1848 United States elections
← House elections | |
Overall control | Democratic gain[3] |
---|---|
Seats contested | All 237 voting members |
Net seat change | Democratic +3[2] |
The 1848 United States elections elected the members of the 31st United States Congress and the 12th president of the United States. The election took place during the Second Party System, nine months after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican–American War. With the issue of slavery (and its extension into western territories) dividing the nation, the Free Soil Party established itself as the third most powerful party in Congress. California joined the union before the next election, and elected its first congressional delegation to the 31st Congress. Whigs won the presidency, but Democrats won a plurality in the House and retained control of the Senate.
In the presidential election,
In the House, Democrats picked up a small number of seats, taking the plurality. The Whigs lost a small number of seats but remained the second largest party, while the Free Soil Party picked up a handful of seats.[6] The House elected Democrat Howell Cobb as Speaker after sixty-three ballots.[7] In the Senate, the Whigs won minor gains, cutting into the Democratic majority.[8]
This is the only time the presidency and one house of Congress flipped control to different parties. In this instance, the Whig Party flipped the presidency but lost control of the House of Representatives.
Campaign
The main two parties failed to rally the people to any important issue, and as such both campaigns were fought without much enthusiasm.
Whig campaigners, who included Abraham Lincoln and Rutherford B. Hayes, talked up Taylor's "antiparty' opposition to the Jacksonian commitment to the spoils system and yellow-dog partisanship. In the South, they stressed that he was a Louisiana slaveholder, while in the North they highlighted his Whig-like willingness to defer to Congress on major issues (which he subsequently did not do).
Results
With Taylor as their candidate, the Whigs won their second and last victory in a presidential election. Taylor won 163 of the 290 Electoral College votes, although the popular vote was much closer: Taylor won only 1,360,099 votes (47%), outvoting Cass, (who won 42.5 of the vote) by 137,933 votes.
A shift of less than 6000 votes to Cass in Georgia and Maryland would have left the electoral college in a 145–145 tie, while a shift of less than 27,000 votes to Van Buren in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts would have left both Taylor and Cass short of the 146 electoral votes required to win, forcing a contingent election in the House of Representatives.[9]
See also
- 1848 United States presidential election
- 1848–49 United States House of Representatives elections
- 1848–49 United States Senate elections
References
- ^ Not counting special elections.
- ^ a b Congressional seat gain figures only reflect the results of the regularly-scheduled elections, and do not take special elections into account.
- ^ No party won a majority in the House of Representatives, but a Democrat was elected as Speaker of the House.
- ^ "1848 Presidential Election". The American Presidency Project. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
- ISBN 0-7425-0888-9.
- ^ "Party Divisions of the House of Representatives". United States House of Representatives. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
- ^ Jenkins, Jeffery A.; Stewart III, Charles (April 2001). Sophisticated Behavior and Speakership Elections: The Elections of 1849 and 1855–56. Midwest Political Science Association. Chicago, IL. p. 29. Retrieved January 8, 2013.
- ^ "Party Division in the Senate, 1789–Present". United States Senate. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
- ^ "1848 Election Results". Archived from the original on 2018-09-21. Retrieved 2021-08-10.