The 1900 United States presidential election in Kentucky took place on November 6, 1900. All contemporary 45 states were part of the 1900 United States presidential election. Voters chose 13 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president.
Kentucky was won by the Democratic nominees, former U.S. Representative and 1896 Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan and his running mate, former Vice President Adlai Stevenson I. They defeated the Republican nominees, incumbent President William McKinley of Ohio and his running mate Theodore Roosevelt of New York. Bryan won the state by a narrow margin of 1.7%.
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 In 1896, the state's growing urban and coal mining areas, which unlike most parts of the South had developed economic ties with the Midwest and Northeast and thus opposed free silver,Shannon, 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 gave William McKinley sufficient support to become the first Republican presidential candidate to win Kentucky, winning it by a very narrow margin of 277 votes in what remains the seventh-closest vote for presidential electors on record.
For the rematch in 1900, an early poll had the state in doubt.See ‘Attempt to Deceive’ Princeton Clarion-Leader, July 19, 1900, p. 2 By the final week of October, polls generally had returning Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan carrying the state,‘Election Forecasts from Both Sides’; The Topeka State-Journal, October 25, 1900, p. 7 and this he did by a 1.7 percent margin. His win was generally attributed to the fact that urban and coal counties were more tolerant of anti-imperialism (directed against American colonialism in the Pacific islands) than free silver. This was the only state that had backed McKinley four years prior that Bryan managed to flip.
Bryan would later win the state again in 1908 against William Howard Taft.
Results 1900 United States presidential election in KentuckyDave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas; Presidential General Election Results – KentuckyPartyCandidateVotesPercentageElectoral votes Democratic William Jennings Bryan 235,126 50.21% 13 Republican William McKinley (incumbent) 227,132 48.51% 0 Prohibition John G. Woolley 2,890 0.62% 0 Populist Wharton Barker 1,961 0.42% 0 Social Democratic Eugene V. Debs 766 0.16% 0 Socialist Labor Joseph F. Malloney 390 0.08% 0 Totals 468,265 100.00% 13 Voter turnout —
Results by county