deciding seat is the one that took the winner past the line, so in a landslide it is a safe seat and the dot stands high. The Senate lane starts in 2008: the seats not up each year are counted from the results of the six years before, and FutureBallot holds too few Senate results before 2004 to count them; 2012 and 2014 are left out, because a senator not up that year is recorded without a party or caucus (Alaska's 2010 write-in winner). The vice president's tie-breaking vote counts for the vice president's party.
Source. Electoral votes from each state's House seats plus two (D.C. three), with Maine's and Nebraska's district electors from the National Archives' records; presidential results from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab; Senate and House results as recorded by FutureBallot in each race's deciding round (Georgia's and Louisiana's runoffs included). Unopposed House races, which record no votes, count as the safest seats. Drawn November 2, 2026, 2:34 AM Pacific.