U.S. presidential election, 1844

United States presidential election, 1844

← 1840 November 1 – December 4, 1844 1848 →
All 275 electoral votes of the Electoral College 138 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	78.9% 1.3 pp
Nominee James K. Polk Henry Clay Party Democratic Whig Home state Tennessee Kentucky Running mate George M. Dallas Theodore Frelinghuysen Electoral vote 170 105 States carried 15 11 Popular vote 1,339,494 1,300,004 Percentage 49.5% 48.1%
Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Polk/Dallas, buff denotes those won by Clay/Frelinghuysen. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election John Tyler Independent Elected President James K. Polk Democratic

John Tyler
Independent

James K. Polk
Democratic

The United States presidential election of 1844 was the 15th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, November 1, to Wednesday, December 4, 1844. Democrat James K. Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest that turned on the controversial issue of slavery expansion through the annexation of the Republic of Texas.

The general election of 1844 took place in the midst of increasingly bitter congressional disputes over anti-slavery agitation that revealed how fragile the peaceful coexistence of free-soil and slave-soil interests within the United States really was. The campaign themes arose in direct response to incumbent President John Tyler's pursuit of Texas annexation as a slave state so as to undermine the unity of the Whig and Democratic parties in his bid to retain the White House.

The Whig Party nominee Henry Clay adopted an anti-annexation platform on the principle of preserving North-South sectional unity and to avoid war by respecting Mexico's claims to Texas. Clay's attempts to finesse his anti-annexation position on Texas alienated many voters in the South and West where annexation support was strongest, while some Northern Whigs in swing states shifted support to the anti-slavery Liberty Party.

Democrat Martin Van Buren, the former president and presumptive presidential contender for his party, was rejected as nominee at the Democratic National Convention after he failed to satisfy the demands of southern Democrat expansionists for a leader favoring the immediate acquisition of Texas.

In place of Van Buren, Democrat James K. Polk emerged as America's first dark horse nominee. He ran on a platform that embraced America's popular commitment to territorial expansionism, often referred to as Manifest Destiny. Polk successfully linked the US-British boundary dispute over the partition of Oregon Territory with the Texas annexation debate. In doing so, the Democratic Party nominee united the anti-slavery Northern expansionists, who demanded Oregon as free-soil, with pro-slavery Southern expansionists, who insisted on acquiring Texas as a slave state. In doing so, Polk narrowly outpolled the Whig Party nominee Clay by less than 40,000 votes.