The 1896 United States presidential election in Kentucky took place on November 3, 1896. All contemporary 45 states were part of the 1896 United States presidential election. Voters chose 13 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.
Kentucky was won by the Republican nominees, former Ohio Governor William McKinley and his running mate Garret Hobart of New Jersey. They defeated the Democratic and Populist nominees, former Nebraska Representative William Jennings Bryan and his running mate Arthur Sewall of Maine. McKinley won the state by a very narrow margin of 0.07%.
As a result of his win, McKinley became the first Republican presidential candidate to ever win Kentucky. He would also be the only Republican presidential candidate to win the state until Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
Ever since the Civil War, Kentucky had been shaped politically by divisions created by that war between secessionist, Democratic counties and Unionist, Republican ones,Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016 although the state as a whole leaned Democratic throughout this era and the GOP would never carry the state during the Third Party System.Phillips, Kevin P.; The Emerging Republican Majority, p. 350 However, the Democratic Party in the state was heavily divided over free silver and the role of corporations in the middle 1890s, and it lost the governorship for the first time in forty years in 1895 due to Populist defections.Brown, Thomas J.; ‘’The Roots of Bluegrass Insurgency: An Analysis of the Populist Movement in Kentucky; The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Summer 1980), pp. 219-242 For the 1896 election, the Democratic Party would aim to fuse with the Populists, and adopted the Populist free silver platform under former Nebraska Representative William Jennings Bryan.
In contrast to the majority of antebellum slave states, and despite the majority of the state's economy being an agricultural one revolving around tobacco, Kentucky was sufficiently close to the industrial Northeast that it had a significant urban working class in its Ohio River cities that opposed free silverShannon, Jasper Berry and McQuown, Ruth; Presidential Politics in Kentucky, 1824-1948: A Compilation of Election Statistics and an Analysis of Political Behavior (1950), p. 96 because it would cause inflation.Weir, Robert E.; Workers in America: A Historical Encyclopedia, p. 320 Similar views were held by workers in Kentucky's developing coal mining industry. Polls late in October nonetheless showed Bryan carrying the state by a margin only slightly reduced from what discredited incumbent President Grover Cleveland had achieved in 1892.‘McKinley Over 100,000 Ahead: Count in the Postal Card Canvas of the Middle West’; Evening Star (Washington D.C.), October 22, 1896, p. 11 A week later, however, polls had McKinley and Hobart carrying Kentucky by seventeen thousand votes.‘McKinley’s Kentucky Plurality’; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 28, 1896, p. 2 As it turned out, the state was exceedingly close, with McKinley becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Kentucky, by a mere 277 votes, or 0.06352%. Owing to the direct election of presidential electors and the extreme closeness of the result, one Bryan elector and twelve McKinley electors were chosen.
McKinley's victory is, by percentage margin, the seventh-closest popular results for presidential electors on record.
McKinley would later lose Kentucky to Bryan four years later and Bryan would later win the state again in 1908 against William Howard Taft.
Results 1896 United States presidential election in KentuckyDave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas; Presidential General Election Results – KentuckyPartyCandidateVotesPercentageElectoral votes Republican William McKinley 218,171 48.93% 12 Democratic William Jennings Bryan 217,894 48.86% 1 National Democratic John M. Palmer 5,084 1.14% 0 Prohibition Joshua Levering 4,779 1.07% 0 Totals 445,928 100.00% 13 Voter turnout —
Results by county