Mountain West, 1896

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Why did Bryan do so incredibly well in CO, UT, NV, ID, and MT?  He broke 78% 5 non-Southern states, and broke 80% in 3 non-Southern states.

[Hash]

Why did Bryan do so incredibly well in CO, UT, NV, ID, and MT?  He broke 78% 5 non-Southern states, and broke 80% in 3 non-Southern states.

Probably took Populist/Weaver support from 1892. IIRC, he did very well in counties which had voted for Weaver in '92.

[Rob]

The vast majority of voters in the mining belts of Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado were attracted to Bryan's free-silver plank for obvious reasons (economic self-interest, in other words- the workers and their bosses voted for Bryan in the interior West that year). Note that McKinley actually carried some rural grazing country in eastern Montana, Wyoming and Colorado that year.

Utah's circumstances were slightly different.

[minionofmidas]

Populists plus silver plus being the first ever western candidate plus economic depression plus Bryan just being the all-round awesomest.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     The really curious thing is why didn't Bryan do so well out there in 1900? I'd think he would since it was a rematch & all, but maybe silver was no longer an issue by 1900.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

     The really curious thing is why didn't Bryan do so well out there in 1900?

Yeah, he went from 82.7% in Utah in 1896 to 47.3% in 1900.  Weird.

[Daniel Adams]

     The really curious thing is why didn't Bryan do so well out there in 1900? I'd think he would since it was a rematch & all, but maybe silver was no longer an issue by 1900.

Yeah, the currency issue was no longer very relevant in 1900. Discoveries of gold, particularly in Alaska, inflated the currency and eased credit, and McKinley was able to fulfill his campaign promise of "prosperity at home". Bryan's call for free silver no longer energized the voters. The main theme of this campaign was imperialism, but Bryan failed to effectively make the case against it.

[Rob]

     The really curious thing is why didn't Bryan do so well out there in 1900?

Yeah, he went from 82.7% in Utah in 1896 to 47.3% in 1900.  Weird.

Mormons voted as a bloc for Bryan in 1896 because, well, most of them were already Democrats. Things had changed by the turn of the century, though- the LDS leadership began a campaign to convert its flock to the GOP, cynically attempting to curry favor with the Republican administration in Washington. Mormons being Mormons, they went along, and by 1912 Utah was one of only two states carried by LDS-endorsed William Howard Taft.

Re: Bryan's collapse in the mining belt, silver had largely vanished as a hot-button issue by that time; as the national debate shifted from economics to foreign policy, his vote fell off in the west (with a corresponding increase in the cities of the Northeast).

[RI]

County Results for most of the Mountain West:


and Montana (which doesn't quite fit with the other states)

[Associate Justice PiT]

     County results in MT are pretty shocking. I guess that there were significantly more people in Western MT than in the Eastern part of the state.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Wow.  That's the last time you'll ever see a county map like that.