In observance of Presidents Day on Monday, Feb. 15, the ASPPA offices will be closed. Accordingly, ASPPA Connect will not be published on Feb. 15. ASPPA Connect will reappear on Wednesday, Feb. 17.
The recent election was remarkable for the controversy surrounding it. But while some events surrounding it are unprecedented, it is far from the only one that was tumultuous. Here’s a look at some others.
1800
The election was remarkable for three reasons:
1. Because the procedures for electing presidents were still developing and the way candidates were designated were unclear when voting took place in the electoral college, technically there was an electoral college tie between Thomas Jefferson and his vice presidential running mate, Aaron Burr. In the end, of course, the intended result was clear, and Jefferson took office as the third president.
2. The inauguration of Jefferson was the first of only three in which the president leaving office (in this case, John Adams) did not attend the swearing in of the president who assumed office as he departed.
3. Most important, the election of 1800 was very important because it was a peaceful political revolution, one of the first in history. The ideology of the incoming president was sharply different from that of the outgoing, and the fact that despite that the outgoing president and administration left office peacefully was a very important precedent for the United States as well as free societies in that day and to come.
1824
The election of 1824 was the first in which the popular vote was tallied. It was also the first in which the popular vote winner and the electoral vote result were not in sync. In an election with five candidates, Andrew Jackson had the highest number of votes; however, he did not have sufficient electoral votes to win office. Two other candidates gave their electoral votes to John Quincy Adams, who had come in second in the popular vote and the electoral vote; consequently, John Quincy Adams won in the electoral college and took office as the 6th president. Jackson was enraged (although that didn’t take much).
1828
The election of 1828 was a rematch of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. It was one of the most personally nasty of any of the presidential campaigns. But the result this time was not in doubt, and Jackson was the undisputed winner. And like his father 28 years before, Adams did not attend Jackson’s inauguration, the second time such a thing happened.
1876
In the election of 1876, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes; however, while he had more electoral votes than Hayes, Tilden did not have enough to win. In addition, there was controversy over the vote results in five states, and allegations of fraud on both sides. In the end, the election was referred to an electoral commission composed of members of the House, Senate and Supreme Court; the result was a win for Hayes in the nick of time before March 4, the date on which inauguration had to take place (the date was changed to Jan. 20 in the 1930s). He was sworn in privately to avoid any, well, unpleasantless.
1888
The election of 1888 was the third in which the popular vote winner did not win in the electoral college; accordingly, incumbent Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison. As they were leaving the White House, new former First Lady Frances Cleveland told the White House staff not to break anything because they would be back. And she was right—in 1892, Cleveland won in a rematch and Frances was back to see if they followed directions.
1912
In 1908, Teddy Roosevelt’s (1901-09) hand-picked successor William Howard Taft was nominated by the Republicans and won the election. But Roosevelt was unhappy with how Taft had done in office, and decided to run in 1912. The Republicans—led by the party establishment, which had always disliked Roosevelt—renominated Taft and Roosevelt then ran as leader of the Progressives (then known as the “Bull Moose” Party). Roosevelt split the Republican votes and Taft came in third, giving the win to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who did not have a majority of the popular vote but did win sufficient electoral votes to take office.
1948
In 1948, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, who ran unsuccessfully in 1944, was nominated for president for a second time by the Republicans. The Democrats nominated Harry S. Truman, who had taken office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945; however, the “Dixiecrat” faction, opposed to Truman’s pursuit of desegregation, left the convention and nominated Sen. Strom Thurmond for President. Truman was widely expected to lose by pundits and the press; so confident were they that The Chicago Daily Tribune in anticipation of a Dewey win pre-printed the newspaper for Nov. 3, 1948, the day after election day, with that headline. Inconveniently, Truman won handily.
1972
The election of 1972 was a landslide; one of only two in which the winner (in this case, Richard Nixon) carried 49 out of 50 states (the other was 1984, when Ronald Reagan was reelected). The election certainly was not in doubt, but it was the election during which the Watergate break-in took place, and less than two years later, the winner of that landslide resigned in disgrace.
2000
On election night in 2000, at one point Vice President Al Gore, who had been nominated by the Democrats, called Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican nominee, to concede the election. Gore had won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote. But the result in Florida came into doubt shortly after, and Gore rescinded his concession. Examination of ballots in Florida proceeded in several counties, and the matter ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court’s ruling resulted in Bush carrying Florida by 537 votes, and he became the 43rd president.
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