United States presidential election, 1888

	‹ 1884 1892 ›
	United States presidential election, 1888;
	November 6, 1888
	; Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Cleveland/Thurman, Red denotes those won by Harrison/Morton. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
	Incumbent President; Grover Cleveland; Democratic President-Elect; Benjamin Harrison; Republican

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The United States Presidential Election of 1888 was held on November 6, 1888. Incumbent President Grover Cleveland received the greatest number of popular votes, but Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison's 233 electoral votes topped Cleveland's 168 to win the election. Just 12 years earlier, in the election of 1876, the same thing had happened where the President-elect had failed to win the popular vote. It would not happen again until the election of 2000, 112 years later.^[1]

[edit] Nominations

[edit] Republican Party nomination

Republican candidates

[edit] Democratic Party nomination

Democratic candidates

Ballot	1st
Presidential Ballot
Grover Cleveland	822

Ballot	1st Before Shifts	1st After Shifts
Vice Presidential Ballot
Allen G. Thurman	684	822
Isaac P. Gray	101	0
John C. Black	36	0
Not voting	1	0

[edit] Other nominations

The Prohibition Party ticket of Clinton B. Fisk and John Brooks captured nearly a quarter million popular votes as the prohibition movement gained steam. Another group, the Union Labor Party, was formed with Alson Streeter as their nominee. The Union Labor Party garnered nearly 150,000 popular votes, but failed to gain widespread national support.

[edit] General election

[edit] Campaign

Cleveland set the main issue of the campaign when he proposed a dramatic reduction in tariffs in his annual message to Congress in December 1887. Cleveland contended that the tariff was unnecessarily high and that unnecessary taxation was unjust taxation. The Republicans responded that the high tariff would protect American industry from foreign competition, guaranteeing high wages, high profits, and high growth. The argument between protectionists and free traders over the size of the tariff was an old one, stretching back to the Tariff of 1816. In practice the tariff was practically meaningless on industrial products, since the United States was the low-cost producer in most areas (except woolens), and could not be undersold by the less efficient Europeans. Nevertheless the tariff issue motivated both sides to a remarkable extent.

Besides the obvious economic dimensions, the tariff argument also possessed an ethnic dimension. At the time, the policy of free trade was most strongly promoted by the British empire, and so any political candidate who ran on free trade instantly was under threat of being labelled pro-British and thereby losing the swing Irish-American voting bloc. Cleveland neatly neutralized this threat by pursuing punitive action against Canada (which was still viewed as part of the British empire) in a fishing rights dispute.

Harrison was well funded by party activists and mounted an energetic campaign by the standards of the day, giving many speeches from his front porch in Indianapolis which were covered by the newspapers. Cleveland adhered to the tradition that presidential candidates did not campaign, and forbade his cabinet from campaigning as well, leaving his 75 year old vice presidential candidate Thurman as the spearhead of his campaign.

[edit] Blocks of Five

One of the most notorious electoral frauds was perpetrated for this election in Indiana. William Wade Dudley, Treasurer of the Republican National Committee, wrote a circular letter to Indiana's county chairmen telling them to "Divide the floaters into Blocks of Five, and put a trusted man with the necessary funds in charge of these five, and make them responsible that none get away and that all vote our ticket."

[edit] The Murchison letter

A California Republican named George Osgoodby wrote a letter to Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British ambassador to the U. S., under the assumed name of "Charles F. Murchison". "Murchison" described himself as a former Englishman who was now a California citizen and asked how he should vote in the upcoming presidential election. Sir Lionel wrote back and indiscreetly suggested that Cleveland was probably the best man from the British point of view.

The Republicans published this letter just two weeks before the election, where it had an effect on Irish-American voters exactly comparable to the "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" blunder of the previous election: Cleveland lost New York state and the presidency and Sackville-West was sacked as British ambassador.^[2]

[edit] Results

Cleveland was defeated. He actually led in the popular vote over Benjamin Harrison (48.6% to 47.8%), but Harrison won the Electoral College by a 233-168 margin, largely by virtue of his 1% win in Cleveland's home state of New York. Had Cleveland won his home state, he would have won the electoral vote by a count of 204-197 (201 votes then needed for victory). Note that Cleveland earned 24 of his electoral votes from states that he won by less than 1% (Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia).

Cleveland thus became one of only four men (Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel Tilden in 1876, and Al Gore in 2000) to clearly win the popular vote but lose the presidency. As Frances Cleveland and the ex-president left the White House, she assured the staff that they would return in four years, which they did.

Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Popular Vote		Electoral Vote	Running Mate	Running Mate's Home State	RM's Electoral Vote
Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Count	Pct	Electoral Vote	Running Mate	Running Mate's Home State	RM's Electoral Vote
Benjamin Harrison	Republican	Indiana	5,443,892	47.8%	233	Levi Parsons Morton	New York	233
Stephen Grover Cleveland	Democratic	New York	5,534,488	48.6%	168	Allen Granberry Thurman	Ohio	168
Clinton Bowen Fisk	Prohibition	New Jersey	249,819	2.2%	0	John Anderson Brooks	Missouri	0
Alson Jenness Streeter	Union Labor	Illinois	146,602	1.3%	0	Charles E. Cunningham	Arkansas	0
Other			8,519	0.1%	–	Other		–
Total			11,383,320	100 %	401			401
Needed to win					201			201

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1888 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 27, 2005).

Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).

[edit] In popular culture

In 1968 the Michael P. Antoine Company produced the musical film, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band which centers around the election of 1888 and the annexing and subdividing of the Dakota Territory into states (which was a central issue of the election).

[edit] See also

Business advertising card with an election theme

[edit] Notes

^ Gaines 2001.
^ [Butterfield 1947 p. 253] and [Shenkman 2004]

[edit] References

[edit] Primary sources

Dawson, George Francis (1888). The Republican Campaign Text-book for 1888. New York: Brentano's.

[edit] Secondary sources

Books

Butterfield, Roger (1947). The American Past: A History of the United States from Concord to Hiroshima, 1775–1945. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Jensen, Richard (1971). The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896.
Morgan, H. Wayne (1969). From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896.
Reitano, Joanne R. (1994). The Tariff Question in the Gilded Age: The Great Debate of 1888.
Summers, Mark Wahlgren (2004). Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics.

Journal articles

Baumgarden, James L. (Summer 1984). "The 1888 Presidential Election: How Corrupt?". Presidential Studies Quarterly 14: 416–27.
Gaines, Brian J. (March 2001). "Popular Myths about Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits". PS: Political Science and Politics 34: 70-75.

Web sites

Shenkman, Rick (2004). "Who Played the First Dirty Tricks in American Presidential Politics?". History News Network. Retrieved on April 4, 2005.

[edit] External links

1888 popular vote by counties
Wrong way elections table at the Center for Range Voting
How close was the 1888 election? - Michael Sheppard, Michigan State University

[edit] Navigation

[0] Gaines 2001.

[1] [Butterfield 1947 p. 253] and [Shenkman 2004]

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