1892 United States presidential election in North Dakota

1892 United States presidential election in North Dakota

November 8, 1892 1896 →
 
Nominee James B. Weaver Benjamin Harrison Grover Cleveland
Party Populist Republican Democratic
Home state Iowa Indiana New York
Running mate James G. Field Whitelaw Reid Adlai Stevenson I
Electoral vote 1 1 1
Popular vote 17,700 17,519 Not on ballot
Percentage 49.01% 48.50% N/A

County Results

President before election

Benjamin Harrison
Republican

Elected President

Grover Cleveland
Democratic

The 1892 United States presidential election in North Dakota took place on November 8, 1892. As North Dakota had been admitted to the Union as the 39th state on November 2, 1889, this was the first presidential election in which North Dakota cast electoral votes. All contemporary 44 states were part of the 1892 United States presidential election. Voters chose three electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.

In 1892, the Populist nominees, James B. Weaver of Iowa and his running mate James G. Field of Virginia, won a plurality of the votes of North Dakota. However, the state Democratic Party also endorsed the Weaver/Field ticket in exchange for the Populists supporting Democratic candidates for local offices, creating a fusion ticket.[1] In North Dakota, Weaver and Field's opponents were the Republican nominees, incumbent President Benjamin Harrison of Indiana and his running mate Whitelaw Reid of New York.

As was often the case in this era, voters in North Dakota had to choose electors individually rather than as a slate.[2]While it was a Democratic-Populist elector who earned the most votes with 17,700, the 17,519 recorded by the top Republican elector was enough to edge out the bottom-finishing Fusion elector for third place overall. This created a split delegation of electors. With the overall national result not in doubt, the two Fusion electors ultimately split their votes (one for Weaver one and for Democratic president-elect Grover Cleveland, who was not separately on the ballot) while the Republican elector duly voted for the defeated incumbent Harrison. This is the only time in a US presidential election that a state has equally distributed its electoral votes between three candidates. A state had only cast electoral votes for 3 different candidates twice before, in 1824 (New York cast votes for four) and 1872, the latter due to the death of Horace Greeley. Since 1892, the only time a state has cast electoral votes for more than two candidates was in 2016, when both Washington and Texas did so. However, both of those situations involved faithless electors, meaning this remains (as of 2024) the last time a state's voters duly elected presidential electors who vote more or less as pledged for three different candidates.

  1. ^ Knoles, George Harmon; The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1892 (1942), p. 185
  2. ^ Knoles; The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1892