The very first New York Times election map

Matthew Ericson, the deputy graphics designer at the New York Times, found the first election map printed in the New York Times, printed a day after the election on Wednesday, November 4, 1896. Holy crap. The states in white went for Republican William McKinley (M’Kinley), while the states in black went for Democrat William Jennings Bryan.

Interstingly:

The speed with which the results made it into print boggles the mind given the technology of the day (especially considering that in the last few elections in the 2000s, with all of the technology available to us, there have been a number of states that we haven’t been able to call in the Wednesday paper).

I, for one, love the fact that it’s the 1896 election, of all presidential elections. It was a quite interesting and important election. It was the first election in decades that the Republican won the popular vote, and it solidified the Republican Party as the party of dominance until 1932 (with the exception, of course, of Wilson’s 1913-1921 term, which happened as a result of Republicans Taft and Roosevelt splitting the vote in 1912).

The whole thing was over the gold standard (sound familiar?): Republicans wanted to keep it, while Democrats cited a massive depression (Panic of 1893) as reason to leave it for a freer standard based on silver. Business leaders were scared of the Democrats’ proposals, and flooded the McKinely campaign with cash: as percent of GDP, about three billion dollars in today’s money. Wildly outspent, Bryan became the first candidate to travel the country and speak directly to voters. Some Democrats, angered by the takeover of their party by the silver advocates and afraid of Bryan’s appeals to end the gold standard, split from the party, starting the National Democratic Party (the Gold Democrats). Their quixotic third-party bid seemed to only have an effect on Kentucky’s results, but they did tend to return to the Democratic Party, and many of them were helpful in Wilson’s ascendancy to the Oval Office.

Related posts:

1. Wisconsin State Sen. Dan Kapanke hopes government workers sleep through Election Day
2. Join us on Election Night for “Live-Blogging Towards Bethlehem”
3. A handy election flowchart