The hunt for 270 Electoral College votes to secure a White House win for the 2020 presidential race has been wired with suspense and has put pollsters under extra scrutiny, as state and national polls paved the path for a Joe Biden landslide. But voters haven’t seen the results yet, as margins between President Donald Trump and Biden remain razor-thin with four of the uncalled states posting the former vice-president hovering leads around one percent.

Perhaps the 2020 election could be classified as one of the tightest races in American history with results not even determined more than 48 hours after Election Day. Politicians and historians, however, point to previous elections, where the chase was even more competitive and exhausting.

What could be tighter than the 2020 presidential election?

After “the Era of Good Feelings”

Following the War of 1812, Americans stirred up “a strong desire for national unity, and a rare moment of declining partisanship,” creating a period called “the Era of Good Feelings.”

Despite the search for unity, four candidates emerged in the election of 1824: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford.

While Adams and Crawford built a bubbling feud within the Democratic-Republican Party, even though they served together on President James Monroe’s Cabinet, Jackson, a “military commander,” became the candidate who resisted traditional politicians, emphasizing that he would nix any “corrupt” aristocrats if he were to become president.

The tight election results swirled vexation among voters, as well as within the candidates themselves, as no presidential candidate grappled a majority of the number of electoral votes needed to secure a spot in the White House. At the time, a candidate needed 131 electoral votes -- slightly more than half of the total Electoral College votes, which was 261.

It wasn’t until Dec. 1, 1824 that the results were announced. Jackson led in terms of electoral votes and in the popular vote, earning 99 votes with about 41 percent of the popular vote, with Adams trailing behind at 84 votes and about 31 percent of the popular vote, followed by Crawford, who battled a stroke prior to the election, at 41 votes and 11 percent of the popular vote and Clay with 37 votes.

While Adams earned a victory in New England, Jackson and Adams split the mid-Atlantic states. Jackson and Clay also divided the Western states, and Jackson and Crawford saw a bridge in the South, confirming the candidates’ regional support.

With no apparent electoral win, Congress pushed the election to the House of Representatives to determine the final results, as guided by the 12th Amendment. 

The amendment states that in the event of no electoral majority, the three leading popular vote candidates would be considered at the House-level. 

Clay -- who rallied less than 13 percent of the popular vote -- was disqualified from the race, as he was the fourth-ranking candidate.

A motion was set in place by the Kentucky legislature to Clay, who served for Kentucky as the speaker of the House, to give him the state’s delegate vote support. But rather than welcoming the support, he encouraged the legislature to back Adams’ candidacy. Both Clay and Adams embraced a “loose coalition” in Congress that years later surfaced as the National Republicans.

Clay’s widespread support helped Adams’ presidential candidacy, with the House delivering a win for him on Feb. 9, 1825 -- nearly three months after Election Day. Clay was then appointed as Secretary of State under his administration. 

But Clay’s sudden support for Adams and top cabinet position angered Jackson, as the defeated candidate dubbed the exchange as their “corrupt bargain.”

After Adams served in the White House for four years, he experienced a brutal loss by Jackson, when he lost more than twice as many electoral college votes as Jackson.

The election of 1824 served as a period of division within the country, as the presidential candidates and their supporters rebalanced ideology and political values. With such a tight race among four candidates, it took a long time for Americans to recover from the political heat intertwined between the candidates, which translated onto their supporters.

Fast forward nearly two centuries, and America is seeing a similar divide now. The election results between Trump and Biden will not grant one of them a clear landslide, but instead show a clear disunity in a country, as battleground states show margins that are so close that the president has requested a recount in one of them.

Like 1824, tight election results indicate an apparent separation in America that could take decades to end.

Rachel Bucchino is a reporter at the National Interest. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report and The Hill.