1796

[jimrtex]

The first contest presidential election, and one of the closest ever in the electoral vote, and in some cases the popular vote.  The 16th state Tennessee had been added, and chose its electors by popular vote.  GA and NC switched to popular election for the first time.

Electors Chosen by The Legislature: RI(4), CT(9), NY(12), NJ(7), DE(3), SC(, VT(4), TN(3), Total 50.

Electors Chosen by Popular Vote: NH(6), MA(16), PA(15), MD(10), VA(21), NC(12), GA(4), KY(4), Total 88.

John Adams (F) received 71 votes from the 136 electors, one more than a majority of 70.  His opponent Thomas Jefferson (D-R) received 68 electoral votes and was elected Vice President, becoming the 2nd person to be elected without a majority of the electoral votes.  The running mates of Adams and Jefferson, Thomas Pinckney and Aaron Burr received 59 and 30 votes respectively.  Some Adams electors may have left Pinckney off their ballot out of fear that some Pinckney voters would leave Adams off their ballots, permitting Jefferson to be elected Vice President (the Democrat-Republicans would not make the same "mistake" in 1800).

Interesting trivia: George Washington received two electoral votes, one from NC and one from VA.

New Hampshire 6 electors.

New Hampshire once again elected its 6 electors at large.  A curiousity is that the 6th place candidate did not receive a majority of the popular vote, and so the legislature chose the 7th place candidate, despite a 2,077 to 980 margin (the top 5 received between 3,719 and 2,867 votes).

Massachusetts 16 electors.

Massachusetts yet again switched it electoral system, switching to 14 single member districts, with the legislature choosing the final 2 electors.  The electoral districts were the same as the congressional districts, making Massachusetts the first state to adopt what we might call the Maine-Nebraska format. 

Massachusetts required that a elector receive a majority, which occured in 7 of the 14 districts.  Elbridge Gerry, who was running as a Democrat-Republican was defeated by 2 votes (though the victor did not receive a majority).  Had Gerry somehow been chosen by the legislature, it would have cut Adams margin of victory in half.

Norfolk County was set off from Suffolk County at this election.  Suffolk County consisted of Boston, Chelsea. and Hull.  Boston included South and East Boston, but not Dorchester and Roxbury, which were separate towns in Norfolk County; the area west of the Fens and north of Brookline, which was part of Cambridge; and Charlestown which was a separate town and a larger area extending north along the Mystic river (now Somerville).

Pennsylvania 15 electors.
Electrors were elected statewide but as individual candidates.  A close election, Democrat-Republican 50.3%, Federalist 49.7%, resulted in a split decision, 13 D-R and 2 Federalist.  However, the results were proclaimed before the returns from Greene County in the far southwestern corner of the state were received.  Had these votes been counted, the D-R would have swept all 15 seats.  As it turned out, one of the Federalist electors voted Jefferson-Pinckney, so that the exclusion of the Greene votes only gave Adams one extra elector.

Maryland (10 electors)

Maryland continued to choose its electors by districts.  Statewide, the Federalists receive 52.2% of the vote to 47.8% for Democrat-Republicans.   3 D-R electors were chosen from districts around the head of Chesapeake Bay (from Ann Arundel County through Baltimore (city and county) and along the eastern shore to Kent County.

One elector voted for Adams and Jefferson, but this would represent a Federalist splitting his vote.

Virginia (21 electors)

The electors were chosen by electoral district, but no returns are available.  Adams secured one electoral vote.

North Carolina (12 electors)

The electors were chosen by electoral district, but no returns are available.  Adams also secured one electoral voter here as well.

Georgia (4 electors)

The four electors were chosen statewide, with all 4 supporting Jefferson.  There was substantial differences in the level of support:  (D-R) 6,200; (D-R) 4,610; (D-R) 4,357; (D-R) 3,965; (F) 2,644; (F) 2,357; (F) 1,042; F (910); F (710);
40 other candidates received downwards from 254 votes, with 34 receiving less than 20.

Kentucky (4 electors)

The electors were chosen by electoral district, but no returns are available.

[jimrtex]

Who did Washington vote for in 1796?

I don't know.  In the states where county votes are available there were often very lopsided results.   This suggests that often voting was still for the elector rather than the presidential candidate.  Even if you knew that Joe Smith was a supporter of Adams or Jefferson, you might vote for Smith as respected community leader.  This might be especially true in cases like Virginia where electors were chosen by district (Washington's district would have been Fairfax, Prince William, and Stafford counties).

In addition, some of the final decisions might have been made when the electors met in their respective states.  For example, in 1796, Jefferson received votes from 20 of 21 electors in Virginia.  But Samuel Adams received 15 votes, while Aaron Burr, Jefferson's nominal running mate only received 1.  All of Sam Adams electoral votes in the 1796 election came from Virginia.

Washington might not have voted.  The capital was still New York City.  Absentee voting might not have been possible, and it would be several days travel to Virginia.

[jimrtex]

So I assume the other Federalist elector voted for Adams and Pinckney.  I had figured, when I thought about the 1796 electoral vote earlier, that 13 of Pennsylvania's electors voted for Jefferson and Burr, 1 voted for Jefferson and Pinckney, and 1 voted for Adams and Pinckney, but I didn't want to assume that was the case without hearing it conclusively from a reliable source (because the split could, given the state's electoral vote totals, have been 12 Jefferson-Burr electors, 2 Jefferson-Pinckney electors, and 1 Adams-Burr elector).

Besides Pennsylvania, there were three other states where no candidate received all of the electoral votes (if one candidate received all of a states electoral votes, that means all of the electors in that state voted for him, and one other candidate if the total number of electoral votes is twice the state's number of electors; beyond that, the electoral vote totals in themselves don't tell you what combinations of two candidates the individual electors voted for in that state).  Those states were Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.  If someone knew for certain who the Adams electors in Virginia and North Carolina respectively voted for besides Adams and/or who the Jefferson electors (besides the Federalist elector who voted for both Jefferson and Adams) voted for besides Jefferson, could you please tell me through a reply on this thread?

I don't know who the electors voted for.  What I do know is that the electors in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina were elected by electoral district.

In Maryland, Jefferson carried 3 districts.  It is reasonable to infer that the 3 electors voted for Jefferson and Burr, since we know that there must have been one Jefferson and Adams elector (one district had a 1344-1340 margin for the Federalist elector, so we might at least wishfully attribute the split vote to this elector from the 4th district (western Maryland beyond Frederick County).  This means that the 7 Adams electors split (4 Thomas Pinckney, 2 Patrick Henry, and 1 Thomas Jefferson).

In Virginia, it might be possible that a Federalist elector carried one district (no returns were located) and voted for Adams and Pinckney.  The problem with this is that George Washington received one electoral vote.  An elector from Virginia could not legally vote for both Jefferson and Washington.  So possibly, like in Maryland, there was one elector who voted for Jefferson and Adams.  This would mean that like in Pennsylvania, there was also a Jefferson and Pinckney elector.  This would split the second for the 20 Jefferson votes (as Samuel Adams 15, John Adams 1, Thomas Pinckney 1, George Clinton 3).

In North Carolina, the simplest assumption is that one elector voted for Adams and Pinckney.  This would split the 2nd vote for the 11 Jefferson electors as (Burr 6, James Iredell 3, Charles Pinckney 1, and George Washington 1).  It would have been legal for a North Carolina elector to vote for Jefferson and Washington.