Talk:United States presidential election, 1896

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[edit] Did Cleveland run or not?

The entries for Cleveland and Bryan says that Cleveland did seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1896 but was defeated. Yet here it says that he did not seek the nomination at all. So which is it. Did he or did he not run for the nomination. -- (unsigned contribution by Matthew See 22:44, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Cleveland did not run in 1896. (For example, see [1].) If he had run, he would probably have lost the nomination; the Panic of 1893 and the Elections of 1894 had damaged Cleveland's viability and shifted the Democratic Party away from backers of the gold standard (such as Cleveland) to the bimetallists. — DLJessup 00:02, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
OK, since I made that last comment, I've done some additional research into Wikipedia, and I'd like to revise my previous posting.
RobLa copied the comment in the Cleveland article about Bryan defeating Cleveland for the nomination from the White House site about three years ago. Interestingly, the White House site now words this differently: "His party deserted him and nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896."
User:Maveric149 copied the comment in the Bryan article about Bryan defeating Cleveland from [2], and this is an exact quote.
Here are some additional sources, not from Wikipedia:
What generates confusion is that there were few to no primaries in 1896, so that the convention determined entirely who was the presidential nominee. This means that, although Cleveland was apparently a candidate for the nomination, he did no campaigning prior to the convention. (And, after the convention, there was no point to his campaigning.) The pro-silver (or bimetallist) forces controlled the majority of delegates, and so Cleveland was never a serious contender in any of the balloting. Five ballots were taken, and the major contenders were Bryan, Richard Bland, and Horace Boies, all pro-silver. Essentially, the composition of delegates meant that Cleveland's candidacy was D.O.A. and the purpose of the convention was to decide upon a successor.
There. Have I confused things enough? — DLJessup 00:44, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Popular vote sourcing

Most of the U.S. presidential election, yyyy articles take their PV data from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. I made the decision to have this article take its PV data from U-S-History.com for a few reasons:

  • U-S-History.com breaks out how much of Bryan's vote was Democratic and how much was Populist.
  • One would get the idea from Leip's Atlas that Arthur Sewall got 176 EV, just like Bryan did, not that Sewall got part of the 176 EV and his Populist counterpart got the rest.

— DLJessup 13:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

But what about the write-ins? Toya 11:43, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Blarg. Toya, I was going to revert your changes. I really don't feel comfortable pulling PV data for a single election from two distinct sources which, where they overlap, disagree, and footnote (a) was there specifically to indicate that there were additional (but negligible) PVs. However, when I tried to write this all up here, I realized that my case was somewhat weak, and I really don't want to start a new edit war without stronger provocation, so I'm going to just switch over to the Dave Leip PV data.

— DLJessup 12:40, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Electoral picture peculiarity

Why is the graphic depiction of electoral votes skewed? Rarely nowadays does one see democratic votes colored red and and republican votes blue. --maru (talk) Contribs 20:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

This post has been copied to Wikipedia talk:Style for U.S. presidential election, yyyy#Electoral picture peculiarity. Please direct your responses there.
— DLJessup (talk) 21:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Third parties

I just wanted to comment on something that I have not seen in print anywhere. The term "national" in a party name in 1896 was used by the minority faction when they nominated their own candidate. The National Democratic Party nominated Sen. John M. Palmer. In several states, such as North Carolina, his Electors were officially the Gold Democratic Party Electors. In contrast, the National Prohibition Party was the silver faction - their nominee Charles E. Bentley ran on the "Silver Prohibition" line in Arkansas. It has intrigued me that the term "national" in 1896 would not be (for example) the gold faction of the party. Chronicler3 12:30, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Cleveland & the Democratic National Convention of 1896

I would like to add the following to the discussion of President Cleveland's interest in a third term.

1) Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, eds., Convention Decisions and Voting Records (DC: the Brookings Institution, 1973), p. 154 states "Cleveland helped obscure the succession question by avoiding questions about the possibilities of his trying for a third term." The state-by-state breakdown of the roll call votes show that no delegate at the convention voted for Cleveland for President on any ballot.

2) Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform, and Expansion 1890-1900 (NYC: Harper & Row, 1959) lists many potential candidates but never mentions Cleveland as a candidate in 1896.

3) Several of the web pages cited above state that Cleveland was not a candidate in 1896. The Capital Century page emphatically states "Cleveland chose not to run for a third term."

It is certainly true that Cleveland would have received the votes of the New York and New Jersey delegations, which both abstained during the roll call votes, if he had been a candidate.

Other notes. The election page has information on the Democratic convention. Bryan was nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention over Bland, Pattison, Boies, and Blackburn as indicated earlier on the talk page. He was nominated by the Populist National Convention over Norton by a 1,042-321 vote. Ohio Elects the President, pp. 64-65.

As DLJessup stated, the delegates were selected in state conventions. "Florida enacted the first presidential primary law in 1901." Presidential Elections Since 1789 (DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1983), p. 9.

Chronicler3 02:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Party Systems sentence

The issue of the first paragraph seems to be raging right now, mostly over the sentence about the election of 1896 being a realignment election.

To some degree, I would argue that the realignment started in 1894 and was only strengthened in 1896. I would like to see the sentence retained. Would it be better to move it to a point later in the paragraph instead? The current last sentence in the paragraph sets the stage for the sentence. I don't have strong feelings either way, except that I would like to see the discussion here rather than on the watchlist. Chronicler3 00:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modern citation needed

A citation is needed at William_McKinley#Presidency_1897-1901 for one of this article's topics: "William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. Presidential election of 1896, in what is considered the forerunner of modern political campaigning." (SEWilco 05:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC))