Presidential election in the United States 1880

‹  1876  •   •  1884 ›
24. Presidential election
November 2, 1880
			Republican Party
			James Garfield / Chester Arthur
			electors					214
			be right				4,446,158
									48.3%
			Democratic Party
			Winfield Hancock / William English
			electors					155
			be right				4,444,260
									48.2%
Election results by state
19 states   Garfield / Arthur						19 states   Hancock / English
President of the United States
Before the election Rutherford Hayes Republican Party						Elected James A. Garfield Republican Party

The 1880 presidential election in the United States was largely viewed as a referendum on the republican "détente and reconstruction effort" in the southern states.

In order to keep the promise he made during the 1876 campaign, President Rutherford B. Hayes did not stand for re-election. The Republican Party chose James A. Garfield as its candidate; his running mate was Chester A. Arthur . The Democrats nominated Civil War general Winfield Scott Hancock and William Hayden English as the vice-presidential candidate . They missed their goal of winning several northern states and thus gaining a majority. Although Garfield only had 2,000 more votes than Hancock, he was appointed president thanks to his clear lead on the electoral body . To date, apart from the five cases (most recently in 2016 ) in which the elected president received fewer votes, it is the narrowest popular vote victory in American history.

Result

Results in the counties : In counties colored blue the Democrat Winfield S. Hancock won , in counties colored red James A. Garfield received the majority of the votes. In counties colored green , James B. Weaver got a majority of the votes. The darker the color, the stronger the lead.

candidate	Political party	be right		electors
		number	percent
James A. Garfield	republican	4,446,158	48.27%	214
Winfield S. Hancock	democrat	4,444,260	48.25%	155
James B. Weaver	Greenback	305.997	3.32%	0
Neal S. Dow	Prohibitionist	10.305	0.11%	0
John W. Phelps	Know nothing	707	0.01%	0
total		9,211,058	100%	369

Despite the narrow margin of 2,000 votes (0.02 percent), James Garfield managed to get a clear majority in the Electoral College. He achieved this, among other things, by winning in the so-called Swing States : In New York and Connecticut , the gap between Garfield and Winfield S. Hancock was less than two percent. These two states were still able to win the Democrats in the elections in 1876.

Moreover reached James B. Weaver of the Greenback Party still a relatively good result. He was able to achieve more than ten percent of the votes in Iowa and Texas and also achieved a relative or absolute majority of the votes in some counties. The candidates for the Prohibition Party and the Know-Nothing Party remained basically insignificant and nowhere did they achieve a share of more than 0.4 percent of the vote.

Results in the states

The following table lists the results of the three top-voting candidates (in percent) in each state.

Country	Garfield	Hancock	Weaver	electors
Alabama	37.1	60.0	2.9	10
Arkansas	38.7	56.1	3.8	6th
Colorado	51.3	46.0	2.7	3
Connecticut	50.5	48.5	0.7	6th
Delaware	48.0	51.5	0.4	3
Florida	45.8	54.2	-	4th
Georgia	34.6	65.4	-	11
Illinois	51.1	44.6	4.2	21st
Indiana	49.3	47.9	2.8	15th
Iowa	57.0	32.8	10.0	11
California	48.9	49.0	2.1	6th
Kansas	60.4	29.7	9.9	5
Kentucky	39.9	55.7	4.3	12
Louisiana	37.3	62.3	0.4	8th
Maine	51.5	45.3	3.1	7th
Maryland	45.6	54.4	-	8th
Massachusetts	58.5	39.6	-	13
Michigan	52.5	37.3	9.9	11
Minnesota	62.3	35.4	2.2	5
Mississippi	29.8	64.7	5.0	8th
Missouri	38.7	52.5	8.8	15th
Nebraska	62.9	32.6	4.5	3
Nevada	47.6	57.7	-	3
New Hampshire	51.9	47.2	0.6	5
New Jersey	49.0	49.8	1.1	9
new York	50.3	48.2	1.1	35
North Carolina	48.0	51.6	0.5	10
Ohio	51.7	47.0	0.9	22nd
Oregon	50.5	48.9	0.6	3
Pennsylvania	50.8	46.6	0.4	29
Rhode Island	62.2	36.9	0.8	3
South carolina	34.1	65.5	0.3	7th
Tennessee	44.3	53.3	2.5	12
Texas	24.0	64.7	11.3	8th
Vermont	69.8	28.2	1.9	5
Virginia	39.5	60.5	-	11
West Virginia	41.1	51.0	8.0	5
Wisconsin	54.0	42.9	3.0	10
total	48.3	48.2	3.3	369

• Results of the candidates in the counties
• 

  Garfield

• 

  Hancock

• 

  Others

literature

• Donald Richard Deskins, Hanes Walton, Sherman C. Puckett: Presidential Elections, 1789-2008: County, State, and National Mapping of Election Data. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 2010, ISBN 978-0-472-11697-3 , pp. 219-228 (= Chapter 26: James A. Garfield's Election. ).

Web links

Commons : US Presidential Election 1880  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

• Result of the presidential election

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In Electoral College , Hancock received five votes, Garfield one