1840 United States presidential election

1840 United States presidential election

October 30 – November 23, 1840[1]
294 members of the Electoral College 148 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	72.8%[2] 6.4 pp
Nominee William Henry Harrison Martin Van Buren Party Whig Democratic Alliance Anti-Masonic Home state Ohio New York Running mate John Tyler N/A[a] Electoral vote 234 60 States carried 19 7 Popular vote 1,275,390 1,128,854 Percentage 52.9% 46.8%
Presidential election results map. Yellow denotes states won by Harrison/Tyler and Blue by Van Buren. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes cast by each state.
President before election Martin Van Buren Democratic Elected President William Henry Harrison Whig

The 1840 United States presidential election was the 14th election in the history of the United States. It occurred from October 30 to November 23, 1844. This election was between the Whig nominee, General and former Minister to Gran Colombia William Henry Harrison of Ohio, and the Democratic nominee, President Martin Van Buren of New York. Harrison won the election with 234 electoral votes. Van Buren got only 60 electoral votes.

Van Buren's loss in the election made him the third president in U.S. history and the first president outside of the Adams family (John Adams in 1800 and John Quincy Adams in 1828) to lose their re-election campaign. This election was also the third rematch in U.S. history, the first two being John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and Andrew Jackson & Henry Clay in 1832.

Harrison (as the winner of the election) would also be the oldest elected president in U.S. history at 67 years and 9 months, holding the record for 140 years until the election of Ronald Reagan to his first term in 1980 at 69 years and 8 months as well as being the last challenger to an incumbent President to win a majority of the vote until Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Van Buren would also be the last incumbent president until Abraham Lincoln in 1864 to win their party's nomination twice and the last incumbent president to lose their re-election campaign until Grover Cleveland in 1888.

This was also one of the few elections in U.S. history in which all the candidates in the party's primary would go on to later serve as their party's nominee (Clay in 1844 and Scott in 1852)

1. ↑ Dubin, Michael J. (2002). United States Presidential Elections, 1788–1860: The Official Results by County and State. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. p. xvi.
2. ↑ "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press.