1896 United States presidential election in Louisiana

Summary

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1896 United States presidential election in Louisiana

← 1892 November 3, 1896 1900 →
 
Nominee William Jennings Bryan William McKinley
Party Democratic Republican
Alliance Populist
Home state Nebraska Ohio
Running mate Arthur Sewall
(Democratic)
Thomas E. Watson
(Populist)
Garret Hobart
Electoral vote 8 0
Popular vote 77,175 22,037
Percentage 76.38% 21.81%

Parish Results

President before election

Grover Cleveland
Democratic

Elected President

William McKinley
Republican

The 1896 United States presidential election in Louisiana took place on November 3, 1896. All contemporary 45 states were part of the 1896 United States presidential election. State voters chose eight electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.

Following the overthrow of Reconstruction Republican government, Louisiana, like most of the former Confederacy, established a Democratic-dominated but highly fraudulent political system[1] that would from 1890 be challenged by the rise of the Populist Party due to declining conditions for farmers. Both the Populists and the earlier Greenback Party — who shared key leaders like James B. Weaver — would be supported by the state Republican Party.[2] At the same time, outside of Acadiana — where French Catholic beliefs produced less hardline attitudes towards black voting[3] — intimidation was already either drastically reducing the number of black voters or counting them for Democrats hostile to their interests.[4]

By the 1890s the Louisiana Republican Party was deeply divided between “black and tans” and an insurgent “lily white” faction led by Acadian sugar planters,[5] and the state Democratic Party was divided less deeply between pro- and anti-lottery factions.[6] To avert the fragmented 1892 gubernatorial election, both Republican factions would organize a fusion with the Populist Party, who had run a separate candidate that year. This fusion ticket, headed by sugar planter John Pharr, would be denied according to later analysis by the persistent electoral fraud,[7] and in the immediate aftermath of a potential civil war due to a planned Populist march on Baton Rouge, the Democrats would pass laws to disenfranchise the remaining black voters and also many poor whites[8] — which they would complete during the ensuing gubernatorial term.[9]

Louisiana was won by the Democratic nominees, former U.S. Representative William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska and his running mate Arthur Sewall of Maine, though four electors would cast their vice presidential ballots for Thomas E. Watson. They defeated the Republican nominees, former Ohio Governor William McKinley and his running mate Garret Hobart of New Jersey. Bryan won the state by a landslide margin of 54.57%.

As this was the last election before disfranchising constitutional conventions ended black voting in Acadiana as well as the rest of the state, McKinley did retain overwhelming support in several sugarcane-growing parishes opposed to the anti-tariff Democratic policy.[3]

Bryan would later win Louisiana against McKinley again four years later and would later win it again in 1908 against William Howard Taft.

Results edit

1896 United States presidential election in Louisiana[10]
Party Candidate Votes Percentage Electoral votes
Democratic William Jennings Bryan 77,175 76.38% 4
Populist William Jennings Bryan 0 0.00% 4
Total William Jennings Bryan 77,175 76.38% 8
Republican William McKinley 22,037 21.81% 0
National Democratic John M. Palmer 1,834 1.82% 0
Totals 101,046 100.00% 8
Voter turnout

Results by parish edit

1896 United States presidential election in Louisiana by parish[11]
Parish William Jennings Bryan
Democratic
William McKinley
Republican
John McAuley Palmer
National Democratic
Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # % # %
Acadia 1,082 81.54% 234 17.63% 11 0.83% 848 63.90% 1,327
Ascension 737 49.07% 722 48.07% 43 2.86% 15 1.00% 1,502
Assumption 344 23.66% 1,070 73.59% 40 2.75% -726 -49.93% 1,454
Avoyelles 1,657 88.00% 214 11.36% 12 0.64% 1,443 76.63% 1,883
Bienville 1,491 96.01% 51 3.28% 11 0.71% 1,440 92.72% 1,553
Bossier 1,146 97.28% 22 1.87% 10 0.85% 1,124 95.42% 1,178
Caddo 1,812 83.70% 285 13.16% 68 3.14% 1,527 70.53% 2,165
Calcasieu 2,658 74.27% 891 24.90% 30 0.84% 1,767 49.37% 3,579
Caldwell 610 95.46% 26 4.07% 3 0.47% 584 91.39% 639
Cameron 251 85.37% 37 12.59% 6 2.04% 214 72.79% 294
Catahoula 811 91.33% 74 8.33% 3 0.34% 737 83.00% 888
Claiborne 1,757 95.80% 53 2.89% 24 1.31% 1,704 92.91% 1,834
Concordia 1,085 92.58% 80 6.83% 7 0.60% 1,005 85.75% 1,172
De Soto 1,940 91.55% 153 7.22% 26 1.23% 1,787 84.33% 2,119
East Baton Rouge 1,412 68.38% 595 28.81% 58 2.81% 817 39.56% 2,065
East Carroll 235 52.93% 185 41.67% 24 5.41% 50 11.26% 444
East Feliciana 1,548 98.47% 15 0.95% 9 0.57% 1,533 97.52% 1,572
Franklin 871 94.88% 28 3.05% 19 2.07% 843 91.83% 918
Grant 780 85.15% 123 13.43% 13 1.42% 657 71.72% 916
Iberia 939 70.02% 391 29.16% 11 0.82% 548 40.87% 1,341
Iberville 358 36.68% 600 61.48% 18 1.84% -242 -24.80% 976
Jackson 705 97.24% 18 2.48% 2 0.28% 687 94.76% 725
Jefferson 1,383 79.30% 352 20.18% 9 0.52% 1,031 59.12% 1,744
Lafayette 825 81.68% 167 16.53% 18 1.78% 658 65.15% 1,010
Lafourche 1,129 73.94% 386 25.28% 12 0.79% 743 48.66% 1,527
Lincoln 1,241 95.02% 40 3.06% 25 1.91% 1,201 91.96% 1,306
Livingston 693 90.23% 72 9.38% 3 0.39% 621 80.86% 768
Madison 1,248 92.04% 96 7.08% 12 0.88% 1,152 84.96% 1,356
Morehouse 853 94.15% 46 5.08% 7 0.77% 807 89.07% 906
Natchitoches 1,656 98.10% 23 1.36% 9 0.53% 1,633 96.74% 1,688
Orleans 17,487 65.81% 8,295 31.22% 789 2.97% 9,192 34.59% 26,571
Ouachita 2,712 96.31% 93 3.30% 11 0.39% 2,619 93.00% 2,816
Plaquemines 1,502 73.16% 540 26.30% 11 0.54% 962 46.86% 2,053
Pointe Coupee 773 64.04% 410 33.97% 24 1.99% 363 30.07% 1,207
Rapides 2,600 93.56% 142 5.11% 37 1.33% 2,458 88.45% 2,779
Red River 832 96.41% 26 3.01% 5 0.58% 806 93.40% 863
Richland 706 90.75% 61 7.84% 11 1.41% 645 82.90% 778
Sabine 1,469 97.22% 36 2.38% 6 0.40% 1,433 94.84% 1,511
Saint Bernard 569 89.47% 66 10.38% 1 0.16% 503 79.09% 636
Saint Charles 125 29.90% 282 67.46% 11 2.63% -157 -37.56% 418
Saint Helena 522 88.62% 59 10.02% 8 1.36% 463 78.61% 589
Saint James 210 12.57% 1,417 84.85% 43 2.57% -1,207 -72.28% 1,670
Saint John the Baptist 180 24.32% 539 72.84% 21 2.84% -359 -48.51% 740
Saint Landry 1,786 87.04% 242 11.79% 24 1.17% 1,544 75.24% 2,052
Saint Martin 679 89.11% 76 9.97% 7 0.92% 603 79.13% 762
Saint Mary 591 49.25% 580 48.33% 29 2.42% 11 0.92% 1,200
Saint Tammany 636 60.80% 317 30.31% 93 8.89% 319 30.50% 1,046
Tangipahoa 1,429 76.99% 395 21.28% 32 1.72% 1,034 55.71% 1,856
Tensas 1,108 82.13% 236 17.49% 5 0.37% 872 64.64% 1,349
Terrebonne 597 62.12% 348 36.21% 16 1.66% 249 25.91% 961
Union 1,586 93.46% 86 5.07% 25 1.47% 1,500 88.39% 1,697
Vermilion 702 77.40% 196 21.61% 9 0.99% 506 55.79% 907
Vernon 697 94.57% 35 4.75% 5 0.68% 662 89.82% 737
Washington 1,168 95.11% 48 3.91% 12 0.98% 1,120 91.21% 1,228
Webster 774 88.36% 97 11.07% 5 0.57% 677 77.28% 876
West Baton Rouge 237 43.73% 279 51.48% 26 4.80% -42 -7.75% 542
West Carroll 637 99.84% 1 0.16% 0 0.00% 636 99.69% 638
West Feliciana 919 93.58% 44 4.48% 19 1.93% 875 89.10% 982
Winn 682 93.42% 42 5.75% 6 0.82% 640 87.67% 730
Totals 77,172 76.38% 22,037 21.81% 1,834 1.82% 55,135 54.57% 101,043

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Hair, William Ivy (1969). Bourbonism and agrarian protest; Louisiana politics, 1877-1900. pp. 114–115. ISBN 0807109088.
  2. ^ Kousser, J. Morgan (1975). The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (Second Printing ed.). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. 25. ISBN 0-300-01973-4.
  3. ^ a b Howard, Perry H. (1954). "A New Look at Reconstruction". Political Tendencies in Louisiana, 1812-1952; An Ecological Analysis of Voting Behavior (Thesis). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. pp. 112–113.
  4. ^ Dethloff, Henry C.; Jones, Robert R. (Autumn 1968). "Race Relations in Louisiana, 1877-98". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 9 (4). Louisiana Historical Association: 301–323.
  5. ^ Heersink, Boris; Jenkins, Jeffrey A. Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968. pp. 265–266. ISBN 1107158435.
  6. ^ Hair. Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, pp. 168-169
  7. ^ Kousser. The Shaping of Southern Politics, p. 41
  8. ^ Hair. Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, pp. 261-268
  9. ^ Lewinson, Paul (1965). Race, class and party; a history of Negro suffrage and white politics in the South. New York City: Grosset & Dunlap. p. 81.
  10. ^ "1896 Presidential General Election Results – Louisiana". Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas.
  11. ^ "Popular Vote at the Presidential Election for 1896". Géoelections. (.xlsx file for €30 including full minor party figures)