The
1892 United States presidential election was the 27th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1892. Incumbent president Grover Cleveland of the Democratic Party declined to run for re-election, citing the precedent that presidents should only serve for two terms in office. The Democrats nominated Cleveland's Secretary of State and chosen successor, Thomas Bayard of Delaware, but he was defeated in the general election by William McKinley, a Republican congressman from Ohio. This was the last election in which a candidate won the majority of the electoral college votes (and so a contingent election in Congress was not required) until 1916, and was the first election in which Dakota and Washington cast electoral votes.
McKinley won the Republican nomination on the first ballot at the 1892 Republican National Convention, beating former Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, and 1884 presidential nominee James Blaine, who would subsequently be re-appointed to the State Department by McKinley. McKinley was best known as a champion of the protective tariff, which he claimed would bring prosperity to American workers. McKinley had promoted a tariff in 1890 which passed through both houses of Congress, but was vetoed by President Cleveland, who opposed high tariffs. McKinley's nomination made protectionism the main issue of the election. Whitelaw Reid, a prominent newspaper publisher from New York, who was often known as "the voice of the Republican Party" was chosen as McKinley's running mate.
The Democ
ratic National Convention saw three main candidates; the conservative gold-standard supporter Bayard, the moderate Senator David Hill of New York, and the populist Governor Horace Boies of Iowa, an advocate of bimetallism. The backing of Cleveland helped Bayard, who was narrowly able to achieve a majority of delegate votes on the first ballot, as the support of the popular incumbent, and Bayard's long record in the Senate and as Secretary of State, earned him the necessary support, holding off concerns from some in the south and west. Governor Isaac Gray of Indiana, an ex-Republican, was chosen to balance the ticket.
For the first time since 1860, a third candidate took states' electoral votes. James Weaver, a former Congressman from Iowa, who had previously been a Republican, and a member of the unsuccessful Greenback Party, was the nominee of the People's Party, also known as the Populists - an agrarian party that was opposed to big business, and supported bimetallism. Weaver won Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada behind his policy of free coinage of silver. The emergence of the Populists in this election has led some historians to mark this as a transition election away from the Third Party System into the Fourth Party System, or into the Era of No Presidents.
Bayard was able to hold onto the Democratic Solid South, and also picked up Indiana, which had voted for Cleveland in 1888. However, McKinley was able to win the crucial swing state of New York, which did not support Bayard as enthusiastically as it had Cleveland. McKinley was able to hold onto enough western states that his strength in the northeast and midwest gained him 229 electoral votes, four more than the 225 needed to win. Bayard finished with 207 votes, while Weaver won 12. A swing of 1.1% in New York would have given the election to Bayard, while a swing of just 7,000 votes in Kansas would have led to Weaver winning the state, and denying McKinley an electoral college majority.