Presidential Elections: Details

1904

This race confirmed the popularity of Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president when McKinley was assassinated, and moved Democrats away from bimetallism and toward progressivism.

1988

Vice President George H. W. Bush faced some opposition in the primaries from Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, but won the Republican nomination by acclamation. He chose Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate. The Democrats nominated Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, for president and Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas for vice president.

1920

Warren G. Harding defeated Democrat James M. Cox, governor of Ohio and The Socialist party candidate Eugene V. Debs, who received more than 900,000 votes despite having been imprisoned for his opposition to World War I.

1896

William Jennings Bryan delivered his Cross of Gold speech at the Democratic convention to great acclaim, but the Republicans, heavily financed by corporate interests, successfully portrayed him and the Populists as radicals leading a victory for Republican William McKinley.

1832

Democratic-Republican Andrew Jackson was easily reelected in this election, with 219 electoral votes and 54.5 percent of the popular votes, over National-Republican Henry Clay (37.5%) and Anti-Masonic candidate William Wirt (8%). Martin Van Buren won the vice presidency.

1904

Democrats attacked President Theodore Roosevelt for his antitrust policies and for having invited Booker T. Washington for a meal at the White House, but he won easily in both the popular vote the Electoral College.

1980

Despite being opposed for the nomination by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts President Jimmy Carter easily won the Democratic nomination. Ronald Reagan, former governor of California, received the Republican nomination, and his chief challenger, George Bush, became the vice-presidential nominee.

1956

Despite suffering a heart attack and abdominal surgery during his first term, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was nominated by the Republicans for a second term without opposition. Although Richard M. Nixon had been a controversial vice president and many Republicans felt he was a liability, he was also renominated. For the second time, the Democrats chose former governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois again.

1968

Hubert Humphrey was nominated at the Democratic party convention in Chicago which was marred by bloody clashes between antiwar protesters and the local police.

1976

Jimmy Carter, governor of Georgia, ran as an outsider, independent of Washington, which was now in disrepute due to the Watergate Scandal and Nixon's resignation. President Gerald Ford tried to justify his pardoning of Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate break-in cover-up. Carter won a narrow victory.

1936

President Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a second term while the Republican Party, strongly opposed to his New Deal economic programs, ran Kansas Governor Alfred M. Landon against him. Eighty percent of newspapers endorsed the Republicans, accusing Roosevelt of imposing a centralized economy. Most business people charged the New Deal with trying to destroy American individualism and threatening the nation's liberty. But Roosevelt won in a landslide, with the support of farmers, industrial workers, urban ethnic voters, and reform-minded intellectuals and African-American voters, who had historically voted Republican, but switched to FDR in record numbers.

1940

President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term, carrying the Electoral College, 449 to 82 to defeat Republican Wendell L. Willkie.

1984

President Ronald Reagan won a decisive victory, carrying all states except Minnesota, Walter Mondale's home state, and the District of Columbia. He received 54,455,074 popular votes to Mondale's total of 37,577,185. In the Electoral College the count was Reagan, 525 and Mondale, 13.

1872

President Ulysses S. Grant ran against New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Greeley ran on a platform of civil service reform, laissez-faire liberalism and an end to Reconstruction. The Republicans came out for civil service reform and the protection of black rights. Thomas Nast's anti-Greeley cartoons in Harper's Weekly attracted wide attention. Grant won with the century's biggest Republican popular majority. The result was considered more anti-Greeley than pro-Grant.

1900

President William McKinley ran for reelection, but since Vice President Garret A. Hobart had died in office the republican vice presidential nominee became Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York. The Democratic candidates were William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska for president and Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois for vice president.

1808

Republican James Madison won the presidency in this election, defeating Charles C. Pinckney by receiving 122 electoral votes to Pinckney's 47.

1876

Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio defeated Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden of New York despite Tilden not only winning the popular vote, but actually receiving a majority, rather than just a plurality of the votes. The election came down to 20 disputed electoral votes and was ultimately decided by a commission made up of ten congressmen and five Supreme Court justices.

1960

The Democratic Party nominated Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy. The Republicans nominated Vice President Richard M. Nixon to succeed Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was prohibited from running for a third term by the recently adopted 22nd Amendment. Kennedy won the presidency by a popular margin of less than 120,000, but the race was not as close in the Electoral College, where Kennedy got 303 votes to Nixon's 219. Kennedy became the first Catholic and the youngest person to be elected president.

1976

The Democratic Party nominated former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia for president and Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota for vice president. The Republicans chose President Gerald Ford and Senator Robert Dole of Kansas.

1964

The Democrats nominated Lyndon B. Johnson who had succeeded to the presidency upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Johnson, the first president from the South since Andrew Johnson, had been Democratic leader of the Senate. The Republicans chose Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona as their candidate.

1916

The Progressive party convention tried to nominate Theodore Roosevelt again, but Roosevelt, seeking to reunify the Republicans, convinced the convention to support the Republican choice, Charles Evans Hughes. The Democrats renominated President Woodrow Wilson. The Democrats stressed the fact that Wilson had kept the nation out of the European war, but Wilson was ambiguous about his ability to continue to do so.

1928

The Republican presidential nominee during this election year was Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover of California. The Democrats nominated Alfred E. Smith, governor of New York. Hoover seemed to stand for old-fashioned rural values. The Republican campaign slogan promised the people "a chicken for every pot and a car in every garage."

1968

The Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and protests tied to both combined in a tumultuous year to cause a tight, unusual election closely linked to these issues. Opposition to the war moved Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to enter the Democratic race, followed by Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, both with strong support from liberal constituencies.

1952

A scandal regarding Nixon's campaign fund threatened briefly to cost him his place on the Eisenhower ticket. But an emotional speech he delivered on television featuring his wife's "good Republican cloth coat" and his dog, Checkers, saved him. Eisenhower's victory was the largest of any candidate's to that time: He received 33,936,234 popular votes and 442 electoral votes to Stevenson's 27,314,992 popular votes and 89 electoral votes.

1928

After President Calvin Coolidge declined to seek reelection, Herbert Hoover emerged as his party's front-runner to ultimately defeat Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith. Despite the Republican win however, the Democrats, carried the country's twelve largest cities, heralding a major political shift to come.

1908

After Theodore Roosevelt declined to run for reelection, the Republican convention nominated Secretary of War William Howard Taft for president. The Democrats chose William Jennings Bryan for president for the third time. Taft won with 321 to 162 electoral votes.

1920

After a generation of progressive insurgency within the Republican party, it returned in 1920 to a conservative stance, and nominated Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding president and Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts for vice-president. They defeated the Democratic party candidate James M. Cox, governor of Ohio, and his running mate, Franklin D. Roosevelt assistant secretary of the navy.

2000

Al Gore conceded on election night but retracted his concession the next day when he learned that the vote in Florida was too close to call. Florida began a recount, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the recount unconstitutional before it could be completed, giving the presidency to George W. Bush.

2000

Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the election. This was the fourth election in U.S. history in which the winner of the electoral votes did not carry the popular vote. It was the first such election since 1888, when Benjamin Harrison became president after winning more electoral votes but losing the popular vote to Grover Cleveland.

1856

Although Buchanan won, the divided opposition gained more popular votes. The Republican Party captured 114 electoral votes, and the American Party (Know Nothings) received 8. The Republicans' impressive showing left the South feeling vulnerable to attacks on slavery and fearful the Republicans would soon capture the government.

1948

Although polls and conventional wisdom predicted a victory for Thomas E. Dewey of New York, President Harry S. Truman campaigned vigorously as the underdog, making a famous whistle-stop tour of the country aboard a special train. Results were uncertain to the last minute. A well-known photograph shows Truman the day after the election smiling broadly and holding aloft a newspaper with the headline, "Dewey wins!" The paper was wrong: Truman beat Dewey 303 to 189 (Thurmond received 39 votes and Henry Wallace none).

1968

Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey ran against former vice president Republican Richard M. Nixon who chose Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland as his running mate, while the conservative American Independent Party nominated Governor George Wallace of Alabama, a segregationist, for president, along with Air Force general Curtis LeMay of Ohio, who advocated using nuclear weapons in Vietnam, for vice president.

1820

Despite a sizable range of domestic problems, James Monroe faced no organized opposition for reelection What would have been the opposition party, the Federalists, ceased to exist. Voters, as John Randolph put it, displayed "the unanimity of indifference, and not of approbation." Monroe won by an electoral vote of 231-1.

2004

George W. Bush defeated John Kerry to win a second term. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean was the expected Democratic candidate but lost support during the primaries. There was speculation that he sealed his fate when he let out a deep, guttural yell in front of a rally of supporters, which became known as the "I Have a Scream" speech, because it was delivered on Martin Luther King Day.

1792

George Washington complained of old age, sickness and the increasing hostility of the Republican press toward his administration. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among others, convinced him to continue as president by arguing that only he could hold the government together.

1964

In the campaign, conducted in the midst of the escalating Vietnam War, Barry Goldwater, an ultraconservative, called for the bombing of North Vietnam and implied that the Social Security system should be dismantled. President Johnson campaigned on a platform of social reform that would incorporate Kennedy's New Frontier proposals. Despite the country's deepening involvement in Vietnam, LBJ campaigned as the candidate of peace against the militaristic Goldwater.

1944

In the middle of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth term. Democratic Party regulars disliked Vice President Henry A. Wallace and persuaded Roosevelt to replace him with Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri. The Republican party chose conservative governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Roosevelt won reelection with an electoral vote of 432 to 99.

1932

In the third year of the Great Depression, the Republican party nominated President Herbert Hoover and the Democratic party nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York. With a platform that called for the repeal of Prohibition and a reduction in federal spending, Roosevelt won the election in a landslide, taking the electoral college by 472 votes to Hoover's 59.

1968

In the wake of the Tet Offensive, and decreasing support for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. This prompted Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to announce his candidacy.

1816

In this election, Republican James Monroe won the presidency with 183 electoral votes to Rufus King's 34. After the bitter partisanship of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, Monroe's came to symbolize the "Era of Good Feelings."

1868

In this election, Republican Ulysses S. Grant opposed Horace Seymour, the Democratic governor of New York. The Democrats attacked the Republican management of Reconstruction and black suffrage. The Republicans questioned the wartime patriotism of the Democrats. Grant won, carrying the Electoral College by 214 to 80.

2008

In this historic election, Barack Obama became the first African-American to become president, and Joe Biden became the first-ever Roman Catholic vice president. Had the McCain/Palin ticket won, John McCain would have been the oldest president in history, and Sarah Palin would have been the first woman vice president.

1812

James Madison was reelected president by the narrowest margin of any election since the Republican Party had come to power in 1800, receiving 128 electoral votes to his Federalist opponent DeWitt Clinton's 89.

1789

Most Federalists agreed that John Adams should be vice president. But Hamilton feared that if Adams was the unanimous choice, he would end in a tie with Washington and might even become president, an outcome that would be highly embarrassing for both Washington and the new electoral system. Hamilton therefore arranged that a number of votes be deflected, so that Adams was elected by less than half the number of Washington's expected unanimous vote.

1952

Popular discontent with Truman's handling of the Korean War, charges of corruption in his administration, an inflationary economy and a perceived communist threat worked against Adlai Stevenson. He was also confronted with Eisenhower's immense personal popularity-"I like Ike!" the campaign buttons proclaimed-and the voters' belief that he would swiftly end the war led to an Eisenhower victory.

1996

President Bill Clinton won reelection in a decisive victory, but only won in four Southern states, signaling a decline in Southern support for Democrats.

1888

President Grover Cleveland lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison, a former senator from Indiana and the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. Cleveland won the popular vote, but lost in the Electoral College, 233 to 168.

1948

President Harry S. Truman, who had succeeded FDR after his death three years earlier, stood for reelection on the Democratic ticket but when the Democratic convention adopted a strong civil rights plank, southern delegates walked out and formed the States' Rights Party, known as The Dixiecrats, and nominated Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president Incumbent Democratic president Harry S. Truman, Dixiecrat nominee Strom Thurmond, Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace, and Republican Thomas E. Dewey all ran against each other. Although the polls and conventional wisdom predicted a Dewey victory, Truman campaigned vigorously as the underdog, making a famous whistle-stop tour of the country and won the election 303 to Dewey's 189; Thurmond's 39 and Wallace none.

1892

Republican President Benjamin Harrison Democrat Grover Cleveland ran against each other again, but this time Cleveland won, becoming the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms..

1912

Republican voters were split between the incumbent William H. Taft, and former president Theodore Roosevelt running on the Progressive (Bull Moose) party ticket The Democratic Party nominated New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson, and for the fourth time the Socialist party nominated Eugene V. Debs. Wilson won easily in the electoral college 435 to 88, but the combined vote for Taft and Roosevelt indicated that if the Republican party had not split, they would have won the presidency; the total cast for Wilson, Roosevelt, and Debs spoke to the people's endorsement of progressive reform.

1800

Republicans failed to deflect votes from their vice-presidential candidate, Aaron Burr, resulting in a tie with Jefferson and Burr each receiving 73 electoral votes. This result threw the election into the House of Representatives, where it was eventually decided in favor of Jefferson, with Burr becoming vice-president.

1968

Robert Kennedy won the California primary, but immediately thereafter, he was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.

1824

The Republican Party splintered during this election. with William Crawford, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson were the final candidates. None received a majority. The choice of president, therefore, fell to the House of Representatives, where Clay threw his support to Adams, who was then elected. Later, when Adams named Clay secretary of state, the Jacksonians charged that the two men had made a "corrupt bargain."

1924

The Republican nominee was President Calvin Coolidge who had taken office when President Warren G. Harding had died the previous year. The Democrats, after a lengthy deadlock, chose John W. Davis, a corporation lawyer on the 103rd ballot. The Republicans won easily, with Coolidge receiving 382 electoral votes to Davis's 136.

1860

The Republican party nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois for president and Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for vice president with a platform that called for a ban on slavery in the territories and a Pacific railroad. The Democratic party nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, but Southern Democrats meeting separately chose Vice President John Breckinridge of Kentucky as their candidates. Former Whigs and Know-Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party, nominating Senator John Bell of Tennessee.

1972

The Republicans renominated President Richard M. Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. The Democrats, still split over the war in Vietnam, chose Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, with Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri as his running mate, but after it was revealed that he had once received electric shock and other psychiatric treatments, Eagleton resigned from the ticket and McGovern named Sargent Shriver, director of the Peace Corps, as his replacement.

1984

The Republicans renominated President Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Former vice president Walter Mondale was the Democratic choice with Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York for his running mate. This was the first time a major party nominated a woman for one of the top offices.

1840

The Whigs, stealing a page from the Democratic emphasis on Andrew Jackson's military exploits, chose William Henry Harrison, a hero of early Indian wars and the War of 1812. They depicted Harrison as living in a "log cabin" and drinking "hard cider." and used slogans like "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," and "Van, Van, Van/Van is a used-up man," to stir voters. Harrison won by an electoral margin of 234 to Van Buren's 60.

1992

The year before this election, incumbent President George H. W. Bush's approval ratings reached 88 percent, the highest in presidential history up to that point. But by election day, his ratings had sunk, and he lost his attempt at reelection to Bill Clinton.

1972

This campaign ended in one of the greatest landslides in the nation's history. Nixon's popular vote was 47,169,911 to McGovern's 29,170,383, and the Republican victory in the Electoral College was even more lopsided at 520 to 17. Only Massachusetts gave its votes to McGovern.

1844

This election introduced expansion and slavery as important political issues. Southerners of both parties sought to annex Texas and expand slavery. Democratic James K. Polk backed Texas annexation and settling the Oregon boundary dispute with England.

1852

This election rang a death knell for the Whig Party, which split over the issue of slavery. The Whigs rejected Millard Fillmore, who had become president when Zachary Taylor died in office two years earlier, and nominated Gen. Winfield Scott of Virginia. Scott endorsed the party platform, which approved of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, causing Free-Soil Whigs to bolt. Southern Whigs were nevertheless suspicious of Scott. So, Democratic unity, Whig disunity and Scott's political ineptitude combined to elect Franklin Pierce.

1856

This election saw the emergence of the Republican Party, composed of ex-Whigs, Free-Soil Democrats and antislavery groups. It nominated military hero John C. Frémont of California for president. The Democratic Party nominated James Buchanan with a platform supporting noninterference with slavery, and the far-right nativist American Party (known as the Know-Nothings) nominated former president Millard Fillmore.

1864

This election that took place in the midst of the Civil War pitted President Abraham Lincoln against Democrat George B. McClellan, the general who had commanded the Army of the Potomac until his indecision and delays caused Lincoln to remove him. The Republicans attracted Democratic support by running as the Union party and putting Andrew Johnson, a pro-war Democrat, on the ticket. Lincoln won in a landslide.

1848

This election underscored the increasingly important role of slavery in national politics. Democratic president James K. Polk did not seek reelection. His party nominated Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan. Antislavery groups formed the Free-Soil Party, whose platform promised to prohibit the spread of slavery, and chose former president Martin Van Buren as their candidate. The Whigs nominated Mexican War hero Gen. Zachary Taylor, a slave owner. Van Buren received no electoral votes, but he drew enough popular votes away from Cass to swing New York and Massachusetts to Taylor, assuring the Whigs' victory.

1804

This election was a landslide victory for the incumbent Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson, who easily defeated Charles C. Pinckney 162-14 in the first election held under the Twelfth Amendment, which separated Electoral College balloting for president and vice president.

1880

This election was as rich in partisan wrangling as it was lacking in major issues. Factional rivalry in the Republican Party led to a compromise choice on the thirty-sixth ballot, Senator James A. Garfield of Ohio. The Democrats selected Civil War general Winfield Scott Hancock, a man of modest abilities, because he was less controversial than their party leaders. Turnout was high on election day (78.4 percent), and the result was one of the closest in history.

1836

This election was largely a referendum on Andrew Jackson, but it also helped shape what is known as the second party system. The Democrats nominated Vice President Martin Van Buren to lead the ticket. His running mate, Col. Richard M. Johnson, claimed to have killed Indian chief Tecumseh (Johnson was controversial because he lived openly with a black woman). The new Whig Party ran three candidates. The Whigs tried to tie Democrats to abolitionism and sectional tension, and attacked Jackson for "acts of aggression and usurpation of power." Van Buren won the election with only 50.9 percent of the total.

1796

This election was the first contested presidential race. It took place against a background of increasingly harsh partisanship between Federalists and Republicans. John Adams won with 71 votes, defeating Thomas Jefferson, who became his vice president.

1800

This election was the first peaceful transfer of power between parties under the U.S. Constitution. Republican Thomas Jefferson succeeded Federalist John Adams.

1856

This election was the first to directly confront the issue of slavery. The violence that followed the Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed the old political system and past formulas of compromises. The Whig Party was dead. the American Party (known as the Know-Nothings) nominated former president Millard Fillmore to head their nativist American Party. The Democratic Party nominated James Buchanan with a platform supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act and noninterference with slavery.

2016

This election was unconventional in its level of divisiveness. Former first lady, New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first woman to be nominated by a major party in a U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump, a New York real estate baron and reality TV star won, in a stunning upset, losing the the popular vote (65,853,516 to 62,984,825), but winning in the Electoral College 306 to 232.

1828

This election, which saw the emergence of two new political parties: Andrew Jackson's Democratic-Republicans or simply Democrats, and The National-Republicans which was the party of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. This was one of the dirtiest camaigns in America's history, with both parties spreading false and exaggerated rumors about the opposition. Andrew Jackson won by a landslide, receiving 56 percent of the popular vote.

1884

This race, marred by negative campaigning and corruption, ended in the election of the first Democratic president since 1856 when New York governor Grover Cleveland defeated Republicans James G. Blaine of Maine.

2012

Barack Obama won reelection, defeating Mitt Romney, the first Mormon to receive a major party's nomination. This election was the first to be waged following the "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision that allowed for increased political contributions with the two major party candidates spending over a billion that cycle.

1832

For the first time in American politics, a third party, the Anti-Masons, challenged the two major parties. The Anti-Masons feared a conspiracy to control American political institutions, a fear fed by the fact that both Jackson and Clay, were prominent Masons.

1912

Former president Theodore Roosevelt, Angered over what he felt was the betrayal of his policies by his hand-picked successor sought the Republican nomination over current president William Howard Taft. When the party nominated Taft at the convention, Roosevelt bolted and formed the Progressive, or Bull Moose party.

1980

The two major issues of the campaign were the economy and the Iran Hostage Crisis. President Carter seemed unable to control inflation and had not succeeded in obtaining the release of American hostages in Tehran before the election. Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory (489 to 49), and the Republicans gained control of the Senate for the first time in twenty-five years.

1952

When President Harry S. Truman declined to run for a third term, the Democratic convention nominated Governor Adlai Stevenson (grandson of Adlai Stevenson who served as vice president under Grover Cleveland in the 1890s). The Republicans nominated World War II general Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and Richard M. Nixon, an anticommunist senator from California as his running mate.