Talk:1836 United States presidential election

Election results table

How about a table border = 1, instead of 5? I think the thinner border is less imposing/distracting. Perhaps you could add that to your HTML script, Rob? maveric149

sure, I'll get that in the next batch of changes -- user:RobLa

President:	Martin Van Buren [D]
Main Opponent:	William Henry Harrison [W]
Electoral Vote:	Winner: 170	Main Opponent: 73	Total/Majority: 294/148
Popular Vote:	Winner: 762,678	Main Opponent: 735,651
Votes for Others:	Hugh L. White (26), Daniel Webster (14), William P. Mangum (11).
Vice President:	Richard M. Johnson (147)
V.P. Opponents:	Francis Granger (77), John Tyler (47), William Smith (23)
Notes:	The election for Vice President was decided in the Senate, with Johnson receiving 33 votes and Granger receiving 17 votes.
Party key: [D] = Democrat [D-LR] = Democrat-Liberal Republican [D-P] = Democrat-Populist [D-R] = Democrat-Republican [F] = Federalist [N-R] = National-Republican [P] = Progressive [R] = Republican [W] = Whig
Source: U.S. Office of the Federal Register

See also: President of the United States, U.S. presidential election, 1836

Change it!

Change this page to match the format of the other election pages, that format is superior! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.228.220.93 (talk) 14:39, 24 September 2004 (UTC)

Senate vote

According to 26 Senate Journal 230 that the Senate vote was 33 – 16, not 33 – 17; some Senator failed to cast a ballot. I will make this change to the text momentarily. — DLJessup 07:47, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, according to the list here, both South Carolina senators also failed to cast a ballot. I suppose the "Some Senator" you alluded to was Hugh Lawson White. Perfectly understandable, I think. --Paul Pieniezny (talk) 13:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Tyler's party in 1836

LB-Versender just made a change in John Tyler's party alignment, changing him from a Democrat to a Whig. That particular datum has been in this article since October 17, 2004. I was skeptical of a change to such a long-standing datum, especially since LB-Versender used the Wikipedia article on John Tyler as his citation for the change, and that article said nothing about John Tyler's party alignment in 1836. (I also knew that Tyler was a former Democrat who was a lukewarm Whig and who would get drummed out of the party in 1841. It was entirely plausible that Tyler would be a Democrat in 1836 and a Whig in 1840.)

After doing some research, I believe that LB-Versender's change was correct, however. First of all, looking at the “Breakdown by ticket” section, every time a state's electors voted for Tyler, they voted for a Whig for President. (The breakdown by ticket data is backed up by the National Archive's state-by-state breakdown of electoral votes.) By this point in United States history, split-party tickets were an anomaly. Additionally, on page 36 of Michael F. Holt's The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (ISBN 0195055446), it is mentioned that Tyler was forced to resign his Senate seat when the Democrats retook the Virginia legislature and on page 60, Tyler is referred to as one of the Whig party's founders.

— DLJessup (talk) 14:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Same problem as the Lincoln page

We need to fix this. The fourth candidate is listed as getting the most electoral votes, along with the actual winner.J'onn J'onzz (talk) 22:37, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Lead section/infobox sizing issues

I'm using Mozilla - and it may be just me - but on my screen, the unusual size of the infobox featuring the candidates results in a very narrow lead section that doesn't look too spectacular. Would it be possible to go with a new infobox design that opts for height while sacrificing width, instead of the other way around (which is, as I say, rather atypical for Wikipedia and "A4" size pages in general). However, I'm not a layout "aficionado" by any means, so do what thou wilt :P. Peace :) Psychonavigation (talk) 02:16, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Michigan

I'm confused about something here. According to the article on Michigan, Michigan was admitted on January 26, 1837. This would've been after the election, so how did Michigan cast electoral votes if it would've been a territory at the time? XinaNicole (talk) 05:33, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Never mind ... just noticed the section on "disputes" XinaNicole (talk) 05:46, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

whig strategy, control of house of representatives

It is implied in this article that the House of Representatives would have chosen a Whig candidate if Van Buren didn't win a majority of electoral votes. Elsewhere on the www, I have seen it explicitly stated that the HoR was controlled by the Whigs. However, it was actually controlled by the Jacksons/Democratic party (http://artandhistory.house.gov/house_history/index.aspx). It seems almost certain they would have chosen Van Buren, anyway. Well, it does to me at least, but I'm not an expert. -- ElApuesto (talk) 17:19, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Indeed - it looks like a pretty enormous Democratic majority based on 24th United States Congress - 139 Democrats and 102 Whigs, Anti-Masons, and Nullifiers. However, looking at it by state, Democrats look to have had majorities in Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (12 states), their opponents in Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont (10 states), with Maryland, Mississippi, and Missouri, divided evenly (3 states). To be elected by the House, you needed 13 states. Of course, the Whig congressman in Mississippi died in July and was replaced by a Democrat in December, which gave Van Buren what he would have needed. But if that hadn't happened, you'd likely have a situation where Van Buren gets 12 states, Harrison gets 6 (Delaware, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont), and White gets 4 (Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee). But even a deadlock doesn't help the Whigs - Johnson, elected VP by the Senate, would then have become president. So they would need a) to agree themselves between Harrison and White (and it's extremely unlikely the South Carolinians, who might not even have accepted White, would accept Harrison, or that the New Englanders would be enthusiastic about White); and b) persuade Democratic congressmen in Maryland, Missouri, and Mississippi to at least absent themselves to allow a Whig majority. Hard to see that happening. Maybe the plan was to have the electors settle on a candidate after being elected due to supposed support for more popular favorite sons. john k (talk) 17:37, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Looking for actual sources on this issue, this article suggests that in fact there was no Whig strategy at all, and certainly not one to throw the election to the House. What happened was just that the Southern opponents of Jackson would not agree to a Whig candidate, and instead nominated the basically Democratic White, and then the northerners concentrated around Harrison as a compromise candidate who could unite erstwhile National Republicans and Anti-Masons. Once that situation had arisen, though, the opposition did hope to deny Van Buren an electoral college majority and then somehow win, but it's not clear how - apparently there was some thought of all the electors settling on Harrison, but it's unclear if that would work out. McCormick also has a different take on the House than our tally in 24th Congress would suggest, giving Van Buren 10 majorities and the opposition 11, and notes that it's impossible to say who would have come out the victor, as it's unclear whether representatives would have felt constrained to vote for the winner in their state, among other things. The idea of a strategy to throw the election to the House seems to have been more a Democratic fear than a Whig strategy - they seemed to believe that Biddle and the bankers would buy the presidency for Harrison if it came to that. john k (talk) 18:40, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

On a different, but related, note: The article does open claiming that the multi-candidate Whig party nominees were some clever strategy. But further on, the article points out that the Whigs could not all agree on one ticket due to the increasing rifts in politics re slavery. Not being able to agree is not a strategy in the normal sense of that word! I think john k's comment, above, points to this as well. I'm just pointing out the failure of logic within a single article.

I think it was half-and-half. It was a strategy in that if the party organization couldn't settle on a candidate, getting the voters to go along was likely a lost cause. I'm guessing that it was a byproduct of Webster being in the mix to start with as much as anything (Webster was going to "bounce" in the South). But basically the "strategy" was probably best phrased as "We can't work this out now, so let's deal with it once the votes come in". Probably the better question is whether, should they have gotten a majority overall, there would have been an effort to corral the electors to either one Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate in December (particularly as the Dems were still well-positioned in the House/Senate)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.126.206 (talk) 06:10, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Webster? Magnum?

Is there a reason Webster and Magnum are not in the infobox? Both received electoral votes and, according to the article, were legitimate candidates. Webster received 3% of the popular vote, which was more than Strom Thurmond in 1948. I am assuming the fact that the electors for Magnum were selected by the SC state legislature is the reason he is not included, but that is dubious reasoning at best. Is there any reason they should not be listed?Nathaniel Greene (talk) 23:47, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Cartograph displays Mangum as an Independent, while the text and tables display him as Whig. Which is it? For comparison, I did a google search, and got mainly that Mangum was Whig.Henryxmartin (talk) 09:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Spelling

Please can someone, fortunate enough to know how to, correct the spelling of "Mangum" where it is written beside the graphic of the USA with variously colored states? Harfarhs (talk) 22:54, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

 Done File:ElectoralCollege1836.svg was fixed by Rrostrom back in June 2016. YBG (talk) 00:22, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Senate Vote

looks like 49 senators voted out 52 senate seats any idea what happened to the other 3 ?

• Too wild a night in the tavern the night before? (Joking aside, might have been Democrats who had the same issue that the VA electors did.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.126.206 (talk) 06:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

AK and MI

Might be worth mentioning that this was the first presidential election in which Arkansas and Michigan voted.SecretName101 (talk) 09:27, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Control of the House (in discussion of a possible contingent election)

I know the Democrats retained control of the House (in terms of seat count), but did they control a majority of the delegations? With the scattered House election schedule, I'm not sure if they would have had control of enough delegations to pack Van Buren through. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.126.206 (talk) 06:02, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

New lead images

We should change the lead images to photographs. This was an election that had very minimal use of photography, but enough so that photographs for all the major candidates (Except for Hugh L. White, but for him, I just used a B&W engraving.) can be obtained. Here are my proposals. Thoughts? The Image Editor (talk) 22:45, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

Martin Van Buren

William Henry Harrison

Hugh L. White (engraving)

Daniel Webster

Willie P. Mangum

Mangum

In the past (and the current state by state results) it displays Mangum as having received 0 popular votes as he only ran in South Carolina, which lacked the popular vote; a recent edit put Mangum as receiving 0.2% of the popular vote; does anyone have a source on this? PeacockShah (talk) 02:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)