Historic elections in the United States: a bad deal, an unexpected return and 537 votes difference

The United States has elected a president 59 times, but not every election was historic. 5 particularly memorable presidential elections.

Alan Cassidy from Washington

Posted today at 3:55 pm

1860: a country on the edge

Perhaps the most important election in American history has been slavery and America’s survival. The question of whether it should be abolished or expanded had divided the Democratic Party. In 1860 there were four different presidential candidates. Benefited from that Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the incipient Republican Party, who prevailed with 40 percent of the electorate and a majority of 123 out of 180 votes in the Electoral College, the electoral body.

Lincoln, a lawyer and former provincial deputy, was a talented speaker. Within his own party, he did not go as far as others when it comes to abolishing slavery: he promised in the election campaign that slavery should not spread to the new western states of the continent. But he assured the southern states that they would be allowed to adhere to his slave regime.

Lincoln’s victory ended the supremacy of the Democratic Party in Washington, which had had the largest number of presidents since 1789. Before Lincoln’s inauguration, seven of the southern states ruled by Democrats broke away and formed the Confederacy. . Shortly after, civil war broke out.

1876: a momentous commitment

To this day, no election has been scarcer than 1876, and almost none have been so momentous. Democrat Samuel Tilden won more votes nationally than Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But he lacked the necessary majority in the Electoral College. In three southern states, voter allocation was controversial and sections of the Democrats openly threatened violence.

After a bitter discussion in Congress, both parties agreed that the remaining electors would be assigned to the Republican Hayes: he became president. In return, Republicans agreed to withdraw federal government troops from the southern states that had been stationed there since the end of the Civil War in 1865. The move marked the beginning of decades of democratic rule in the south, characterized by terror. racist against blacks.

To his opponents, Hayes was an illegitimate president due to the circumstances of his election. They called it, after the English word “fraud” for fraud, “Your fraud” or “Rutherfraud”. Hayes did not run for a second term.

1936: the New Deal elections

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first reelection in 1936 was very different: It was the definition of a landslide victory. The Democrat received just under 61 percent of the vote and 523 of 531 votes in the Electoral College. His Republican opponent Alf Landon only won the eight electors from the states of Maine and Vermont. The polls, which were not yet very mature, had previously predicted a close race.

Roosevelt’s victory allowed him to earn his “New deal” that shaped America’s political landscape for decades. The reform program ended the laissez-faire policies of Roosevelt’s Republican predecessors, which had become increasingly controversial in the face of the severe economic crisis of the 1930s. Roosevelt introduced, among other things, insurance policy. state pension and unemployment insurance. Both turned out to be very popular.

Roosevelt was elected to a third term in 1940 and a fourth in 1944. He died in office in 1945. The 22nd amendment to the constitution, passed after his death, has since limited the term of the president of the United States to two terms.

1948: The newspaper duck

On Election Day, the matter seemed clear: New York Republican Governor Thomas Dewey would prevail against Democrat Harry Truman and oust the incumbent president from the White House. Most pollsters were so sure of this that they stopped doing so a few weeks before the election date. Life magazine ran a story about the future Dewey administration, and the Chicago Tribune newspaper on Election Night wrote on its cover the following day: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

The photo of the smiling Truman, holding one of these covers in his hand, went down in history, because everything turned out so different. The president, considered unpopular by his opponents, was re-elected with a comfortable majority of 303 to 189 votes in the Electoral College, although the gap between the votes was significantly smaller. Truman also survived the handicap that Democrats in the southern states were divided and with Strom Thurmond presented a third candidate who fought to maintain racial segregation.

2000: all in limbo

The 2000 election has been the subject of much debate recently, because it serves as a warning to Democrats in particular that their candidate may win a majority of the vote but lose the election in controversial circumstances.

On election night, the television network falsely declared George W. Bush, the Republican governor of Texas, the winner over outgoing Vice President Al Gore. Gore had already congratulated Bush on the phone, but later withdrew his admission of defeat because the outcome of the state of Florida, which was decisive for the Electoral College, was so close that the votes had to be counted again.

This started a long battle in the courts. It consisted of Republicans trying to avoid scrutiny of pending votes that would have had a certain chance of winning the race for the Democrat. For weeks it was unclear who had won the election and whether the potential loser would accept defeat.

The decision was finally made by the country’s Supreme Court: with a conservative majority of 5: 4, the judges ruled that the remaining votes could no longer be counted. Bush had just 537 more votes than Gore at the time. Still, the vice president accepted the verdict.

Posted today at 3:55 pm