The Connecticut Secretary of State’s office on Wednesday certified Democrat Christopher Poulos’ victory over Republican Tony Morrison in the race for the Assembly seat 81st Legislative District 5,297 to 5,296, the AP reports. It’s among about 20 state legislative races nationally, most of them in New Hampshire, which has a 400-seat State House of Representatives, that the AP found were decided by less than 10 votes. One race in the Granite State ended in a 970-970 tie between incumbent Dem state Representative Chuck Grassie and Republican challenger Dave Walker.
While a one-vote win is (obviously) the closest possible margin of victory in absolutes, at 10,593 votes cast in the Connecticut 81st District race it works out to a 0.0094% edge. Percentage-wise, the closest margin of victory in US history is Republican Louis Wyman’s 0.000901% win by two votes out of 110,926 cast over Dem John Durkin in the 1974 New Hampshire US Senate election. Dem state lawmakers initially sat Wyman, but pulled him three days later amid a turnover to a larger Dem majority in the state Senate. A special election was called and Durkin then won by 27,000 votes.