United States presidential election, 1796

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Presidential electoral votes by state.
Because electors couldn't distinguish between their presidential and vice presidential choices until the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, the map above assumes that the presidential votes are exactly the votes for Adams or Jefferson. This leads to an anomaly: Maryland is listed as having cast 7 Federalist votes and 4 Republican votes when Maryland had only 10 electors. The problem is that at least one Maryland elector cast his ballot for a Jefferson-Adams ticket.

The United States presidential election of 1796 was the first contested American presidential election and the first one to elect a President and Vice-President from opposing tickets, exposing potential flaws in the original Electoral College system.

Incumbent Vice President John Adams was a candidate for the presidency on the Federalist Party ticket with Thomas Pinckney as his running mate. Although Adams won, his opponent, Thomas Jefferson on the (Democratic) Republican ticket received more votes than Pinckney and was elected Vice-President.

General election

Campaign

Unlike the previous elections where the outcome had been a foregone conclusion, both sides campaigned heavily in the states to get favorable electors chosen. The debate was an acrimonious one, with Federalists tying the Republicans to the violent revolutions in France and the Republicans accusing the Federalists of favoring monarchism and aristocracy. In foreign policy, the Republicans denounced the Federalists over Jay's Treaty, perceived as too favorable to Britain, while the French ambassador embarrassed the Republicans by publicly backing them and attacking the Federalists right before the election.

Results

Under the system then in place, Electors had two votes, but both were for President; the runner-up in the presidential race was elected Vice President. Each party intended to get around this by having some of their Electors cast one vote for the intended presidential candidate and one vote for somebody besides the intended vice presidential candidate, leaving their vice presidential candidate a few votes shy of their presidential candidate. Unfortunately, these schemes were complicated by several factors:

• All electoral votes were cast on the same day, and communications between states were extremely slow at that time, making it very difficult to coordinate which Electors were to tank their Vice Presidential votes.
• There were rumors that southern Electors pledged to Jefferson were coerced by Alexander Hamilton to give their second vote to Pinckney in hope of electing him President instead of Adams. Indeed, as it turned out, all eight South Carolina Electors as well as at least one Pennsylvania Elector cast ballots for both Jefferson and Pinckney.

Source (Popular Vote): [U.S. President National Vote]. [Our Campaigns]. (February 11, 2006).

Source (Electoral Vote): [Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996]. [Official website of the National Archives]. (July 30, 2005).

^(a) Popular vote figures are suspect because (1) only 9 of the 16 states used any form of popular vote, (2) pre-Twelfth Amendment electoral vote rules obscure the intentions of the voters, and (3) those states that did choose electors by popular vote often restricted the vote via property requirements.

Breakdown by ticket

References

Books

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Web references

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