U.S. presidential election, 1896

United States presidential election, 1896

← 1892 November 3, 1896 1900 →
All 447 electoral votes of the Electoral College 224 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	79.3% 4.6 pp
Nominee William McKinley William Jennings Bryan Party Republican Democratic / People's Home state Ohio Nebraska Running mate Garret Hobart Arthur Sewall (Democratic) Thomas Watson (Populist) Electoral vote 271 176 States carried 23 22 Popular vote 7,111,607 6,509,052 Percentage 51.0% 46.7%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes those won by McKinley/Hobart, blue denotes states won by Bryan/Sewall and the Populist ticket of Bryan/Watson. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election Grover Cleveland Democratic Elected President William McKinley Republican

Grover Cleveland
Democratic

William McKinley
Republican

The United States presidential election of 1896 was the 28th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1896. It was the climax of an intensely heated contest in which Republican candidate William McKinley (a former Governor of Ohio) defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan (a former Representative from Nebraska) in one of the most dramatic and complex races in American history.

The 1896 campaign was a realigning election that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System. McKinley forged a conservative coalition in which businessmen, professionals, skilled factory workers, and prosperous farmers were heavily represented. He was strongest in cities and in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Coast. Bryan was the nominee of the Democrats, the Populist Party, and the Silver Republicans. He presented his campaign as a crusade of the working man against the rich, who impoverished America by limiting the money supply, which was based on gold. Silver, he said, was in ample supply and if coined into money would restore prosperity while undermining the illicit power of the money trust. Bryan was strongest in the South, rural Midwest, and Rocky Mountain states. Bryan's moralistic rhetoric and crusade for inflation (to be generated by a money supply based on silver as well as gold) alienated conservatives. Turnout was very high, passing 90% of the eligible voters in many places.