Alternative History
United States presidential election, 1880
← 1876 November 2, 1880 (1880-11-02) 1884 →

309 members of the Electoral College
132 electoral votes needed to win
  Roscoe Conkling Thomas Hendricks 2 James Weaver - Brady-Handy (cropped)
Nominee Roscoe Conkling Thomas A. Hendricks James B. Weaver
Party Republican Democratic Populist
Home state New Netherland Centralia Iowa
Running mate Charles J. Folger Richard M. Bishop Peter Cooper
Electoral vote 175 131 3
States carried 13 10 1
Popular vote 5,052,318 2,879,448 2,342,276
Percentage 37.0% 33.5% 29.5%

1880electionahr2
Electoral College results

President before election

Samuel J. Tilden
Democratic

Elected President

Roscoe Conkling
Republican

The 1880 United States presidential election was the 24th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1880, in which the Republican candidate Roscoe Conkling, a representative from New Netherland, narrowly defeated incumbent vice president Thomas A. Hendricks and Populist candidate James B. Weaver. The election saw a high voter turnout in comparison to prior elections.

Incumbent president Samuel J. Tilden did not seek re-election due to declining health. Instead, the Democratic Party agreed to nominate his vice president Thomas A. Hendricks for the presidency, with Ohio Governor Richard M. Bishop as his running mate. The Republicans faced a contentious primary between Conkling and James Garfield, with the former winning on the party's fifteenth ballot at the convention, nominated alongside Massachusetts representative Charles J. Folger. The Populists ran a grassroots campaign, and nominated the agrarian James Weaver with former Greenback Party member Peter Cooper as his running mate. The economy served as a major issue for the election, due to the unpopularity of the Bourbon Democrats' relative fiscal conservatism. President Tilden had attempted to compromise with the Republicans by raising the tariff, which resulted in the party nearly fracturing, but neither side wished to see a repeat of the 1848 election. Nonetheless, a large portion of the party's Midwestern base responded by voting for the Populist Party, narrowing the initial lead of Hendricks.

Conkling narrowly won the election on November 2, defeating Hendricks by a wide margin in the popular vote but by a smaller margin in the electoral vote. This cemented the return of the Republicans to the presidency, which they had not won since 1868.