| ←1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 → Presidential election year | |
| Election day | November 7 |
|---|---|
| Incumbent president | Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) |
| Next Congress | 45th |
| Presidential election | |
| Partisan control | Republican hold |
| Popular vote margin | Democratic +3.0% |
| 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 theelectoral votes won by each candidate. | |
| Senate elections | |
| Overall control | Republican hold |
| Seats contested | 25 of 76 seats[1] |
| Net seat change | Democratic +5[2] |
 | |
| Results: Democratic gain Democratic hold Republican gain Republican hold Independent gain | |
| 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 | |
Elections were held on November 7, 1876. In one of the most disputedpresidential elections in American history, Republican GovernorRutherford B. Hayes ofOhio ended up winning despite Democratic GovernorSamuel J. Tilden ofNew York earning a majority of thepopular vote. TheRepublicans maintained their Senate majority and cut into theDemocratic majority in the House.
This marks one of four occasions where a newly elected president entered office with a divided legislature, occurring again in1860,1884, and1980. 1980 is the only other occasion where the president's party held the Senate, but not the House. A divided Congress also occurred after the1984 and2012 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 GovernorSamuel J. Tilden of New York won the Democratic nomination on the second ballot of the1876 Democratic National Convention, defeating Indiana GovernorThomas A. Hendricks and a handful of other candidates. Republicanschose Ohio GovernorRutherford B. Hayes on the seventh ballot over Maine SenatorJames G. Blaine, SenatorOliver P. Morton ofIndiana, Secretary of the TreasuryBenjamin H. Bristow, and several other candidates.[5]
While Tilden outpolled Hayes in the popular vote by a margin of three percent, he had 184electoral votes to Hayes' 165, with 20 electoral votes in dispute. InFlorida,Louisiana, andSouth Carolina, each party reported its candidate had won the state amid various allegations of electoral fraud and intimidation of voters. At the same time, inOregon, one elector was declared illegal (as an "elected or appointed official") and replaced.
To resolve this dispute, Congress formed theElectoral 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 ofReconstruction.
Excluding the four-candidate1824 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 candidatelost the popular vote, and the only one where the popular vote loser lost by more than one point until the2016 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 theSeventeenth Amendment, these seats were chosen by thestate legislatures.[7]