Where Does Harris-vs.-Trump Rank in America’s “Most Pivotal Election” Sweepstakes?

All year long, political Cassandras have been prophesying that November 5 could spell doomsday for American democracy. And with good reason. Given that one candidate falsely calls the 2020 election fraudulent—and has cast doubt on the need for some of the Constitution’s ironclad guarantees—the outcome may be grave, even catastrophic.

Many believe this is the most pivotal election of their lifetime. But just how pivotal is it when compared to all 59 previous White House races? By my own personal tally, it ranks number three.

Here are my top 14, in reverse order, along with my reasoning behind each selection. Some of these races have proved “pivotal” only with the benefit of hindsight. Other elections—like Tuesday’s—have seemed monumental in the moment.

14. JFK VS. NIXON (1960)

Vice President Richard Nixon represented the establishment. Senator John Kennedy, though a son of privilege, was the face of the future: a war hero, the second Catholic to be named his party’s nominee, and at 43, the youngest man ever to be elected president. Many believed that his tanned, photogenic presence in the first-ever televised presidential debate, contrasted with the visage of Nixon (who appeared haggard, partly due to his reported refusal to wear makeup under the harsh TV lights—and a recent hospital stay), helped turn the electoral tide in JFK’s favor. Whatever the case, that maiden broadcast would lay the media-steeped foundation for every televised debate—and national election—since.

When the ballots were tabulated, the race was so close that many believed Nixon should have challenged the results. (Chicago’s mayor Richard Daley, in fact, would be accused of helping to deliver a raft of dubiously procured votes.) Nixon, however, not wanting to send the country into political chaos, chose to stand down.

13. HAYES VS. TILDEN (1876)

The face-off had everything we’ve come to expect in nightmare election scenarios: polling-place intimidation, out-and-out fraud, systemic threats to would-be voters from Black communities, parallel sets of mismatched electoral votes sent to be ratified—and two nominees maintaining they’d won the thing. The proceedings dragged on into March 1877, before Rutherford B. Hayes was eventually declared the victor, squeaking by with a lone Electoral College vote, in a ruling issued by an electoral commission set up by Congress. Writer Jim Windolf, in the book Vanity Fair’s Presidential Profiles, would dub it “the most controversial and hotly contested presidential election in US history (with the possible exception of George W. Bush versus Al Gore).” Admittedly, that pronouncement was made in 2010, 11 years before the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol Building.

12. REAGAN VS. CARTER (1980)

Put aside the many accomplishments of President Ronald Reagan, who, with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev, had a not insignificant hand in the eventual dissolution of the Soviet bloc and the USSR. Even more significant on the home front was how the actor turned California governor represented a sea change in the Republican Party. A former Democrat, Reagan had inherited the mantle of right-wing conservatism, which, as historian Todd Brewster notes, “was considered by many to have been vanquished in 1964 with the defeat of presidential aspirant Barry Goldwater.” Buoyed by Reagan’s leadership, the GOP would begin its slow yet ever more steadfast alliance with the so-called Christian right and various conservative organizations, eventually aligning with the Tea Party and, during the Trump years, the MAGA movement. Reagan’s ascension to the White House set all of this in motion.

11. NIXON VS. McGOVERN (1972)

Richard Nixon’s advances in the Middle East, Russia, and China were among the most transformative foreign policy shifts in US history. He won his second term as a defender of the status quo values of what he termed the Silent Majority. In short order, he would become the archenemy of a young, demonstrative New American Left, one that was fueled by cultural change, engaged in political action, and enraged by US involvement in the Vietnam War. But none of these issues explain why his reelection in 1972 proved so pivotal.

More to the point: Nixon’s team, trying to ensure that the president won four more years in office, employed clandestine dark ops in what came to be known as the Watergate scandal. As Nixon began his second term, it had already been revealed that a political “dirty tricks” unit, in league with campaign staffers, had been illegally targeting political opponents, even attempting—five months before the election—to plant surveillance devices in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. Top Nixon aides then conspired to cover up their involvement in or knowledge of the schemes. Dozens of individuals would be indicted for, or plead guilty to, Watergate-related crimes. Before Congress could commence impeachment hearings, the president himself would resign in disgrace. The main lessons of the Watergate scandal were twofold. The Constitution’s safeguards—against executive overreach and obstruction of justice—had held firm. And as Chief Justice Warren Burger stated in his historic Supreme Court opinion, no man, not even the president, is “above the law.”

10. OBAMA VS. McCAIN (2008)

One-term senator Barack Obama beat Arizona senator John McCain, a decorated combat veteran and former POW. Obama’s win was not only decisive—365 electoral votes to 173—but unprecedented: For the first time, the highest office in the land would be occupied by a Black man. As Obama said in the opening line of his victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

9. JOHNSON VS. GOLDWATER (1964)

The November after John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, President Lyndon Johnson would win in a landslide. And he was determined to uphold his predecessor’s vow to address the clarion calls of the civil rights movement. Working in concert with the reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and others, Johnson succeeded in pushing for the passage of two landmark bills: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the latter, said the president, was “as huge as any victory won on any battlefield.” By eradicating racial barriers, one by one, the twin initiatives forever altered the electoral landscape on the local, state, and federal levels.

8. FDR VS. HOOVER (1932)

Franklin Roosevelt’s unrivaled four-term presidency began in the teeth of the Great Depression and ended as the Allies were on the verge of winning World War II. By assuming the reins from Herbert Hoover, a president mired in the nation’s fiscal free fall after the stock market crash of 1929, FDR would take command during a tumultuous stretch in which he helped rescue America from economic implosion, introduced the Social Security system, and, working with other world leaders, helped spare much of Europe and Asia from domination by the Nazis and the Axis Powers. That initial 1932 election would prove to have global repercussions that resonate to this day.

7. BUSH VS. GORE (2000)

Some still contend that the election was a silent coup, a swindle. Late into the evening of November 7, 2000, the race was too close to call—and all because of suspicions surrounding ballots in the state of Florida, where the governor happened to be Jeb Bush, the brother of GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush. After weeks of “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots,” recounting and finger-pointing—many of those fingers aimed at Florida’s overwhelmed secretary of state, Katherine Harris—the whole matter degenerated into chaos. Despite vote counts that were clearly trending in Gore’s favor, myriad bureaucratic and court decisions regarding ballot tallies continued to fall Bush’s way—possibly because Florida pols and officials had their thumbs on the scale. Before long, both sides lawyered up, embarking on a monumental lawsuit, Bush v. Gore. Taken up by the Supreme Court, the case was decided by a razor-thin 5-4 margin, with—no surprise—Bush coming out on top. Many cried foul: The deck had seemed stacked from the start. And yet, from his podium at a joint session of Congress, Vice President Al Gore, the unlikeliest arbiter of all, oversaw the certification of Bush’s victory—two months after Election Day.

Some continue to insist that America’s democratic system held fast: The levers of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches soldiered on, as outlined in the Constitution. Many others believe the whole shebang was rigged, disenfranchising thousands of Floridians, many of them people of color, who had legitimately cast their ballots. A study by the US Commission on Civil Rights, as Vanity Fair would report, “made a strong case that the election violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” Declared Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, “One person, one vote must be empty rhetoric. The right to vote is meaningless if every vote is not counted.” In the end, wrote VF, “The presidency was called by a margin of 537 votes out of the 6 million cast in Florida.”

Over the next eight years, three epic debacles occurred on the watch of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney: the September 11 attacks (America’s worst-ever intelligence failure, which a bipartisan commission determined to have occurred despite multiple warnings across the national security apparatus); devastating, protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and a botched response to Hurricane Katrina. The cost: hundreds of thousands of lives.

6. ADAMS VS. JEFFERSON VS. BURR (1796; 1800)

In back-to-back races marred by lies, mudslinging, blackmail, seesaw alliances, and backroom vote trading, the fate of the nation, at times, seemed to be hanging by a thread. In 1796, John Adams triumphed over Thomas Jefferson. In 1800, Jefferson defeated Adams, then bested Aaron Burr in an eleventh-hour ballot in the House of Representatives. That election, according to presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “would give birth to the two-party system, which in many ways is responsible for the partisan warfare in American politics.”

In the fallout, four years later, Burr would shoot and kill key Washington ally Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Even so, the young country, born in revolution, stuck to many of its basic principles—with two of its founders, Jefferson and Adams, at the helm. The whole drama would be set to song more than two centuries later in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, Hamilton, based on the biography by Ron Chernow. (Spoiler alert: See Washington vs. Adams, number one, below.)

5. HARDING VS. COX (1920)

One hundred and four years ago, thanks to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, for the first time American women were able to go to their polling stations and cast ballots in a federal election. It is important to note that only white women—not women of color—were granted this right. That said, the watershed had been three generations in the making, dating back to the inaugural women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

4. BIDEN VS. TRUMP (2020)

In November 2020, Joseph Biden won the presidency, beating the incumbent, Donald Trump. But on January 6, 2021—the day the election results were scheduled to be certified by Congress—the outgoing president didn’t like the outcome. After stewing and venting for weeks, he stood at Washington, DC’s Ellipse and spurred a crowd of supporters to “fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Shortly thereafter, a mob of insurrectionists, many of them armed, stormed the US Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying a free and fair election. In the melee, rioters attacked law enforcement officers, injuring about 140 of them, ransacked representatives’ offices, and threatened to hang Vice President Mike Pence. (Four demonstrators died at the scene; five officers died in connection with the assault. Over 1,000 people have been convicted in connection with offenses committed on the premises.)

For some six hours—in one of the darkest incidents in American political history—the constitutionally mandated mechanism for the transfer and maintenance of executive power had ground to a halt. Members of the House and Senate, however, were determined to proceed with the certification. They reconvened around 8 p.m., with Pence presiding. And after the electoral votes were tallied, 306 to 232, Biden was officially named the 46th president of the United States. A week later, Trump was impeached for “incitement of insurrection,” his second time being held to account by the House. A month later, Trump would be acquitted by the Senate.

3. HARRIS VS. TRUMP (2024)

If elected, one candidate will be inaugurated as America’s first woman president. By assuming office, she would be in a position to provide a relatively seamless transition from the last four years into the next. She would also become, in effect, the country’s bulwark against an ex-president she has characterized as “fascist.” Her opponent, meanwhile, has hinted that if he were to be elected, he might be “a dictator” for a day. He appears to be contemplating large-scale deportation of immigrants; says he will go after “the enemy within”; and has repeatedly made false claims of 2020 election interference, sown doubt about 2024 election integrity, and after the 2022 midterms, declared that in his view, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” In the wake of the Supreme Court’s July ruling that a president may be protected by “absolute immunity” from “criminal prosecution” for duties deemed “official,” the stakes on November 5 could not be higher.

2. LINCOLN VS. BRECKENRIDGE and LINCOLN VS. McCLELLAN (1860 and 1864)

The Civil War broke out within five weeks of Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration. Had the brooding Illinois lawyer and savvy political tactician not won that election; had he not gone on to take the next (his opponent was his top general, George McClellan, whom he’d fired two years before); had he not strove to unite a divided country into a United States; and had he not served as a sure-handed commander in chief during the conflict, the republic might never have survived. Just as critically, his leadership in working to end slavery cannot be underestimated.

1. WASHINGTON VS. ADAMS (1789)

George Washington, a revolutionary turned chief executive, secured all 69 electoral votes in February 1789; his runner-up, John Adams, became his vice president. By stepping aside in 1796, America’s first president established the precedent of a peaceful transfer of power, one that has been a cornerstone of the nation’s 248-year experiment in representative democracy.

David Friend has written or edited stories on 16 presidents, extensively covered the Watergate scandal, coedited a Vanity Fair book on the presidency and one on First Families. He also written books on the 9/11 attacks, and the Clinton era.