Each U.S. presidential election (1900-1996)

From McKinley to Clinton, the context that surrounded every American presidential race

The United States presidential elections from 1900 to 1996 reflect a century of transformative challenges and shifts in the political landscape. This period saw the rise of the Progressive movement, as candidates grappled with issues such as labor rights, women's suffrage, and the fight against corruption.

The aftermath of World War I and the Great Depression brought foreign policy and economic stability to the forefront, particularly during Franklin D. Roosevelt's groundbreaking New Deal.

The post-war era introduced the Cold War, with candidates needing to address national security, civil rights movements, and anti-communism. The 1960s and 70s saw the impact of social upheaval, including the Vietnam War and the fight for racial equality, culminating in pivotal elections that reflected a nation divided.

By the 1990s, the focus shifted toward globalization and technological advancement, alongside new debates over welfare and healthcare.

This article delves into the United States elections of this dynamic century, illustrating how each presidential race not only responded to immediate challenges but also shaped the future of American politics and society.

1900 | William McKinley (R) v. William Jennings Bryan (D)

The 1900 United States presidential election was a rematch of the 1896 race between Republican President William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, his Democratic challenger.

The return of economic prosperity and recent victory in the Spanish-American War helped the incumbent McKinley to secure a convincing win.

He chose New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate because Vice President Garret Hobart had died from heart failure in 1899. McKinley himself would be killed a year and a half after taking office.

1904 | Theodore Roosevelt (R) v. Alton B. Parker (D)

Theodore Roosevelt took office after the assassination of William McKinley in September 1901.

As an incumbent President, Roosevelt became the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination in 1904. However, disgruntled Republicans voiced their view that Roosevelt's actions were too liberal. They favored instead the designation of Mark Hanna. His death in 1904 probably averted a heated contest over what direction the Republican Party would take. With the contender gone, the convention nominated Roosevelt by acclamation.

The Democratic Party passed over William Jennings Bryan (who had lost two consecutive elections against McKinley) and nominated Alton B. Parker, a conservative Appeals Court judge in New York.

Roosevelt easily won a term of his own, thus becoming the first accidental President to do so. The Republican nominee won 56.4% of the popular vote. His 18.8 percentage-point margin concerning his closest contender was the biggest recorded between the elections of 1820 and 1920.

Roosevelt won the election by more than 2.5 million popular votes. No earlier president had won by so large a margin. Following his triumph, Roosevelt announced he would not seek a third term.

The 1904 election witnessed a strong showing by Eugene V. Debs and the Socialists and a notable presence by the Prohibition Party. The Populists were in steep decline and would disappear from the national scene after the next presidential election.

1908 | William Howard Taft (R) v. William Jennings Bryan (D)

Popular incumbent President Theodore Roosevelt, honoring a promise not to seek a third term, persuaded the Republican Party to nominate William Howard Taft, his close friend and Secretary of War, to become his successor.

Having badly lost the 1904 election with a conservative candidate, the Democratic Party turned to two-time nominee William Jennings Bryan, who was defeated in 1896 and 1900 by Republican William McKinley. Despite his two previous defeats, Bryan remained extremely popular among the more liberal and populist elements of the Democratic Party.

Despite running a vigorous campaign against the nation's business elite, Bryan suffered the worst loss in his three presidential campaigns. Taft won comfortably, with 51.6% of the popular vote and 321 electoral votes out of 483.

1912 | Woodrow Wilson (D) v. Theodore Roosevelt (P) and William H. Taft (R)

Three candidates starred in the 1912 U.S. presidential election. The conservative wing of the Republican Party renominated incumbent President William Howard Taft.

After former President Theodore Roosevelt failed to receive the GOP nomination, he called his convention and created the Progressive Party, which nominated Roosevelt and ran candidates for other offices in big states.

Democrat Woodrow Wilson was nominated on the 46th ballot of a contentious convention, thanks to the support of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate who still had a large and loyal following in 1912.

The election brought a discussion about the country's future. The New Nationalism proposed by Roosevelt called for an interventionist government with robust regulatory powers, while Wilson's New Freedom advocated antimonopoly policies and a return to small businesses.

Wilson defeated Roosevelt and Taft in the general election with a lopsided victory in the Electoral College. The Democrat nominee won 41.8% of the popular vote. His nearest rival (Roosevelt) won 27.4%.

The Republican split aided his election. The sum of the popular votes for Taft and Roosevelt would have given the presidency to the GOP.

Woodrow Wilson became the only elected President of the Democratic Party between 1892 and 1932 and the second of only two Democrats to be elected President between 1860 and 1932. The other one was Grover Cleveland.

The 1912 election was the last in which a candidate who was not a Republican or Democrat came runner-up in either the popular vote or the Electoral College and the first where the 48 states of the continental United States participated.

1916 | Woodrow Wilson (D) v. Charles E. Hughes (R)

The 1916 U.S. presidential election took place while Europe was in the middle of World War I, a conflict in which the country remained neutral until 1917.

The contest faced incumbent President Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate, against Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the GOP nominee.

Despite their sympathy with the allied forces fighting in Europe, most American voters wanted to avoid involvement in the war and preferred to continue a policy of neutrality.

The election was decided by a count in California that gave the state's electoral votes (13) to Wilson and ensured his re-election.

Wilson defeated Hughes by a narrow margin. Ironically, the Democrat's campaign motto was "He kept us out of war."

1920 | Warren G. Harding (R) v. James M. Cox (D)

Prospects for the Republican Party in the 1920 presidential election were favorable. The aftermath of World War I and the hostile reaction to Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic incumbent President, paved the way for the GOP candidate, William Harding, to get a comfortable victory.

The wartime boom had collapsed. Politicians argued over peace treaties and the question of America's entry into the League of Nations. There were wars and revolutions outside the United States.

At home, several strikes in meatpacking and steel were held, while large race riots took place in Chicago and other cities. Terrorist attacks on Wall Street produced fears of radicals and terrorists.

On the Democratic side, President Wilson wanted a third term despite his poor health and declining public appeal. Party regulars, however, refused to accede to the president's wishes and succeeded in garnering the 1920 nomination for an outsider, Ohio Governor James Cox.

Harding defeated Cox with 404 of the 531 electoral votes in dispute and 60.3% of the popular vote.

The election in 1920 was noteworthy in two other respects. For the first time in American history, election results were available to the public by radio. KDKA in Pittsburgh received polling information by telegraph and passed the information along to listeners in the eastern part of the country. This election also marked the first time women voted in a federal election, following the ratification of the 19th Amendment in August of that year.

1924 | Calvin Coolidge (R) v. John W. Davis (D)

Incumbent President Calvin Coolidge won the 1924 presidential election. The Republican became head of state in 1923 following the death of the then-president, Warren G. Harding.

Coolidge was given credit for a booming economy at home and no visible crises abroad. In addition, he got help from a split within the Democratic Party.

The regular Democrat candidate was John W. Davis, a former congressman and diplomat from West Virginia. Since Davis was a conservative, many liberal Democrats backed the third-party campaign of Wisconsin Senator Robert M. LaFollette, Sr., who ran as the candidate of the Progressive Party.

The 1924 election was the first in which all American Indians were citizens and thus allowed to vote. Coolidge's 25.2-point victory margin in the popular vote is one of the largest ever.

1928 | Herbert C. Hoover (R) v. Alfred E. Smith (D)

In August 1927, incumbent President Calvin Coolidge announced he would not run for the presidency in the 1928 election. That statement opened the door to GOP candidate Herbert Hoover, the current secretary of commerce and possessor of a long record of humanitarian service. 

Hoover faced Democrat Alfred Smith. The Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s. Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic prejudice, his anti-prohibitionist stance, and the legacy of corruption of the Tammany Hall machine with which he was associated.

Hoover won a landslide victory on pledges to continue the economic boom of the Coolidge years. Smith won the electoral votes only of the traditionally Democratic Southern United States and two New England States. Hoover even triumphed in Smith's home state of New York by a narrow margin.

1932 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) v. Herbert C. Hoover (R)

When the 1932 election took place, the Americans were suffering the effects of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression.

With that reality on the horizon, the popularity of incumbent President Herbert Hoover was at a low point as voters felt he couldn't reverse the economic collapse. Democratic candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt used that as leverage, and called Hoover's failure to deal with these problems as a platform for his own election, promising reform in his policy called the New Deal.

Roosevelt won by a landslide, the first of his four consecutive terms until his death in April, 1945. The 1932 election marked the collapse of the Fourth Party System or Progressive Era. The voters soon were realigned into the Fifth Party System, dominated by Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition.

1936 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) v. Alfred M. Landon (R)

The United States presidential election of 1936 was the most lopsided presidential election in favor of the Democratic Party in the history of the country if electoral votes are taken into account. In terms of the popular vote, it was the third biggest victory since the election of 1820.

Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt was still working to push the provisions of his New Deal economic policy through Congress and the courts. However, the New Deal policies he had already enacted, such as Social Security and unemployment benefits, were popular among most Americans.

FDR's Republican opponent was **Alfred M. **Landon, a political moderate. Although some political pundits predicted a close race, Roosevelt won by the greatest electoral vote margin since the beginning of the current two-party system in the 1850s. Roosevelt carried every state except Maine and Vermont, which provided eight electoral votes for Landon.

1940 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) v. Wendell L. Willkie (R)

The tradition that no United States president serves more than two terms was established by George Washington but was not part of the Constitution. As Franklin Roosevelt neared the end of his second term, he began to suggest the need for continuity in a world in crisis despite the U.S. not yet involved in World War II. Democrats agreed and renominated Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term.

The surprise Republican candidate was businessman Wendell Willkie, who crusaded against Roosevelt's failure to end the Depression and eagerness for war.

The GOP nominee conducted an energetic campaign and revived Republican strength in the Midwest and Northeast areas. However, Roosevelt cruised to an easy electoral victory in November. Willkie could take pride in his 22 million popular votes, the greatest number received by a Republican candidate to that date.

1944 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) v. Thomas E. Dewey (R)

The 1944 U.S. presidential election was held while the country was involved in World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been in office longer than any other head of state. Still, he sought another term as the Democratic candidate. His Republican opponent in 1944 was New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who ran an energetic campaign but was not enough.

FDR, who remained popular during the war years, was re-elected, receiving 432 electoral votes to 99 for Dewey, although the popular vote margin was closer. The incumbent President achieved a record fourth term, something nobody else has replicated thanks to the 22nd Amendment, which was approved on March 21, 1947, and ratified by the required number of states on February 27, 1951.

1948 | Harry S. Truman (D) v. Thomas E. Dewey (R)

The 1948 election is considered by most historians as the greatest election upset in American history.

Virtually every prediction indicated that incumbent President Harry S. Truman, who took office after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945, would be defeated by Republican Thomas E. Dewey. However, Truman embarked on a 31,000-mile train trip across the nation and delivered hundreds of off-the-cuff speeches to crowds. The electorate provided the Democrat nominee with one of the biggest political comeback victories in U.S. history.

Truman's surprise victory was the fifth consecutive win for the Democratic Party in a presidential election. As a result of the 1948 congressional election, the Democrats would regain control of both houses of Congress.

Truman's election confirmed the Democratic Party's status as the nation's majority party, a status they would retain until 1952.

1952 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) v. Adlai Stevenson (D)

The 1952 United States presidential election took place when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating, and weariness erupting among the Americans after two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War.

Incumbent President Harry S. Truman decided not to run despite being specifically exempted from the terms of the 22nd Amendment, so the Democratic Party instead nominated Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. The Republican Party countered with the war hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower and won comfortably, ending 20 consecutive years of Democratic control of the White House.

1956 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) v. Adlai Stevenson (D)

The election of 1956 ended up a rematch between the presidential candidates of 1952, as Dwight D. Eisenhower ran for re-election, and his opponent was Democrat Adlai Stevenson, whom the Republican had defeated four years earlier.

The big question concerning the GOP nomination was if Eisenhower's health would permit him to run again. He had suffered a heart attack the previous September and had been obliged to slow his schedule and take time to recuperate. After learning he was capable of continuing, Eisenhower announced on February 28, 1956, that he would seek a second term.

Stevenson remained popular with a core of liberal Democrats but held no office and had no real base. He (and Eisenhower) largely ignored the civil rights issue. Eisenhower had ended the Korean War and the nation was prosperous, so a landslide for the charismatic Eisenhower was never in doubt.

*One elector from Alabama voted for Walter Jones (D)

1960 | John F. Kennedy (D) v. Richard M. Nixon (R)

The election of 1960 marked the end of Dwight D. Eisenhower's two terms as President. Eisenhower's Vice President, Richard Nixon earned the Republican nomination, whereas the Democrats nominated Massachusetts Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Kennedy's margin of victory in popular voting was among the closest ever in American history (around 118,5K votes). Virginian Senator Harry F. Byrd received 15 electoral votes even though he was not on the ballot. Bird received 14 of his 15 electoral votes from winning slates of unpledged electors in Mississippi (8), Alabama (6), and Oklahoma (1).

JFK became the first catholic and the second youngest person (43) ever elected President of the United States (Theodore Roosevelt was 42 in 1901 when he assumed office).

*Harry F. Byrd (D Va.), received 15 electoral votes from unpledged electors: 6 in Alabama; 8 in Mississippi; and 1 in Oklahoma

1964 | Lyndon B. Johnson (D) v. Barry Goldwater (R)

The United States presidential election of 1964 was the sixth-most lopsided presidential election in the history of the United States in terms of electoral votes (486 to 52).

President Lyndon B. Johnson had come to office less than a year earlier following the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy and made the most of JFK's popularity.

Johnson also successfully painted his opponent, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ), as a right-wing legislator who wanted to abolish the social welfare programs created in the 1930s.

With these factors working in his favor, the Democrat easily won the Presidency, carrying 44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. LBJ's 22.6 percentage point margin of victory in the popular vote is the fifth-largest margin in Presidential election history.

1968 | Richard Nixon (R) v. Hubert Humphrey (D)

This presidential election took place in a context that included the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and subsequent race riots across the nation, the killing of Robert F. Kennedy, widespread demonstrations against the Vietnam War across American university and college campuses, and violent confrontations between police and anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

On November 5, 1968, the GOP candidate, former Vice President Richard Nixon won the presidency of the United States over the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The margin in the popular voting between them was under a million, but the Republican aspirant won in the Electoral College with 301 electoral votes from 31 states.

The election of 1968 was the last that confronted candidates who were Vice Presidents. It was also the most recent election in which a 3rd party nominee won electoral votes (American Independent George Wallace - 46).

1972 | Richard Nixon (R) v. George McGovern (D)

The 1972 election was held on November 7. The Democratic Party's nomination was eventually won by Senator George McGovern, who ran an anti-war campaign against the Republican candidate for reelection Richard Nixon but was handicapped by his outsider status and the firing of his running mate Thomas Eagleton.

Shielded by a good economy and his successes in foreign affairs (especially ending American involvement in Vietnam and establishing relations with China), Nixon easily won the election with a difference of 23.2 percentage points (almost 18 million ballots) in the popular vote, the widest margin of any U.S. presidential election. The incumbent collected the electoral votes in all states except Massachusetts (14) and the District of Columbia (3).

*John Hospers (Libertarian) received one electoral vote from a faithless elector in Virginia

1976 | Jimmy Carter (D) v. Gerald Ford (R)

The 1976 United States presidential election was held in the aftermath of Watergate, one of the biggest political scandals in the country's history.

It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate who assumed office after the resignation of Nixon, against former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic nominee.

Ford was saddled with a slow economy and paid a political price for his pardon of Nixon. Carter ran as a Washington outsider and reformer and won a narrow victory.

*Ford won Washington. However one elector cast a vote for Ronald Reagan

1980 | Ronald Reagan (R) v. Jimmy Carter (D)

The domestic policies implemented by President Jimmy Carter failed to resonate with the American public. Also, his image as an international leader was damaged by the Iranian hostage crisis that began on November 4, 1979, and lasted 444 days.

Nevertheless, the Democrats were not inclined to switch allegiance from an incumbent, so Carter had no difficulty securing his party nomination. On the Republican side, Ronald Reagan was successful in the primaries, securing the nomination.

When the campaign began, Carter held a lead over Reagan. However, the GOP candidate changed the voters' perception to the point that claimed a comfortable victory, initiating twelve years of Republican control of the White House until Bill Clinton took office in 1992. The 1980 election marked the beginning of what is popularly called the Reagan Revolution.

1984 | Ronald Reagan (R) v. Walter F. Mondale (D)

The 1984 United States presidential election was a contest between the incumbent President, Ronald Reagan, and Democratic former Vice President Walter Mondale.

The GOP nominee was helped by some policies: a strong recovery from the recession of 1981–82, his increase in defense spending, and aggressive anti-communism stances. At the same time, his advocacy of tax cuts was well-received even though federal deficits had risen, contrary to some of the predominant economic premises.

Reagan carried 49 of the 50 states, becoming the second presidential candidate to achieve the feat after Richard Nixon's victory in 1972. Mondale's only electoral votes came from the District of Columbia, which has always been considered a Democratic guarantee, and his home state of Minnesota, which he won by a mere 3761 votes.

Reagan's 525 electoral votes (out of 538) are the highest total ever received by a presidential candidate, while Mondale's 13 electoral votes is also the 2nd-fewest ever received by a second-place candidate, second only to Alf Landon's 8 in 1936. In the national popular vote, Reagan received 58.8% to Mondale's 40.6%.

1988 | George Bush (R) v. Michael S. Dukakis (D)

Ronald Reagan, the incumbent President, was vacating the position after serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second Amendment. Consequently, the 1988 United States presidential election featured Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush and Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis.

A good economy, a stable international stage (the U.S. was not involved in any wars or conflicts during this time), and Reagan's popularity allowed the Republican ticket to claim an easy victory. Dukakis carried only ten states (and the District of Columbia) but still had a positive result for the Democratic party compared with the outcome four years earlier.

Bush became the first incumbent Vice President of the United States to win a presidential election in 152 years since Martin Van Buren in 1836. Just like Van Buren in 1840, Bush would be defeated for reelection in 1992 after serving a single term.

*Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic) received one electoral vote from a faithless elector in West Virginia

1992 | Bill Clinton (D) v. George Bush (R)

The United States presidential election of 1992 marked the effort by the Republican Party to extend their 12-year hold on the White House, while the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, aimed to bring their image more towards the center. An independent push by billionaire H. Ross Perot of Texas tried to focus the debate on the national debt.

Incumbent George Bush alienated much of his conservative base by breaking his 1988 campaign pledge against raising taxes. His perceived greatest strength, foreign policy, was less influential following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the relatively peaceful climate in the Middle East after the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War.

On the election day, Clinton easily outdistanced Bush in the Electoral College. Perot managed 18.9% of the popular balloting but earned no electoral votes.

1996 | Bill Clinton (D) v. Bob Dole (R)

In the election of 1996, the Democrats were backed by a good economy and stable international affairs, as well as the momentum of an incumbency in the White House. The Republicans tried to provide a solid reason for the electorate to change but were unsuccessful.

There was no significant opposition to the renomination of President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore by the 1996 Democratic convention delegates, who met in Chicago between August 26-29.

On the GOP side, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas benefited from a strong early performance in the primaries.

On election day, November 5, Clinton and Gore comfortably won the popular and electoral college contests. The latter was not much different from 1992.

Data sources
You may be interested in

© 2024 All rights reservedBuilt with DataHub Cloud

Built with DataHub CloudDataHub Cloud