U.S. presidential election, 1900

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The U.S. presidential election of 1900 was held on November 6, 1900. A rematch of the 1896 race between Republican President William McKinley and his Democratic challenger from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, the recent victory in the Spanish-American War virtually assured McKinley re-election.

Contents

1 Nominations 1.1 Republican Party nomination 1.2 Democratic Party nomination 1.3 Other nominations 2 General election 2.1 Campaign 2.2 Results 3 See also 4 Reference 4.1 External link

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

The 926 Republican delegates to the Republican convention chose to renominate William McKinley by acclamation. Party leaders, thinking they would slide him into a position of relative obscurity, supported Spanish-American War Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt of New York as the Vice Presidential nominee, replacing Garret A. Hobart, who died in 1899.

Democratic Party nomination

William Jennings Bryan was easily renominated at the 1900 Democratic National Convention, garnering 936 delegate votes. Former Vice President Adlai Stevenson was nominated for the office again, beating out David B. Hill, Abram W. Patrick and Julian S. Carr for the nomination.

Other nominations

The Populist Party, which four years earlier had supported Bryan, this time went their own way, nominating a ticket of Wharton Barker and Ignatius Donnelly. Eugene Debs made his first bid for president in 1900 as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party.

General election

Campaign

The economy was booming in 1900, so the Republican mantra for this campaign was "Four More Years of the Full Dinner Pail". The Democrats scrambled to find an issue to unseat the Republicans. Bryan's big issue from the previous election, free silver, resonated only in economic hard times, and was further weakened by inflation from gold discoveries in Alaska and South Africa. Bryan also attempted, with limited success, to run against the McKinley administration's imperialism and against problems in the conduct of the Spanish-American War of two years previous, such as the procurement of rotten beef as provisions for the troops. The Democrats were unsuccessful, and McKinley won reelection.

Results

Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Popular Vote(a)		Electoral Vote	Running Mate	Running Mate's Home State	Running Mate's Electoral Vote
			Count	Percentage
William McKinley	Republican	Ohio	7,228,864	51.6%	292	Theodore Roosevelt	New York	292
William Jennings Bryan	Democratic	Nebraska	6,370,932	45.5%	155	Adlai Ewing Stevenson	Illinois	155
John Granville Woolley	Prohibition	Illinois	210,864	1.5%	0	Henry Brewer Metcalf	Ohio	0
Eugene Victor Debs	Social-Democratic	Indiana	87,945	0.6%	0	Job Harriman	California	0
Wharton Barker	Populist	Pennsylvania	50,989	0.4%	0	Ignatius Donnelly	Minnesota	0
Joseph Francis Maloney	Socialist Labor	Massachusetts	40,943	0.3%	0	Valentine Remmel	Pennsylvania	0
Seth Hockett Ellis	Union Reform	Ohio	5,696	0.0%	0	Samuel T. Nicholson	Pennsylvania	0
James Fitz Randolph Leonard	United Christian	Iowa	5,500	0.0%	0	David H. Martin	Pennsylvania	0
Total			14,001,733	100%	447	Total		447
Needed to win					224	Needed to win		224

^(a) The popular vote total omits votes for candidates besides those listed, which skews the popular percentages up slightly.

See also

• History of the United States (1865-1918)

Reference

External link

• 1900 State-by-state Popular vote (http://www.multied.com/elections/1900state.html)