Pulitzer does not hear about Blaine’s dinner in 1884

I just saw a show which talked about how Joseph Pulitzer reported on an extravagant dinner thrown in honor of James Blaine a few days before the election of 1884. At a time when a lot of the people were poor, this portrayed Blaine as a fat cat and turned the election against him. Supposedly this turned around Grover Cleveland’s moribund campaign and gave him the presidency.

What would have happened had Blaine not been in New York at the time and therefore not given Pulitzer an opportunity to report on this meal and save Cleveland?
 
When an election is as close as that of 1884, virtually anything could have made the difference (the Delmonico's dinner, the revolt of the Mugwumps, "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,"etc.) but given that Blaine actually got more votes in New York City than any previous GOP presidential candidate, I suggest that the key to his defeat be found upstate, where Roscoe Conkling's "Stalwarts" apparently "knifed" Blaine (Conkling's stronghold, Oneida County, went for Cleveland by nineteen votes in 1884 after having gone for Garfield by more than two thousand in 1880); also, just the fact that it rained upstate kept Republican turnout down. (And then there was the Prohibition Party vote, most of it from people who usually voted Republican.)
 
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