Talk:1796 United States presidential election

North Carolina electoral college
The map used here follows the common procedure of illustrating the southern Federalist Electors along the coast. In North Carolina, Adams won the Fayetteville District, which is inland. The Elector from that district was re-elected in 1800 and cast a second vote for Adams. Chronicler3 13:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC) Chronicler3

Also, this NC Elector voted for Adams and Thomas Pinckney. It was the Jefferson Electors that scattered many of their votes among Federalist candidates for Vice President. Source: The North Carolina Electoral Vote: The People and the Process Behind the Vote (Raleigh: N.C. Secretary of State, 1988). Chronicler3 13:42, 8 February 2006 (UTC) Chronicler3

I don't believe that the map, which was pulled from the National Atlas, treats the split of colors within a state as geographically significant; rather, it is just supposed to be proportional in area to the split of votes.

Thank you very much for the (cited!) information about the NC elector. I incorporated it into the derivation (see next topic) and it's now in the main article. This leaves Wikipedia with only 15 tickets to figure out.

— DLJessup (talk) 04:15, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Derivation of the ticket pairings
Just to demonstrate how the ticket pairings were found:

According to the National Archives, here's the state-by-state electoral vote in 1796:

Now, if we look at Connecticut, we find that there are 9 electors and 9 votes for John Adams. This means that each elector voted for Adams and one of the other candidates; in this case, there were 4 Adams/Pinckney tickets and 5 Adams/Clinton tickets. This simple analysis can be applied to all of the states except MD, NC, PA, and VA. Breaking up all of the other states by ticket, we get:

Now then, in Pennsylvania, there are only 15 electors, but Jefferson received 14 votes and Burr received 13, for a total of 27 votes. If we give 15 of these 27 votes to each elector, that leaves 12 votes which must be the second vote of the elector. In other words, we know that 12 electors in Pennsylvania voted for a Jefferson/Burr ticket. A similar analysis allows us to find some additional tickets in MD, NC, PA, and VA:

Now, Chronicler3 told us above that there was an Adams/Pinckney elector in North Carolina, citing. This leaves 4 electors in North Carolina and 4 votes for Jefferson, so we can derive all of the North Carolina tickets:

You can almost see now where the minimum and maximum counts come from: for any ticket, you take the number of electors in that ticket's column under “Other states” as a minimum (or 0 if there is no column), and you add the smaller of the ticket's members in each of the MD, PA, and VA columns to get the maximum. There's just one catch: in Virginia, there are 4 votes for Jefferson and 1 vote for Washington, or 5 votes for Virginians. Constitutionally, no Virginia elector was allowed to vote for two Virginians. Thus, each Virginia elector voted for one Virginian and one non-Virginian. Hence, you can only add in the Virginia column if one member of the ticket is a Virginian and one a non-Virginian.

— DLJessup (talk) 04:07, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't follow the last stage of this calculation. Start with Virginia. There are 5 remaining electors, and 4 of them voted for Jefferson. Obviously, the fifth must have been the one who voted for Washington (since, as pointed out, a Virginia elector could not legally vote for both Jefferson and Washington). From the chart on the main page, we find that Jessup, or whoever calculated it, has the Washington elector's other vote be for Adams (the North Carolina Washington elector having given his other vote to Jefferson). That leaves the remaining for votes as the other choices of the four Jefferson electors. But one of those remaining four votes is for T. Pinckney, and the list identifies only 9 votes for the Jefferson/Pinckney ticket, and it's already allocated eight of those from South Carolina and the other from Pennsylvania. If this is the case there must have been 10 Jefferson/Pinckney votes altogether. Assuming that the two remaining Pennsylvania votes are Adams/Pinckney and Jefferson/Burr, which seems like a logical assumption, the closest match I can make with the chart from the remaining Maryland votes is to allocate 3 Jefferson/Burr, 3 Adams/Pinckney, and 2 Adams/Henry.

That would mean the chart on the main page should be corrected by changing the 2 Jefferson/Henry votes to Adams/Henry, subtracting 1 Adams/Pinckney vote for a total of 49, and adding a Jefferson/Pinckney vote for a total of 10. One more change needs to be made to get the totals right. Jessup says that there's an Adams/Pinckney elector in North Carolina. If this means an Adams/Thomas Pinckney elector, then the Adams/C.C. Pinckney vote in the chart on the main page needs to be changed to Jefferson/C.C. Pinckney.

And all this follows from the assumption that the Washington elector from Virginia gave his other vote to John Adams. If he gave it to Sam Adams, Burr, Clinton, or Thomas Pinckney instead, that requires a different calculation.

At any rate, I'm sure the chart on the main page as it currently stands is wrong, but I lack the moxie, and the surety of the Washington/Adams vote in Virginia, to change it. Kalimac (talk) 06:02, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
 * this is all speculation and forbidden Original Research WP:OR, with no basis in or citations to any reliable secondary source. (It's also flawed as in Virginia). Rjensen (talk) 10:20, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Why didn't GW run again?
Did GW's urge to retire override the requests to stay in, or what? Given that he was basically unanimous the first two times, it's probably safe to assume that he would have been elected again if he'd run again.

Since it looks like the parties were basically manipulating the vote, I've modified the text to say so explicitly. If this is incorrect or misleading, then slap my hand and change it back... --Scott McNay 05:21, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

It because he was selfish and did not want any one else to have a chance peolpe voted for him twice I think thats the reason he lost the third time because he got big headed during his second term —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.167.90.229 (talk) 01:04, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Possible Correction
In the article, it states that Adams/Jefferson were the only President and Vice-President from different parties. However, Andrew Johnson was a Democrat and Abraham Lincoln a Republican. Although they ran under a different name, I believe they called themselves the Union party, no such party actually existed and history books today list Lincoln as a Republican and Johnson as a Democrat. I hesitate to change the actual page (I could spend my life editing these pages) but perhaps I will do so later if no one else does.

24.159.34.49 03:48, 16 August 2007 (UTC) dzannucci

Please do. This was my thought as well. 70.88.213.74 (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I third this motion. 25 May 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.14.240.180 (talk) 21:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

If Adams-Calhoun and Lincoln-Johnson both warrant explanations of why they don't count as "president and vice-president from different parties" then perhaps Harrison-Tyler does as well. Although Tyler was officially a Whig as vice-president, it turned out he didn't share the party's views and he was officially expelled from the party a few months into his presidency

More generally, I would question the value of claims like this -- they are especially popular with regard to U.S. presidents -- which are technically true but require multiple explanations to why they initially seem false. What is the purpose of these Wikipedia articles? Is it to display clever presidential trivia which will win you bar bets, or is it to enlighten the reader about the true nature of the presidency? When one reads "For the only time in United States history, the President and Vice President were from different parties", the impression one gets is that it must be very rare for the president and vice-president to be politically opposed, but that turns out to be rather less rare once you apply the strict construction of "from different parties". Does that not make it a sentence which misleads more than it informs? Iglew (talk) 22:14, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

the myth of only two parties
It would be nice if the graphic reflected the table, rather than showing that the votes for Adams and Jefferson add up to the "total". —Tamfang 08:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with this sentiment, though it'd be hard to do. Bayad27 (talk) 22:01, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Connecticut Western Reserve
The map should show that the Connecticut Western Reserve still belonged to Connecticut at the time. Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty 21:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Change to 'Candidates' Section
The "candidates" section of this article makes a distinction between presidential and vice-presidential candidates from each party. In reality, the Constitution mandated that each elector would cast two votes for president. Thus, there were no candidates for v.p.: Burr, Pinckney, etc. were running for president alongside Jefferson and Adams, with the understanding that one elector would cast their votes for someone else to ensure they were the runner up (who at that time became vice president). I propose a united "candidates" section which properly classifies all of the candidates as "presidential candidates", perhaps with a note explaining the assumed intention of the parties.

The "candidates" section of this article divides the candidates into presidential and vice-presidential nominees. In reality, there was no such distinction made by the Constitution at the time: electors cast two votes for president, with the runner-up becoming vice president. Thus, the "vice presidential candidates" section is erroneous and confusing, especially considering the article's explanation of the electoral system of the time.

I propose a united "Candidates" section properly listing all candidates contesting the office of president. Whatever is assumed about the electors' intents (and I should note that there were several Federalist electors intended Pinckney, not Adams, to be elected president, which makes his classification as a vice presidential candidate confusing at best), this is the system of the time and it we need to reflect this in the article. It would probably be a good idea to explain the general historical consensus as to the intent of the two parties, but the layout of the article needs to convey how the president was actually elected, not on assumptions about the intent of people who have been dead for 200 years.

I will wait a few days to see if there are any objections and then make the change. Nathaniel Greene (talk) 17:07, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Change to map: Adams County, Pennsylvania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PresidentialCounty1796.gif

Adams County, Pennsylvania, was created from York County in 1800. In the map file for the Election of 1796 (and earlier), Adams County should not be a blank space. It should be merged into York County, to its immediate east. See the Adams County, Pennsylvania Wikipedia page for confirmation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.5.146.231 (talk) 05:25, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Negative campaigning
Do you think it'd be appropriate to insert a blurb or two about the somewhat infamous negative campaigning that took place during this election (wherein Jefferson alleged, in print, that Adams was a hermaphrodite)?--Kooky (talk) 09:23, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Electoral College
Could we change the colors of the Electoral map at the to of the poge, as me, and other color-blind people, have problems distinguishing between the colors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HeroBobGamer (talk • contribs) 22:43, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on United States presidential election, 1796. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130914141726/http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/presidential/electoral.html to http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/presidential/electoral.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 01:40, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Fixed an error
Just Fixed an error Wtaggart (talk) 08:59, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Map colours
The map is a nightmare for the colour blind. I cannot tell the difference between the green and "burnt orange" states. Can the colours be changed to make this more accessible? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.173.23.62 (talk) 14:38, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Charles Pinckney

2600:1700:B570:52B0:5CAD:4690:677C:9F45 (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Reliable popular vote figures from before 1824 are not available
I find it quite bizarre that Wikipedia has actually claimed popular vote figures in presidential elections from before 1824, likely fudged from another website. I have deleted dubious popular vote references from the 1820 and 1816 elections. A request for comment would be very helpful. Classicalfan626 (talk) 23:40, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Depiction of Maine in the Electoral Map
The depiction of the border of the part of Massachusetts that is now Maine is incorrectly depicted as the modern border. It is depicted correctly from 1804 onward, gaining its modern shape in 1844 after the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that ended the Aroostook War. I encourage someone who is more skilled and familiar with these maps attempt to fix this. I know it's difficult given the weird borders of the states and territories in these early elections. Discuss the issue here. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:46, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

What the voters in the popular vote saw
I find "Instead of the name of the presidential candidates, voters would see the name of an elector." w/r to the popular vote. Is the implementation of candidates'-names-on-ballot handled on wikipedia? Please advise. (Also, when voters saw the elector name, wax there any case of elector death?).

Presumably, using candidates' names was in place by 1912. That year, President Taft and Vice President Sherman ran for re-election (they would lose), and Sherman died on October 30. Wikipedia says it was too late to replace Sherman on the ballot, and it was announced that Nicholas Butler would get the electoral votes that would have been cast for Sherman. . Carlm0404 (talk) 20:02, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

What's the meaning of this?
I find "If any two of the three Adams electors in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina had voted with the rest of their states, it would have flipped the election." I don't understand what "the rest of their states" means (notice we here are not seeing here whom the other vote from each of those 3 electors was for). I do see that flipping 2 of those 3 electoral votes from Adams to Jefferson would have switched Adams to Vice President and Jefferson to President; 70 is seen as the minimum for majority.

As I write this, it occurs to me that we need to say what "Adams" by itself means: John Adams. This is because Samuel Adams received some electoral votes. Carlm0404 (talk) 20:28, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Sources for the popular vote in 1796
Looking over the sixteen-year history of this talk page, the popular vote figures for 1796 have been a subject of prolonged debate, and for good reason: the totals for Adams and Jefferson given in the results table do not match any source cited in this article. Two sources are given for the pv data that appears in the results table: Dubin's United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860 and Lampi's A New Nation Votes. However,  neither  Dubin nor Lampi calculates the nationwide popular vote for 1796, and simply adding up the votes for the most popular Adams and Jefferson electors in each state yields very different figures from those featured in the infobox and in the results table. Somebody has apparently attempted to do this in the "results by state" section, and these numbers are wildly divergent from the national results immediately above.

The nationwide popular vote for president is notoriously difficult to calculate for elections prior to 1824, but at the very least this article ought to (a) be consistent and (b) cite some source for the pv data it presents. After scouring Google for a few hours, the best I have come up with is votearchive.com, which uses Lampi's research as a basis for calculating the national vote for Adams and Jefferson in this election. Their math shows Jefferson running ahead of Adams by ~500 votes, which is why I bring it up here first, but it does appear that their research is solid and based on the same sources which Wikipedia claims to use for the current (inaccurate) table.

(These are, of course, incomplete figures, and votearchive does not attempt to incorporate surviving pv data from Massachusetts, possibly because the legislature had the final choice of electors in that state — Lampi reports the popular vote in Massachusetts by electoral district, but does not assign party labels to the candidates. Since Adams won the electoral vote of Massachusetts, whether or not you include those votes obviously has an impact on the national total.)

I wanted to put this here in case anyone knows of any other sources dealing with the popular vote in 1796, or if Lampi and the folks at Votearchive.com are the best we have, but if no-one else has anything to add I would recommend updating this article to reflect the publicly available scholarship on this topic. Nathaniel Greene (talk) 22:29, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Faithless electors
Faithless_elector mentions Samuel Miles of Pennsylvania, who voted for Jefferson instead of Adams, and says that 18 electors voted for Adams as pledged, but refused to vote for Pinckney. I count 5 from Connecticut, 2 from Maryland, 3 from Massachusetts. I suggest that the Faithless Electors article should also mention the Maryland elector who voted for both Adams and Jefferson. Do we even know whether that elector was pledged to vote for Adams and Pinckney or for Jefferson and Burr? Given that John Henry was a Federalist, I suggest that it is more likely than not that 6 electors were pledged to Adams and Pinckney, that 2 of them voted for Henry rather than Pinckney, that 4 electors were pledged for Jefferson and Burr, and that one of them voted for Adams rather than Burr. But I realise that that is speculation and Original Research. Should it also mention the 4 Georgia electors who voted for George Clinton rather than Burr, the 5 North Carolina electors who voted for a combination of James Iredell, George Washington and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney rather than Burr, the 8 South Carolina electors who voted for Pinckney rather than Burr and the 19 Virginia electors who voted for a combination of Samuel Adams, George Clinton and George Washington rather than Burr? Alekksandr (talk) 18:55, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Regarding which electors were and were not pledged,
 * the nine Connecticut electors were chosen by the state legislature. Perhaps the five who did not vote for Pinckney were not defying the party line, but trying to ensure that he would not tie with Adams, as was to happen in 1800. But arranging for one of them to vote for John Jay would have done just as well.


 * the four Georgia electors were chosen by popular vote. Is it known whether they had pledged to their electorate regarding whom they would vote for as VP?


 * the ten Maryland electors were chosen by popular vote, including the one who voted for Adams and Jefferson. Presumably the six who voted for John Adams but not Thomas Jefferson were elected on the Federalist ticket, and the three voted for Thomas Jefferson but not John Adams were elected on the Democratic-Republican ticket. Is it known how the final elector, who voted for both Adams and Jefferson, was pledged to vote? I.e. is it known whether the election produced seven Federalist electors and three Democratic-Republican electors, or six Federalist electors and four Democratic-Republican electors? I.e. is it known on which ticket the ten men listed at List_of_1796_United_States_presidential_electors were elected? Maryland%27s_2nd_congressional_district says that Gabriel Duvall was a D-R. Maryland%27s_6th_congressional_district says likewise of John Archer. 1789_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Maryland says that, in 1789, John Done was an Anti-Administration candidate (the forerunners of the D-Rs.Alekksandr (talk) 22:15, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I have now done some more research as appears at List_of_1796_United_States_presidential_electors. 7 electors were pledged to Adams and Pinckney and 3 electors were pledged to Jefferson and Burr. To answer the questions that I asked above, (1) It is known that the election produced seven Federalist electors and three Democratic-Republican electors. (2) It is known on which ticket the ten men listed at List_of_1796_United_States_presidential_electors were elected. (3) John Done evolved from being an Anti-Administration congressional candidate in 1789 to being a Federalist elector in 1796.Alekksandr (talk) 15:16, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Running mate in the infobox
It seems inaccurate to have Pinckney and Burr as running mates in the infobox, since there was no such thing as a President-Vice President ticket yet. Should we remove this attribute from the infobox? BoleroGoleador (talk) 02:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)