United States presidential election, 1792

United States presidential election, 1792

November 2 – December 5, 1792
132 electoral votes of the Electoral College 67 electoral votes needed to win
Nominee George Washington Party Nonpartisan Home state Virginia Electoral vote 132 States carried 15 Popular vote 28,579 Percentage 100%
Presidential election results map. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election George Washington Nonpartisan Elected President George Washington Nonpartisan

The United States presidential election of 1792 was the 2nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Friday, November 2 to Wednesday, December 5, 1792. Incumbent President George Washington was elected to a second term by a unanimous vote in the electoral college. As in the first presidential election, Washington is considered to have run unopposed. Electoral rules of the time, however, required each presidential elector to cast two votes without distinguishing which was for president and which for vice president. The recipient of the most votes would then become president, and the runner-up vice president. Incumbent Vice President John Adams received 77 votes and was also re-elected (Washington received 132 votes, or one from each elector).

This election was the first in which each of the original 13 states appointed electors (in addition to newly added states of Kentucky and Vermont). It was also the only presidential election that was not held exactly four years after the previous election, although part of the previous election was technically held four years prior. The second inauguration was on March 4, 1793 at the Senate Chamber Congress Hall in Philadelphia.

Candidates

In 1792, the President of the United States was still elected by the original method set in place by the U.S. Constitution, which would remain in place until 1804. Under this system, each presidential elector was to vote for two individuals. As today, the person who received the greatest number of votes, and which was also a majority of the electoral college, became president. The vice presidency, however, was given to the candidate who received the second-greatest total of votes. Thus, it is difficult to apply modern-day definitions of presidential candidates to this election. Washington is generally held by historians to have run unopposed. Indeed, the incumbent president enjoyed bipartisan support and received a vote from every elector. The parties were not as united over how to cast their second vote, which would effectively be for vice president, there being no question that Washington would win the top spot. Federalist electors threw their support behind incumbent Vice President John Adams, a hero of the American Revolution. Their Democratic-Republican opponents supported New York Governor George Clinton, who had received a handful of votes in the 1788-89 election. Adams and Clinton were technically candidates for president running against Washington, as the Constitution did not distinguish between the two for electoral purposes. However, as it was generally acknowledged that Washington was the choice of both parties for president, the election quickly became a competition for second-place.

Principal candidate

• George Washington, President of the United States from Virginia

Federalist candidate

• John Adams, Vice President of the United States from Massachusetts

Democratic-Republican candidate

• George Clinton, Governor of New York

• 

  President
  George Washington

• 

  Vice President
  John Adams

• 

  Governor
  George Clinton
  of New York

Born out of the Anti-Federalist faction that had opposed the Constitution in 1788, the Democratic-Republican Party (sometimes simply called "Republicans", although there was no connection to the modern-day Republican Party) was the main opposition to the agenda of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. They had no chance of unseating Washington, but hoped to win the vice presidency by defeating the incumbent, Adams. The Republicans would have preferred to nominate Thomas Jefferson, their ideological leader and Washington's Secretary of State. However, this would have cost them the state of Virginia, as electors were not permitted to vote for two candidates from their home state and Washington was also a Virginian. Instead, they settled on Governor George Clinton, though Jefferson would receive the votes of four Kentucky electors.

Campaign

By 1792, a party division had emerged between Federalists led by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who desired a stronger federal government with a leading role in the economy, and the Democratic-Republicans led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Representative James Madison of Virginia, who favored states' rights and opposed Hamilton's economic program. Madison was at first a Federalist until he opposed the establishment of Hamilton's First Bank of the United States in 1791. He formed the Democratic-Republican Party along with Anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson in 1792.

The elections of 1792 were the first ones in the United States to be contested on anything resembling a partisan basis. In most states, the congressional elections were recognized in some sense as a "struggle between the Treasury department and the republican interest," to use the words of Jefferson strategist John Beckley. In New York, the race for governor was fought along these lines. The candidates were Chief Justice John Jay, a Hamiltonian, and incumbent George Clinton, who was allied with Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans.

Although Washington had been considering retiring, both sides encouraged him to remain in office to bridge factional differences. Washington was supported by practically all sides throughout his presidency and gained more popularity with the passage of the Bill of Rights. However, the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists contested the vice-presidency, with incumbent John Adams as the Federalist nominee and George Clinton as the Democratic-Republican nominee. With some Democratic-Republican electors voting against their nominee George Clinton – voting instead for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr – Adams easily secured re-election.

Results

Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of yellow are for the Federalists and shades of blue are for Anti-Federalists.

At the time, there were 15 states in the United States: the 13 original states and the two recently admitted states of Vermont (March 1791) and Kentucky (June 1792). The Electoral College consisted of 132 electors, with each elector having two votes.

The Electoral College chose Washington unanimously. John Adams was again elected vice-president as the runner-up, this time getting the vote of a majority of electors. George Clinton won the votes of only Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, his native New York, and a single elector in Pennsylvania. Thomas Jefferson won the votes of Kentucky, newly separated from Jefferson's home state of Virginia. A single South Carolina elector voted for Aaron Burr. All five of these candidates would eventually win election to the offices of president or vice president.

Only two states, Pennsylvania and Maryland, cast popular votes. Overall there were 28,579 popular votes cast for presidential electors, a record low turnout for a United States presidential election.

Popular vote

Slate	Popular Vote(a), (b), (c)
	Count	Percentage
Federalist electors	26,088	91.28%
Democratic-Republican electors	2,491	8.72%
Total	28,579	100.0%

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

^(a) Only 6 of the 15 states chose electors by any form of popular vote.
^(b) About 0.88% of the population voted: the 1790 Census counted a total United States population of 3.9 million with 3.2 million free population and 700 thousand slaves
^(c) Those states that did choose electors by popular vote had widely varying restrictions on suffrage via property requirements.

Electoral vote

Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Popular Vote(a)		Electoral Vote(b)
			Count	Percentage
George Washington (Incumbent)	None	Virginia	28,579	100.0%	132
John Adams	Federalist	Massachusetts	—	—	77
George Clinton	Democratic-Republican	New York	—	—	50
Thomas Jefferson	Democratic-Republican	Virginia	—	—	4
Aaron Burr	Democratic-Republican	New York	—	—	1
Total			28,579	100.0%	264
Needed to win					67

Source:

^(a) Popular vote figures are suspect because (1) only 6 of the 15 states chose electors by 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.
^(b) Two electors from Maryland and one elector from Vermont did not cast votes.

Electoral college selection

The Constitution, in Article II, Section 1, provided that the state legislatures should decide the manner in which their Electors were chosen. Different state legislatures chose different methods:

Method of choosing Electors	State(s)
state is divided into electoral districts, with one elector chosen per district by the voters of that district	Kentucky Virginia
each elector chosen by voters statewide	Maryland Pennsylvania
two Congressional districts chose five electors each; the remaining two districts chose three electors each elector chosen by majority vote of voters in Congressional district if an insufficient number of electors are chosen by majority vote from a Congressional district, remaining electors would be appointed by the state legislature	Massachusetts
each elector chosen by majority vote of voters statewide if an insufficient number of electors are chosen by majority vote, runoff is held between the top 2n vote-getters, where n is the number of vacancies remaining	New Hampshire
each elector appointed by the state legislature	(all other states)

See also

• First Party System
• History of the United States (1789–1849)
• United States House of Representatives elections, 1792
• United States Senate elections, 1792 and 1793

Bibliography

• A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825

External links

• Presidential Election of 1792: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• Election of 1792 in Counting the Votes