The
2048 Presidential Election pitted populist Democrat
James Williams of Illinois against establishment Whig
Ed Carter of Florida. While Williams won the traditional Democratic base in the industrial belt, the Pacific northwest, and carried mining communities in Montana and Utah, he broke new ground for the party in winning the traditionally Whig-dominated Deep South, building a coalition of free trade oriented manufacturing firms, agribusiness marketers, and industrial workers there. Carter held the traditional Whig base of the farming states in the West, the mercantilist East Coast, and picked up California in a flip from the usual dynamic, which often saw the lily-white coastal state back the segregationist, expansionist Democrats.
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