Liberals/Leftists: What presidential elections would you have started voting Democratic?

[E-Dawg]

For purposes of this thread, let's take 3rd parties out of the equation. Even if you would have voted for a left-leaning 3rd party in some of these elections, I am more so curious who you would have preferred (or at least considered the lesser evil) between the GOP and Dem nominees. Also, this thread is specifically about the post-Civil War elections (I ran out of room in the title to specify that).

I would imagine that the vast majority of modern liberals and leftists would have voted Republican from 1856 to 1876 for obvious reasons. The Republicans in this period were still generally right wing across the board (economically nationalist, protectionist, bro-business, more anti-immigrant, more religious and puritanical), with the exception of some of the radical Republicans who were genuine left-wingers purely in it for ending slavery and protecting African American civil rights. I think its accurate to say that the GOP in in the period from 1854 to 1876 was a generally right-wing party, but one that had a big tent due to their slavery and civil rights stances appealing to many left-wingers as well. The Democrats, even in this period, were in many ways still the more left-wing party. It was unfortunately also the party that was more sympathetic to the South, opposed abolishing slavery, and opposed civil rights protections for African Americans during reconstruction. All of these are massive deal-breakers to modern leftists and liberals, and you'd be hard pressed to find one that would say that would have voted Democratic during this period.

However, the Republican party stopped meaningfully protecting African American rights post-Reconstruction and the Compromise of 1877. The two national parties became equally useless on civil Rights, and the national Democrats were clearly both more egalitarian and more left-wing on economics (With the obvious exception of the Southern planter class who were aligned with the Democrats post-Civil War due to trade and other Northern business interests conflicting with theirs, on top of Civil War legacy).

So I would imagine that a lot of modern liberals/leftists would say that they would start voting Democratic in 1880 once Reconstruction had ended and the Gilded Age political alignments firmly were in place. I could also reasonably see a lot holding out longer out of a mistrust with the Democratic party, hope that Republicans would do something on civil rights, Northern sectionalism, seeing the Democrats as also being too pro-business, and for some Republicans such as Harrison being proto-progressive in some ways. I imagine these liberals/leftists would vote either Republican or 3rd party during the 1880-1892 elections, before finally switching to Bryan in 1896 due to him being clearly way to the left compared to the firmly pro-business and nationalist McKinley. I have a very hard time seeing modern liberal/leftists with coherent ideologies staying with the clearly right-wing GOP for any longer than this, beyond maybe a few isolated later elections (maybe 1904 due to TR's progressive record and Parker's mediocrity, or 1916 due to Wilson's blatantly pro-segregation policies).

I am curious to see if my analysis here is generally correct or not, I'd be interested in hearing different perspectives on this.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I’m the rarity in that I see myself as having possibly been a Jacksonian Democrat in the 1830s (though sort of a reluctant one) that was also an abolitionist and saw opposition to the slave power as an extension of populist principles. By the civil war I definitely would have seen no home for me in the party any more and voted for Lincoln and yes would have stopped supporting the GOP after 1876. I can’t say I would have supported Hancock though and honestly probably would have been mostly politically homeless and supported third parties (except for Bryan) and then been a Democrat from 1928 on.

[E-Dawg]

I’m the rarity in that I see myself as having possibly been a Jacksonian Democrat in the 1830s (though sort of a reluctant one) that was also an abolitionist and saw abolition as an extension and opposition to the slave power as an extension of populist principles. By the civil war I definitely would have seen no home for me in the party any more and voted for Lincoln and yes would have stopped supporting them after 1876. I can’t say I would have supported Hancock though and honestly probably would have been mostly politically homeless and supported third parties (except for Bryan) and then been a Democrat from 1928 on.

Are there any elections from 1880 through 1924 where you prefer the Republican nominee over the Democratic nominee (even if just as a lesser of two evils)?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

I'm pretty sure I would have been a locofoco for some time, but swapped to the GOP in the 1850s and not voting D again until 1896.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I’m the rarity in that I see myself as having possibly been a Jacksonian Democrat in the 1830s (though sort of a reluctant one) that was also an abolitionist and saw abolition as an extension and opposition to the slave power as an extension of populist principles. By the civil war I definitely would have seen no home for me in the party any more and voted for Lincoln and yes would have stopped supporting them after 1876. I can’t say I would have supported Hancock though and honestly probably would have been mostly politically homeless and supported third parties (except for Bryan) and then been a Democrat from 1928 on.

Are there any elections from 1880 through 1924 where you prefer the Republican nominee over the Democratic nominee (even if just as a lesser of two evils)?

Yes, I should have added 1904 and 1916 as two probable examples.

[darklordoftech]

1896

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I should add that to your original post given how obviously pro-business the Republicans were from the 1890s on (with the sole exceptions of TR and Taft) it’s kind of amazing that liberal Republicans managed to limp on into the 60s. I wonder if they maintained some kind of vague lingering hope that they could retake the party and possibly force a realignment where the Democrats would nominate a Dixiecrat in response until 1964 when it must have become obvious they had no future in the party.

[RINO Tom]

I should add that to your original post given how obviously pro-business the Republicans were from the 1890s on (with the sole exceptions of TR and Taft) it’s kind of amazing that liberal Republicans managed to limp on into the 60s. I wonder if they maintained some kind of vague lingering hope that they could retake the party and possibly force a realignment where the Democrats would nominate a Dixiecrat in response until 1964 when it must have become obvious they had no future in the party.

I mean, we have posters claim that people are RINOs and DINOs today, so that still is not entirely gone.  With that said, actual "liberal" Republicans - which I am defining as being at least as "left wing" as your average liberal Democrat - were never that large in number in the Twentieth Century.  A majority of them were more accurately described as being "liberal" for a Republican.  You can say Willkie is a liberal, but you cannot say he didn't run to FDR's right, for example.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I should add that to your original post given how obviously pro-business the Republicans were from the 1890s on (with the sole exceptions of TR and Taft) it’s kind of amazing that liberal Republicans managed to limp on into the 60s. I wonder if they maintained some kind of vague lingering hope that they could retake the party and possibly force a realignment where the Democrats would nominate a Dixiecrat in response until 1964 when it must have become obvious they had no future in the party.

I mean, we have posters claim that people are RINOs and DINOs today, so that still is not entirely gone.  With that said, actual "liberal" Republicans - which I am defining as being at least as "left wing" as your average liberal Democrat - were never that large in number in the Twentieth Century.  A majority of them were more accurately described as being "liberal" for a Republican.  You can say Willkie is a liberal, but you cannot say he didn't run to FDR's right, for example.

True, I guess Republicans like LaGuardia and John Lindsay that genuinely were to the left of many Democrats were rare exceptions.

[darklordoftech]

I should add that to your original post given how obviously pro-business the Republicans were from the 1890s on (with the sole exceptions of TR and Taft) it’s kind of amazing that liberal Republicans managed to limp on into the 60s. I wonder if they maintained some kind of vague lingering hope that they could retake the party and possibly force a realignment where the Democrats would nominate a Dixiecrat in response until 1964 when it must have become obvious they had no future in the party.

In New York City, liberal Republicans were often Republicans just because Democrats were controlled by Tammany Hall.

[Gracile]

I have a difficult time imagining myself voting Republican in any presidential election after the 19th century.

[E-Dawg]

Also, I'm just gonna link to this below thread for some lengthy and really interesting analysis of the views of the two parties over time and how they evolved.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=371825.0

Something I've thought about recently is that contrary to a common misconception that the Democrats and Republicans have "switched sides" there's always been some continuity within each. Republicans have always tended to be the more nationalistic party and accused Democrats of being traitors/soft on the rebs/reds/terrorists, and included in their coalition Protestant zealots (in the north) and small business owners. To some extent current trends are causing the parties to revert to coalitions resembling those in the third party system as well with Democrats as the party of more recent immigrants, finance capital and free trade (DLC type Democrats are actually sort of similar ideologically to the Bourbon Democrats) and Republicans as the party of the native born working class and protectionism. The difference is that now it's as if their had been a nineteenth century coalition that had included the northern conservative Republicans and southern ex-slaveholders.

[E-Dawg]

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=440578.0

This thread also has some great discussion on the ideologies of the Republicans and Democrats during the Civil War and the period after.

[N.B.—So I did not intend to write this much but it just sort-of grew of its own accord. Not good!]

The Southern planter class represented a fundamentally reactionary and dare I say conservative (in the Tory sense of wanting to preserve what was left of the old feudal order) element in nineteenth century American society. They were not exactly aristocrats, but close enough in the important respects that I will not dispute the term. I have said this many times, and it is why I call the Republicans of the 1850s a "progressive or proto-progressive party" depending on how technical you want to get.

If you are talking specifically about the period from 1854-1874, when the only fight that mattered in was between liberal capitalism in the North and quasi-feudal slave society in the South, then I would agree that the Republicans carried the liberal banner in that fight. I do not think that is contradictory of anything I have said in this thread, but I am clarifying here and now.

The problem with applying this to the whole of the nineteenth century (and from here on out I am responding only to Lechasseur's post) is that outside of that twenty-year period, American politics wasn't a straight fight between the planter class and the bourgeoise. For one thing, prior to 1854 the two were often allies: the Whig party was essentially an attempt to marry capitalists in New York and Massachusetts to planters in Mississippi and the Carolinas. Seward in 1860 includes bankers and speculators with slaveholders in his denunciations of "capital" and describes all three as being pitted against the interests of labor embodied by the Republican party. This is why abolitionists absolutely hated the Whig party and wrote disparagingly of the alliance between the "lords of the loom" and the "lords of the lash."

If slavery is incompatible with liberalism, then the Northern bourgeoise were not liberals before 1854, plain and simple.

After 1874 the situation is very different, as most of the liberal and socialist elements flee the Republican party, either returning to the Democrats (Chase) or migrating to the kaleidoscope of leftist third parties that sprung up between 1874 and 1896 (Weaver, Butler, Parsons). It is easy to look at the electoral college maps from this era and draw lazy conclusions about the orientations of the parties, but I would submit that what is really important to understand is what is happening in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic at the state and local level. This is where the new post-war America was being created, in factory towns and cities and on farms and railroads, and crucially it is where most of the voters are. And what we see is that despite the apparent Republican stranglehold on the electoral college, these states were closely contested in every election from 1876 to 1896, with significant showings for the Greenbacks, Union Labor, and Populists in turn. In the majority of cases, the major party that these leftist elements preferred to cooperate with in these states was the Democratic party.

In between you had the Democrats as essentially the party, first of the planter class during the 1850s, and then in the 1860s the party of various interests who wanted no part in a war for black freedom as they saw it. In the North, their support came mainly from those who had ancestral or business ties to the South, or who for a variety of reasons felt alienated from the dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture.

There never was a planter aristocracy in the North, and to argue that Northern Democrats were dupes of the Southern landed gentry for the entire period from 1828 to some point in the early twentieth century is ludicrous, and more importantly ignores the very real political issues that did motivate Northerners to vote the Democratic ticket. They had interests besides just doing whatever the planter class wanted, and except those twenty years from 1854 to 1874, what the planter class wanted was not primarily what decided Democratic orthodoxy.

It is important to understand both who made up the political coalitions and why they chose to support them, and that varied from region to region and decade to decade. Unlike for instance the rank-and-file Confederate soldier, who did fight specifically to preserve a slavery and therefore the political and social dominance of the planter class, Irish immigrants in New York City or agrarian populists in the Midwest were not voting Democrat in the 1870s and 80s because they wanted to help out the Southern landed aristocracy, nor was that the primary effect of their votes. The most important conflict going on in these states was between the bourgeoise elements (those who had benefitted from the advent of industrial capitalism) and the several laboring classes (farmers, urban laborers, and immigrants generally). As bruhgmger pointed out a few posts ago, this is the Democratic party that elected Eugene V. Debs to the Indiana legislature and courted Greenback votes to elect their candidates all throughout the Midwest and even in New England, while the Republicans could not expect similar support.

The Democrats of this period were clearly not a labor party nor were they the preferred vehicle of the left. But it is not an accident that Bryan was nominated by the DNC and not the RNC.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

1928

[Blow by blow, the passion dies]

I should add that to your original post given how obviously pro-business the Republicans were from the 1890s on (with the sole exceptions of TR and Taft) it’s kind of amazing that liberal Republicans managed to limp on into the 60s. I wonder if they maintained some kind of vague lingering hope that they could retake the party and possibly force a realignment where the Democrats would nominate a Dixiecrat in response until 1964 when it must have become obvious they had no future in the party.

In New York City, liberal Republicans were often Republicans just because Democrats were controlled by Tammany Hall.

Jacob Javits was never a Democrat because his father was a ward heeler for Tammany.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=440578.0

This thread also has some great discussion on the ideologies of the Republicans and Democrats during the Civil War and the period after.

[N.B.—So I did not intend to write this much but it just sort-of grew of its own accord. Not good!]

The Southern planter class represented a fundamentally reactionary and dare I say conservative (in the Tory sense of wanting to preserve what was left of the old feudal order) element in nineteenth century American society. They were not exactly aristocrats, but close enough in the important respects that I will not dispute the term. I have said this many times, and it is why I call the Republicans of the 1850s a "progressive or proto-progressive party" depending on how technical you want to get.

If you are talking specifically about the period from 1854-1874, when the only fight that mattered in was between liberal capitalism in the North and quasi-feudal slave society in the South, then I would agree that the Republicans carried the liberal banner in that fight. I do not think that is contradictory of anything I have said in this thread, but I am clarifying here and now.

The problem with applying this to the whole of the nineteenth century (and from here on out I am responding only to Lechasseur's post) is that outside of that twenty-year period, American politics wasn't a straight fight between the planter class and the bourgeoise. For one thing, prior to 1854 the two were often allies: the Whig party was essentially an attempt to marry capitalists in New York and Massachusetts to planters in Mississippi and the Carolinas. Seward in 1860 includes bankers and speculators with slaveholders in his denunciations of "capital" and describes all three as being pitted against the interests of labor embodied by the Republican party. This is why abolitionists absolutely hated the Whig party and wrote disparagingly of the alliance between the "lords of the loom" and the "lords of the lash."

If slavery is incompatible with liberalism, then the Northern bourgeoise were not liberals before 1854, plain and simple.

After 1874 the situation is very different, as most of the liberal and socialist elements flee the Republican party, either returning to the Democrats (Chase) or migrating to the kaleidoscope of leftist third parties that sprung up between 1874 and 1896 (Weaver, Butler, Parsons). It is easy to look at the electoral college maps from this era and draw lazy conclusions about the orientations of the parties, but I would submit that what is really important to understand is what is happening in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic at the state and local level. This is where the new post-war America was being created, in factory towns and cities and on farms and railroads, and crucially it is where most of the voters are. And what we see is that despite the apparent Republican stranglehold on the electoral college, these states were closely contested in every election from 1876 to 1896, with significant showings for the Greenbacks, Union Labor, and Populists in turn. In the majority of cases, the major party that these leftist elements preferred to cooperate with in these states was the Democratic party.

In between you had the Democrats as essentially the party, first of the planter class during the 1850s, and then in the 1860s the party of various interests who wanted no part in a war for black freedom as they saw it. In the North, their support came mainly from those who had ancestral or business ties to the South, or who for a variety of reasons felt alienated from the dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture.

There never was a planter aristocracy in the North, and to argue that Northern Democrats were dupes of the Southern landed gentry for the entire period from 1828 to some point in the early twentieth century is ludicrous, and more importantly ignores the very real political issues that did motivate Northerners to vote the Democratic ticket. They had interests besides just doing whatever the planter class wanted, and except those twenty years from 1854 to 1874, what the planter class wanted was not primarily what decided Democratic orthodoxy.

It is important to understand both who made up the political coalitions and why they chose to support them, and that varied from region to region and decade to decade. Unlike for instance the rank-and-file Confederate soldier, who did fight specifically to preserve a slavery and therefore the political and social dominance of the planter class, Irish immigrants in New York City or agrarian populists in the Midwest were not voting Democrat in the 1870s and 80s because they wanted to help out the Southern landed aristocracy, nor was that the primary effect of their votes. The most important conflict going on in these states was between the bourgeoise elements (those who had benefitted from the advent of industrial capitalism) and the several laboring classes (farmers, urban laborers, and immigrants generally). As bruhgmger pointed out a few posts ago, this is the Democratic party that elected Eugene V. Debs to the Indiana legislature and courted Greenback votes to elect their candidates all throughout the Midwest and even in New England, while the Republicans could not expect similar support.

The Democrats of this period were clearly not a labor party nor were they the preferred vehicle of the left. But it is not an accident that Bryan was nominated by the DNC and not the RNC.

Does anybody know which Chase unconditional surrender Truman is citing here? Salmon Chase died in 1873 and never switched parties. Brilliant analysis I think.

[Mr. Smith]

1896 on more permanent basis, but definitely with back and forth during The Jacksonian Era and mugwumped once.

[sting in the rafters]

Ruling out elections before any of my ancestors got off the boat and assuming I lived where my only family in the US lived at the time, most likely 1936 and perhaps 1928. I can anecdotally re-affirm this as the WPA took my great pop-pop from a trolley-hopping shoeshine boy to naval shipbuilder.

In the pre‑Depression years, Italian‑American voters cast their ballots for the candidates of the party in power at the local level. "Little Italys" in Republican strongholds usually delivered large majorities for the GOP. For instance, on US Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon's turf in Pittsburgh (Murray), Republican presidential candidate Calvin Coolidge received 70.5 percent of the Italian‑American vote in 1924. Similarly, when Philadelphia's Republican boss William Vare ran for the US Senate two year later (Salter), he carried the local Italian‑American community by a 97.4 landslide ( Pennsylvania State Manual , 1925‑27).

56.9 percent of Philadelphians of Italian descent cast their ballots for Smith in 1928 ( Pennsylvania Manual , 1929).  However, a majority of Italian Americans went back to the GOP in 1932 and Hoover obtained 52.5 percent of their vote ( Pennsylvania Manual, 1933). In hard times, many destitute members of the local community relied on the services of the city's Republican organization to cope with the economic crisis. Indeed, boss Vare's henchmen operated relief kitchens to supply the needy with food. They also established welfare committees that offered Republican stalwarts free health care, clothing, and coal besides paying utilities bills on their behalf (Bauman 54‑55). Only the enactment of the social and labor legislation of the New Deal managed to align a majority of the Italian‑American electorate with the Democratic party in federal and state elections in Philadelphia and left Roosevelt with 65.1 percent of the vote in this community in 1936 ( Pennsylvania Manual , 1937).

Moreover, roughly one third of the heads of family in the main area of Philadelphia's Italian‑American settlement were on federal relief in 1936 (Maiale 170). Likewise, Providence's efficiently Italian 13th ward totaled more relief cases than any other ward in the city (Davies 96). Actually, reliance on WPA jobs during the economic crisis is a leitmotif in local Italian Americans' recollections about the Depression (Raponi 3; De Nucci 5). Likewise, Italian‑American WPA applicants in Philadelphia needed a letter of recommendation from their Democratic ward leader ( Evening Bulletin , Apr. 23, 1936).

A comparison of the voting behavior of Philadelphia's Italian Americans in federal and local elections sheds additional light on the pivotal role of political patronage in cementing their participation in the Roosevelt coalition. The Democratic party carried the community in all federal and state contests from 1934 through 1940. Nevertheless a majority of the city's Italian‑American voters retained their pre‑Depression Republican attachment in all county and municipal races except for 1937. Since the Democratic party failed to elect a mayor throughout the interwar years and managed to win only the 1933 county elections, a Republican machine survived thanks to the hold of city and county spoils until the postwar years.

[Yu748Girl83]

1828.

[Хahar 🤔]

I very much doubt that most red avatars on this site would be voting Democratic in 1896: Bryan campaigned in opposition to urban areas in a way that no presidential candidate after him has. Of the fifty largest cities in the country, only seven were in a county that voted for Bryan: New Orleans, Kansas City, Denver, Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta, and Memphis. Of this group, Kansas City is the only one not to have been either Southern or a center for the silver industry. Bryan was simply not interested in the votes of city-dwellers.

[SWE]

I think I'd be a pretty safe Whig/Republican voter for the first several decades of being allowed to vote in New York. Erie County was overwhelmingly Whig/Republican until FDR (our favorite candidate in history was Clay, who broke 70% against Jackson), so that's the sort of perspective I'd be hearing disproportionately, there's a good chance my family's economic stability would depend on JQA's American system, Jackson was a personality and style of politics I don't think I'd ever really respond to, and, for those early elections, I would have grown up watching my hometown burned to the ground in a war that seemed pointless, which I think would make me despise Madison and who I see as his ideological descendants in the Democratic party. I think I'd be the type of person who isn't really a doctrinaire Whig but is a loyal Whig nonetheless because Jackson man bad. And, while I don't want to pat myself on the back and assume I'd be way ahead of the time of slavery, I am from an area that was a hotbed of abolitionist activity and obviously would never have lived in a position where I benefited directly from slavery, so I think I'd at least default to being soft antislavery, probably getting negatively polarized as the southern voices got more extreme as we inched closer to the Civil War.

First election I'd flirt with voting Democrat in 1884. I imagine I'd hate Blaine and see him as a crook, and I'd probably grow discontent as the Republican party moved away from the party of reconstruction to big business. On the other hand, Cleveland was the hometown Buffalo guy with a good reputation as a corruption fighter. I think I'd pick Cleveland over Blaine, view Cleveland's administration as a disaster and go right back to Republicans with Harrison, who I'd view as a disappointment but still prefer to Cleveland

McKinley vs Bryan I'm a safe McKinley voter - I'm not voting Democrat after Cleveland's disastrous second term and Mikado makes an excellent point - I wouldn't see Bryan as a likable champion of the working man, I'd see him as a nutter who wants to obliterate my way of life. 1900 though is where it gets interesting - I think I would be a committed anti-imperialist and Bryan would win me over with his 1900 campaign. 1900 to 1916 is really dicey and I could see myself going either way in all of those elections depending on exactly who the early 20th century version of me is, but I think it's possible that I'm a safe D voter in all of those elections. 1916 for sure - Wilson kept us out of war. Either way I'd be a Harding/Coolidge voter after that - everyone was.

1928 is the first election I'm absolutely confident I would have voted Democrat. I was raised Catholic - I would love Al Smith and I would hate Hoover for embracing an anti-Catholic campaign, and I'd certainly feel vindicated in that hate when the Stock Market crashes. From then on, I'd always prefer the Democrat to the Republican, with the likely exception of Eisenhower, who probably wins me over through a combination of basing his campaign largely around ending the Korean War and being the guy who beat Hitler.

So I'd say 1960 in terms of having an unbroken D streak, 1928 in terms of when I'm confident I would be a solid D voter with minimal exceptions, 1900 in terms of when it's possible I'd start being a solid D voter with minimal exceptions, and 1884 in terms of when voting Democrat first becomes acceptable to me as an option.

[Intell]

I probably would've been a Jeffersonian Democrat against the aristocratic nature of the federalists.

1824 is interesting because I probably wouldn't have like the Brahmin elite nature of Adams nor the populist nature of the Jackson. In the end of it I would've sided with Jackson and his expansion of democracy. Similarly I would've sided with Jackson in 1828 and 1832 while probably not liking the expansionary side of his politics. Similar siding with my Democratic/Jacksonian legacy I'd have sided with Van Buren in 1836 and 1840.

1844 is the first real ? election because Polk was rabid expansionist but I think the chaos of the wig presidency and my democratic nature would've kept me in Polk's fold.

I'd have supported Van Buren in 48 and I think Pierce in 52' out of legacy and Scott not being a compelling alternative.

From 1856, I'd support the republicans with their anti-slavery campaign and after the civil war would look at the democrats as traitors leading me to vote straight republican from 1856 to 1932 (La' Follette in 1924)

The Great Depression would've affected me and would've resulted in me shifting to the Democratic Party and across the FDR years I'd be a moderate new deal democrat on a national level.

Eisenhower-Eisenhower as a military hero and Stevenson being an intellectual would not have appealed to be. I'd have voted for Nixon as continuation as well most likely, before from there voting Straight D

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I very much doubt that most red avatars on this site would be voting Democratic in 1896: Bryan campaigned in opposition to urban areas in a way that no presidential candidate after him has. Of the fifty largest cities in the country, only seven were in a county that voted for Bryan: New Orleans, Kansas City, Denver, Richmond, Nashville, Atlanta, and Memphis. Of this group, Kansas City is the only one not to have been either Southern or a center for the silver industry. Bryan was simply not interested in the votes of city-dwellers.

I live in a mid-sized city (Providence) but still would have voted for him simply on the basis of ideology. That’s why I can confidently say I’d have voted for both Bryan in 1896 and Biden in 2020, because I’ve never been a culture war voter and don’t think I ever would have been when the other choice is William McKinley or Donald Trump.

[TDAS04]

Maybe 1884, but there were still plenty of elections following that where I would have preferred the Republican.

[Sumner 1868]

1936 for sure. Maybe Bryan and Al Smith but it's hard to tell.