WI: In 1896, Cleveland ran third-party/independent as a “Gold Democrat”

McKinley wins more easily than in OTL. Even Palmer's performance, poor as it was, almost certainly cost Bryan KY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_United_States_presidential_election_in_Kentucky See Robert F. Durden's comment in The Climax of Populism: The Election of 1896: "the 5,084 votes for Palmer...obviously hurt Bryan there..." https://books.google.com/books?id=ZNkeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA127

There may be a few conservative Democrats who voted for McKinley in OTL who would vote for Cleveland, but the core Republican vote is going to stick with McKinley and this will be more than enough. Cleveland will probably take more votes from conservative Democrats who reluctantly voted for Bryan in OTL (especially in the South in the interests of white supremacy).

Even if we assume that Cleveland does well in New York, he has no hope of taking that state away from McKinley; he carried it by nineteen points in OTL and while Cleveland will no doubt do better than the state than Parker's 1.33 percent, he is very unlikely to get nineteen percent there, and even if he does it won't all be at McKinley's expense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_York

(As has already bee noted, this should be moved to pre-1900.)
 
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He could pull three term?

No. He was just too unpopular after the depression started in 1893 and the core Republican vote would be more than enough to defeat him. And there would still be some conservative Demcorats who would vote for McKinley because they thought a third party ticket couldn't win or because (in the South) it was thought that the Democratic nominee must be supported to assure white supremacy.
 
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