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All 217 electoral votes of the Electoral College 109 electoral votes needed to win |
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Presidential election results map. Green denotes states won by Monroe, burnt orange denotes states won by King. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
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James Madison
Democratic-Republican
James Monroe
Democratic-Republican
The United States presidential election of 1816 was the eighth quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Friday, November 1 to Wednesday, December 4, 1816. It came at the end of the two-term presidency of Democratic-Republican James Madison. With the Federalist Party on the verge of collapse, Madison's Secretary of State, James Monroe, had an overwhelming advantage against very weak opposition. Monroe won the electoral college by the wide margin of 183 to 34.
The previous four years of American politics were dominated by the effects of the War of 1812. While the war had not ended in victory, the peace concluded in 1815 was satisfactory to the American people, and the Democratic-Republicans received the credit for its conclusion. The Federalists found themselves discredited by their opposition to the war and the secessionist rhetoric from New England embodied by the Hartford Convention of 1814-15. Furthermore, President Madison had succeeded in realizing certain measures favored by the Federalists, for example a national bank and protective tariffs. This gave the Federalists few issues to campaign on, and this resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Democratic-Republicans.
Secretary of State James Monroe
Governor Simon Snyder of Pennsylvania
Governor Daniel D. Tompkins of New York