A front porch campaign is a low-key electoral campaign used in American politics in which the candidate remains close to or at home where they issue written statements and give speeches to supporters who come to visit. The candidate largely does not travel around or otherwise actively campaign. The presidential campaigns of James A. Garfield in 1880, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, William McKinley, and Warren G. Harding are perhaps the best-known front porch campaigns.
McKinley's opposing candidate, William Jennings Bryan, gave over 600 speeches and traveled many miles all over the United States to campaign, but McKinley outdid this by spending about twice as much money campaigning. While McKinley was at his Canton, Ohio, home conducting his "front-porch campaign", Mark Hanna was out raising millions to help with the campaign. Hanna also arranged for various delegations to visit McKinley and hear him deliver a short speech that would then be circulated by the newspapers. These delegations were made up of various interest and demographic groups.
Throughout the course of the 1896 United States presidential election, William McKinley spoke to more than 700,000 supporters in front of his house in Canton. These speeches started as organized meetings between McKinley and delegations from all over the nation. Although it was expensive for the campaign to bring these delegations, all in all, this idea became a good strategy because of the publicity it generated. In addition, due to the fact that McKinley's campaign chose those who would travel as part of the delegation, it was possible to make those who spoke portray McKinley positively.
McKinley's front-porch campaign was a big contrast to William Jennings Bryan's unprecedented whistle-stop train tour throughout the United States. A 2022 study used these different campaigning strategies to assess the impact of campaign visits. The study found that "campaign visits by Bryan increased his vote share by about one percentage point on average."
Another president known for his front porch campaign was Warren G. Harding during the presidential election of 1920. Harding was a republican who opposed the sitting president Woodrow Wilson's handling of World War 1 and the decisions of the League of Nations. [1] He supported new immigration and trades laws using this to push his idea of a promise of return to normal times. [1] Socially he fought to end lynching and offered support for woman suffrage. He ran against liberal democrat James M. Cox. Cox supported Wilson and planned to continue his progressive idealistic narrative in his term. At his home in Marion, Indiana, Harding used a front porch campaign strategy in this race where he spoke with cliche phrases to display his narrative of returning the country to normal. [1] This led to Harding winning the presidential election by a landslide collecting 404 electoral votes to Cox's 127. Harding died from a heart attack within his first term on August 2, 1923, leaving Vice President Calvin Coolidge to take over.
James A. Garfield was the republican nomination for the 1880 presidential election. He ran against the democrat's nominee Winfield Scott Hancock. Garfield won the close election by less than 10,000 votes. [2] In Mentor, Ohio, Garfield stayed at home honoring campaigning traditions at the time that emulated George Washington's presidency. [3] James gave out short speeches on his front lawn where he spoke about the "The future of colored men", "The possibilities of life", " The immorality of ideas", and "German citizens". [4]
During this time the republican party was split up into two different groups, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds. The Stalwarts were more conservative while the Half-Breeds were more progressive. Garfield had to tend to both sides of his party and did so by appointing James G. Blaine (Half-Breed) as his secretary of state and the Half-Breed's with other significant post. [2] The Stalwarts felt like they had been underrepresented, which inevitably lead to the assassination of Garfield on July 2, 1881. Charles Guiteau was responsible, after which he exclaimed "I am a Stalwart and Arthur is president now!". [2] Guiteau was charged and later hung for his crimes in 1882. [2]
Benjamin Harrison took inspiration from Garfield and ran his own front porch campaign in Indianapolis in 1889. During this time over 350,000 people came to visit his home, many offering gifts. [5] Harrison gave speeches which spoke of highly protected tariffs along with offering support to union soldiers. [5] He gained a huge support from soldiers who sought protection of their homes and family. During this time the infamous Jim Crow Laws were being set in place. To combat, Harrison hosted many African Americans to which he pledged to protect their rights. [5] Harrison went on to win the presidential election with 233 electoral votes despite Grover Cleveland winning the popular vote with only 168 electoral votes. [6]
James Gillespie Blaine was an American statesman and Republican politician who represented Maine in the United States House of Representatives from 1863 to 1876, serving as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1869 to 1875, and then in the United States Senate from 1876 to 1881. Blaine twice served as Secretary of State, first in 1881 under President James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur, and then from 1889 to 1892 under President Benjamin Harrison. He is one of only two U.S. Secretaries of State to hold the position under three separate presidents, the other being Daniel Webster. Blaine unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for President in 1876 and 1880 before being nominated in 1884. In the 1884 general election, he was narrowly defeated by Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland. Blaine was one of the late 19th century's leading Republicans and a champion of the party's moderate reformist faction, later known as the "Half-Breeds".
William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. As a member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades. He presided over victory in the Spanish–American War of 1898; gained control of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; restored prosperity after a deep depression; rejected the inflationary monetary policy of free silver, keeping the nation on the gold standard; and raised protective tariffs.
James Abram Garfield was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his assassination in July led to his death in September that year. A preacher, lawyer, and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before his candidacy for the presidency, he had been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio General Assembly—a position he declined when he became president-elect.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1880. Republican nominee James A. Garfield defeated Winfield Scott Hancock of the Democratic Party. The voter turnout rate was one of the highest in the nation's history. Garfield was assassinated during his first year in office, and he was succeeded by his vice president, Chester A. Arthur.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1892. In the fourth rematch in American history, the Democratic nominee, former president Grover Cleveland, defeated the incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland's victory made him the first president in American history to be elected to a non-consecutive second term, a feat not repeated until Donald Trump was elected in 2024. The 1892 election saw the incumbent White House party defeated in three consecutive elections, which did not occur again until 2024.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 3, 1896. Former Governor William McKinley, the Republican nominee, defeated former Representative William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee. The 1896 campaign, which took place during an economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, was a political realignment that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1920. Republican senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio defeated Democratic governor James M. Cox of Ohio. It was the first election held after the end of the First World War, and the first election after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment which gave equal votes to men and women. It was the third presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state, and the last time that the state was not New York. It was the first presidential election to have its results broadcast by radio. Coincidentally, the election was held on Harding's 55th birthday.
Levi Parsons Morton was the 22nd vice president of the United States from 1889 to 1893. He also served as United States ambassador to France, as a U.S. representative from New York, and as the 31st governor of New York.
Marcus Alonzo Hanna was an American businessman and Republican politician who served as a United States Senator from Ohio as well as chairman of the Republican National Committee. A friend and political ally of President William McKinley, Hanna used his wealth and business skills to successfully manage McKinley's presidential campaigns in 1896 and in 1900.
Charles Julius Guiteau was an American man who assassinated James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, in 1881. Guiteau believed he had played a major role in Garfield's election victory, for which he should have been rewarded with a consulship. He felt frustrated and offended by the Garfield administration's rejections of his applications to serve in Vienna or Paris to such a degree that he decided to kill Garfield and shot him at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. Garfield died 79 days later from infections related to the wounds. In January 1882, Guiteau was sentenced to death for the crime and was hanged five months later.
Lucretia Garfield was the first lady of the United States from March to September 1881, as the wife of James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States.
The Stalwarts were a faction of the Republican Party that existed briefly in the United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age during the 1870s and 1880s. Led by U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling—also known as "Lord Roscoe"—Stalwarts were sometimes called Conklingites. Other notable Stalwarts included Benjamin Wade, Charles J. Folger, George C. Gorham, Chester A. Arthur, Thomas C. Platt, and Leonidas C. Houk. The faction favored Ulysses S. Grant, the eighteenth President of the United States (1868–1876), running for a third term in the 1880 United States presidential election.
Thomas Collier Platt, also known as Tom Platt and Easy Boss, was an American politician who was a two-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1873–1877) and a three-term U.S. Senator from New York in 1881 and 1897 to 1909. He is best known as the "political boss" of the Republican Party in New York State in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Upon his death, the New York Times stated that "no man ever exercised less influence in the Senate or the House of Representatives than he," but "no man ever exercised more power as a political leader." He considered himself the "political godfather" of many Republican governors of the state, including Theodore Roosevelt.
William Henry Robertson, also known as W. H. Robertson, was an American lawyer and politician from New York.
The 1880 Republican National Convention convened from June 2 to June 8, 1880, at the Interstate Exposition Building in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Delegates nominated James A. Garfield of Ohio and Chester A. Arthur of New York as the official Republican Party candidates for president and vice president in the 1880 presidential election.
On July 2, 1881, James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., resulting in his death in Elberon, New Jersey, two and a half months later on September 19, 1881. The shooting occurred less than four months into his term as president. He was the second American president to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Charles J. Guiteau was convicted of Garfield's murder and executed by hanging one year after the shooting.
At 2:15 a.m. Eastern Time on September 20, 1881, Chester A. Arthur was inaugurated the 21st president of the United States. The inauguration marked the commencement of Chester A. Arthur's only term as president. The presidential oath of office was administered by New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady at Arthur's private residence in New York City. Two days later, Arthur took part in a second inauguration in Washington, D.C., with the oath administered by Morrison Waite, the Chief Justice of the United States. Arthur became president following the death of his predecessor James A. Garfield, who had been assassinated by a troubled office seeker, Charles J. Guiteau.
In 1896, William McKinley was elected President of the United States. McKinley, a Republican and former Governor of Ohio, defeated the joint Democratic and Populist nominee, William Jennings Bryan, as well as minor-party candidates. McKinley's decisive victory in what is sometimes seen as a realigning election ended a period of close presidential contests, and ushered in an era of dominance for the Republican Party.
The 1920 United States presidential election in Minnesota took place on November 2, 1920, as part of the 1920 United States presidential election in which all contemporary forty-eight states participated. Voters chose 12 electors, or representatives to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. This election marks the last time a candidate for president won every county in Minnesota.
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