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| Elections in Wisconsin |
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The 1896 United States presidential election in Wisconsin was held on November 3, 1896, as part of the 1896 United States presidential election. State voters chose 12 electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
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Wisconsin during the Third Party System was a Republican-leaning but competitive state whereby historically anti-Civil War German Catholic counties stood opposed to highly pro-war and firmly Republican Yankee areas. [1] The German Catholics’ Democratic loyalties were related to their opposition to Republican pietism and to the fact that during the Civil War, they had been extremely hostile to Abraham Lincoln’s wartime draft policies which often singled them out. [1]
Four years prior had seen, aided by favorable demographic shifts, [2] opposition to the notorious “Bennett Law” requiring attendance at public schools, [3] and a shift of some GOP voters to Prohibition Party nominee John Bidwell, Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland carry the state for the first time since before the Republican Party was formed. However, expectations that demographic shifts would favor the Democrats were rudely crushed in 1894, when the Republicans took every Congressional seat in the state. President Cleveland became extremely unpopular and the Democratic Party turned towards the Populist movement active in the West in order to revive its fortunes. While the Populist movement would gain almost universal acceptance in the silver mining West, its inflationary monetary policies were opposed by almost all urban classes and viewed as dangerously radical by rural German Catholics, [4] with free silver being condemned by the Church hierarchy. [5]
Early polls always had Wisconsin strong for Republican nominee William McKinley, with his supporters saying it would be one of the most Republican states despite voting Democratic in 1892. [6] During his fall tour of the Midwest, Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan made fifteen speeches, but was disturbed by a member of McKinley's club, [7] who attempted to mob Bryan in Janesville. [8]
As it turned out, McKinley would carry Wisconsin handsomely by over one hundred thousand votes and by a margin of 22.97%. Wisconsin would be McKinley's strongest state outside the Northeast. [9] McKinley's 59.95% popular vote share was the highest received by any candidate in Wisconsin to that point, though McKinley would break his own record four years later.
Bryan would lose Wisconsin to McKinley again four years later and would later lose the state again in 1908 to William Howard Taft.
McKinley's landslide victory made him the first Republican to ever carry Kewaunee County, Langlade County, Oneida County, Outagamie County, and Washington County. Additionally, McKinley was the first Republican since John C. Frémont in 1856 to win Dodge County and Marathon County and the first Republican since Abraham Lincoln in 1860 to win Jefferson County and Manitowoc County. Waukesha County's well-known Republican tilt began with this election; in prior elections it had been a swing county in Wisconsin but starting with this election, became solidly Republican and has only voted for a Democrat five times since 1892.
