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The presidential election of 1892 between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison was not a momentous contest by any stretch of the imagination. As one historian described it: “Honest bearded Benjamin Harrison confronting honest mustached Grover Cleveland in a tariff debate was a repeat performance that did not inspire parades with torches or the chanting of campaign ditties.”[i]
Indeed, the race was so sedate that Cleveland gave few speeches and spent a good part of the summer at a Cape Cod vacation home, while Harrison stayed in the White House to care for his sick wife, Caroline, who sadly passed away two weeks before election day. The coming battle of 2024, though, does not seem destined to go so quietly into the history books. Fireworks, it’s safe to say, are all but guaranteed. There have almost surely been more pyrotechnics and outrage in the first months of 2024 than there were in the entire 1892 campaign.
And yet, these two elections, so different in style and separated by more than 130 years of political history, are linked in history because they’re the only two elections in which a defeated former president regained his party’s nomination four years later and ran against his successor. In 1892, the Democrat Grover Cleveland not only came back from an 1888 loss to stage a repeat clash with the Republican Benjamin Harrison, but he also won the rematch and became the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. It’s a feat that Trump is now trying to repeat.
Aside from the stylistic differences between the 1892 and 2024 elections, however, are there any other comparisons to be drawn from these two contests?
Early plans for a rematch
It may not be all that significant, but both Cleveland and Trump seemed to be plotting a third run for the presidency as soon as they were defeated for re-election. On Cleveland’s last day in office, his wife Frances told the White House staff: “We are coming back just four years from today.” And Trump, likewise, told supporters while he was contesting the results of the 2020 election: “We’re trying to do another four years. Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.”
Narrow Electoral College victories
One notable similarity between the two contests is that both were held during a time when the country was starkly divided between the two major political parties and the results turned on slight differences in the Electoral College. Trump, for instance, won in 2016 after prevailing by fewer than 78,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, while Biden’s electoral win in 2020 was built on wins in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by 43,000 combined votes. Similarly, Cleveland won his first election in 1884 when he defeated James Blaine by just 1,149 votes in New York, and then he lost in 1888 when New York and Indiana narrowly flipped to Harrison.
Cleveland won the popular vote, Trump did not
On the other hand, Cleveland did win the popular vote in all three of the 1884, 1888, and 1892 elections. In fact, he is one of only three presidents to win the popular vote three times, along with Franklin Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson. Trump, meanwhile, has lost the popular vote by considerable margins in both of his races and was only competitive because of the Electoral College. He lost by almost 2.9 million votes nationwide to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by more than seven million votes to Biden four years later.
Tariffs as an issue
Interestingly, in both the 1892 and 2024 elections, tariffs appear as an issue. In 1892, tariffs were a major source of revenue for the government, while Republicans also defended them as being good for business because they protected domestic manufacturing industries. Democrats, meanwhile, wanted to lower tariffs because they saw them as benefiting big business over consumers, who had to pay an increased cost for products.
Republicans in 1890 passed the McKinley Tariff Act which significantly increased tariffs and, in turn, dramatically raised the cost of imported goods. This became an issue in 1892, especially when some workers faced pay cuts despite the argument that higher tariffs led to higher wages. When workers at the Carnegie Steel Company in Homestead, Pennsylvania, for instance, went on strike to protest just such a pay cut, an ensuing confrontation meant to break the strike left at least 10 people dead. These issues damaged Harrison’s image ahead of the election.
Although tariffs later faded as a topic as the world moved toward freer trade, the economic dislocations that hit U.S. communities in recent decades renewed interest in tariffs as a means of potentially protecting domestic manufacturing. Trump implemented numerous tariffs during his first term, with mixed results, and has promised to go much further if elected again.
The influence of third parties
In 1892, a formidable third party movement emerged. The People’s Party was a populist group that complained the major parties were dominated by financial elites. The party had particular support from farmers in the Plains states and the South, and it nominated former Iowa Congressman James Weaver for president. Its platform endorsed the free coinage of silver to grow the money supply (at a time when the country was on the gold standard), the implementation of a graduated income tax, popular election of Senators (who were then elected by state legislatures), and the nationalization of the railroad, telegraph and telephone industries.
The People’s Party won 8% of the vote and 22 electoral votes in four states, though it didn’t necessarily tip the results as Cleveland won both the popular vote and the Electoral College by comfortable margins. But the 8% share of the vote did show the discontent afoot in the country, which in the next few election cycles would transform the political debate and lead to the rise of the Progressive movement.
In 2024, there are rumblings of other possibly significant third parties, whether it’s the budding No Labels movement, an independent presidential bid by Robert Kennedy, or the candidacies of Jill Stein, Cornel West, and others. Whether any of these will impact the election results remains to be seen.
In 2016, Trump may have won the presidency because of the voters who supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein over Democrat Hillary Clinton in key swing states. In 2020, third parties were less of a factor. But this year, voter despair over the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch has many people again casting about for another option and third parties are currently polling better than at any point since Ross Perot’s two presidential runs in the 1990s.
The final results
Cleveland won the rematch in 1892 and made Harrison a one-term president after winning the popular vote by 46-43% and the Electoral College, 277-145. At the moment, Trump is attempting to replicate that feat and he holds a small but persistent lead in most national polls.
There is a long way to go in this election and Trump is without a doubt a much more controversial national figure than was Cleveland. But while it will be more than seven months before we know the 2024 results, it’s hard not to look back at the 1892 contest and muse about the only two such rematches between presidents in American history.
If you appreciated this story about the 1892 and 2024 elections, you can find other such tales in my book, “Quest for the Presidency: The Storied and Surprising History of Presidential Campaigns in America.”
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[i] CQ Press, Presidential Elections, 1789-2004, 44.