1880 United States presidential election information
24th quadrennial U.S. presidential election
1880 United States presidential election
← 1876
November 2, 1880
1884 →
369 members of the Electoral College 185 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout
78% [1] 4.6 pp
Nominee
James A. Garfield
Winfield Scott Hancock
Party
Republican
Democratic
Home state
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Running mate
Chester A. Arthur
William H. English
Electoral vote
214
155
States carried
19
19
Popular vote
4,446,158
4,444,260
Percentage
48.32%
48.21%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes those won by Garfield/Arthur, blue denotes states won by Hancock/English. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election
Rutherford B. Hayes
Republican
Elected President
James A. Garfield
Republican
The 1880 United States presidential election was the 24th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1880, in which Republican nominee James A. Garfield defeated Winfield Scott Hancock of the Democratic Party. The voter turnout rate was one of the highest in the nation's history. Garfield was assassinated during his first year in office, and he was succeeded by his vice president, Chester A. Arthur.
Incumbent President Rutherford B. Hayes did not seek re-election. After the longest convention in the party's history, the factionalized Republicans chose Representative Garfield of Ohio as their standard-bearer. The Democratic Party chose General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania as their nominee. The dominance of the two major parties began to fray as an upstart left-wing party, the Greenback Party, nominated another Civil War general for president, Iowa Congressman James B. Weaver. In a campaign fought mainly over issues of Civil War loyalties, tariffs, and Chinese immigration, Garfield narrowly won both the electoral and popular vote. He and Hancock each took just over 48 percent of the popular vote, while Weaver and two other minor candidates, Neal Dow and John W. Phelps, together made up the remainder.
In the end, the popular vote totals of the two main candidates were separated by 1,898 votes (0.11%), the smallest victory in the national popular vote ever recorded. In the electoral college, however, Garfield's victory was much larger; he won the tipping point state of New York by 21,033 votes (1.91%). Hancock's sweep of the Southern states was not enough for victory, but it cemented his party's dominance of the region for generations.
This was the last of six consecutive presidential election victories for the Republican Party. It was also the first in which people in every state were able to vote directly for presidential electors.[a]
^Peskin 1980, p. 176.
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4.6 pp
