1840 United States presidential election

The 1840 United States presidential election was the 14th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, October 30 to Wednesday, December 2, 1840. Economic recovery from the Panic of 1837 was incomplete, and Whig nominee William Henry Harrison defeated incumbent President Martin Van Buren of the Democratic Party. The election marked the first of two Whig victories in presidential elections, but was the only one where they won a majority of the popular vote. This was the third rematch in American history, which would not occur again until 1892.

294 members of the Electoral College
148 electoral votes needed to win

80.2% ^[1] 23.8 pp

In 1839, the Whigs held a national convention for the first time. The 1839 Whig National Convention saw 1836 nominee William Henry Harrison defeat former Secretary of State Henry Clay and General Winfield Scott. Van Buren faced little opposition at the 1840 Democratic National Convention, but controversial Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson was not re-nominated. The Democrats thus became the only major party since 1800 to fail to select a vice presidential nominee.

Referencing vice presidential nominee John Tyler and Harrison's participation in the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Whigs campaigned on the slogan of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." With Van Buren weakened by economic woes, Harrison won a popular majority and 234 of 294 electoral votes. Voter participation surged as white male suffrage became nearly universal,^[2] and a contemporary record of 42.4% of the voting age population voted for Harrison.^[3] Van Buren's loss made him the third president to lose re-election.

The Whigs did not enjoy the benefits of victory. The 67-year-old Harrison, the oldest U.S. president elected until Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election, died a little more than a month after inauguration. Harrison was succeeded by John Tyler, who unexpectedly proved not to be a Whig. While Tyler had been a staunch supporter of Clay at the convention, he was a former Democrat, a passionate supporter of states' rights, and effectively an independent. As President, Tyler blocked the Whigs' legislative agenda and was expelled from the Whig Party, subsequently the second independent (after Washington) to serve as president. Van Buren would the last incumbent President to lose his reelection bid in a general election until Grover Cleveland in 1888.

Map of presidential election results by county

Map of Whig presidential election results by county

Map of Democratic presidential election results by county

Map of Liberty presidential election results by county

Map of "Other" presidential election results by county

Cartogram of presidential election results by county

Cartogram of Whig presidential election results by county

Cartogram of Democratic presidential election results by county

Cartogram of Liberty presidential election results by county

Cartogram of "Other" presidential election results by county

Connecticut

Louisiana

Maine

Michigan

Mississippi

New York

North Carolina

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

Campaign songs/slogans[edit]

Harrison[edit]

"Tippecanoe and Tyler too"

Harrison "Tippecanoe Club" ribbon

Ribbon for Harrison political rally

Ribbon for Danvers, Mass. delegation to Harrison Rally, Bunker Hill, 1840; engraved by George Girdler Smith

Delegate badge, Democratic convention

Cover of Boston Harrison Club's Harrison Melodies, 1840^[11]

In popular culture[edit]

In the 1997 film Amistad, Van Buren (played by Nigel Hawthorne) is seen campaigning for re-election. These scenes have been criticized for their historical inaccuracy.^[12]

1840–1841 United States House of Representatives elections

1840–1841 United States Senate elections

History of the United States (1789–1849)

Second Party System

; Black, Merle (1992). The Vital South: How Presidents Are Elected. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674941306.

Black, Earl

Chambers, William Nisbet. "The Election of 1840" in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (ed.) History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968 (1971) vol 2; analysis plus primary sources

Cheathem, Mark. R. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018)

The Coming of Democracy: Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson

Ellis, Richard J. Old Tip vs. the Sly Fox: The 1840 Election and the Making of a Partisan Nation (U of Kansas Press, 2020)

online review

Formisano, Ronald P. "The new political history and the election of 1840", Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Spring 1993, Vol. 23 Issue 4, pp. 661–82

in JSTOR

Gunderson, Robert Gray (1957). The Log-Cabin Campaign. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.

Greeley, Horace

Holt, Michael F. "The Election of 1840, Voter Mobilization, and the Emergence of the Second American Party System: A Reappraisal of Jacksonian Voting Behavior", in Holt and John McCardell, eds. A Master's Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald (1986); emphasizes economic factors; See Formisano (1993) for criticism

Holt, Michael F. (1999). The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. Oxford University Press. 0-19-505544-6.

ISBN

Leahy, Christopher J. President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler (LSU, 2020), a major scholarly biography; also online review

excerpt

Shade, William G. "Politics and Parties in Jacksonian America", Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 110, No. 4 (Oct. 1986), pp. 483–507

online

Zboray, Ronald J., and Mary Saracino Zboray. "Whig Women, Politics, and Culture in the Campaign of 1840: Three Perspectives from Massachusetts", Journal of the Early Republic Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 277–315

1840 United States presidential election