An organized history of pivotal presidential elections

Democratic elections are a key aspect of the American identity and its evolving values. From the first transfer of power between parties to the divisiveness of COVID-19, elections offer more than policy shifts. They’ve become culturally significant, shaping the nation’s social fabric and defining struggles for inclusion, progress and justice. 

12th Amendment and Peaceful Transfer of Power 

The election of 1800 was held from Oct. 31-Dec. 3. Vice President Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican candidate, defeated the incumbent federalist President John Adams in the first true test of America’s new democracy.

Jefferson’s victory was proof for Americans that a peaceful transfer of power between rival political parties was possible. 

The most culturally significant aspect of the election was a tie between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson in the Electoral College. 

At the time, presidential and vice presidential nominees didn’t run together. Each member of the Electoral College cast one vote for president and one for vice president with no distinction made between the two. 

According to the Library of Congress, “The extremely partisan and outright nasty campaign failed to provide a clear winner because of a constitutional quirk… Unfortunately, Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate Aaron Burr both received the identical number of electoral votes, and the House of Representatives voted to break the tie.”

This constitutional crisis over the tied vote led to the passage of the 12th Amendment, which outlines the process for electing the president and vice president.

More than just a change in administration, this election set a precedent for how democracy could work: Power could change hands without violence.

Slavery and the Union 

In the election of 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell in the presidential race. 

Lincoln’s election to the presidency of a nation divided on slavery symbolized a fundamental shift in the country’s moral compass and precipitated the Civil War. 

According to Michael Levy from Britannica, the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which made slavery legal in all U.S. territories, exacerbated sectional differences between those in the North who wanted to abolish slavery and those who sought to protect the institution.

“The results in the South are instructive in understanding the deep sectional divide. Lincoln did not win any votes in any state that would form the Confederacy… By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration in March, seven Southern states had seceded, and barely a month after Lincoln became president, the country became engaged in civil war,” Levy wrote. 

The 1860 election is often cited as the first of three “critical” elections in the United States. After 1860, the Democratic and Republican took the top spots in a largely two-party system. Culturally, the election of 1860 was a turning point in the fight for racial justice, setting the stage for the eventual abolition of slavery.

The Women’s Vote 

The election of 1920 saw Republican Warren G. Harding defeat Democrat James M. Cox. However, this election stands out not because of who was elected but because of who could vote. 

After decades of struggle, the 19th Amendment was ratified that same year, granting women the right to vote. For the first time in U.S. history, women could participate in the political process on equal footing with men. 

An exhibit from University of California Berkeley’s library reads, “Political advertisements for both Harding and Cox appeared in pages of The Woman Citizen with specific appeal to issues of social welfare, which were thought to be ‘women’s issues.’”

Women from the National American Woman Suffrage Association formed the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan group that aimed to educate and inform women voters so they could exercise their right to vote responsibly.

The election represented the dawn of a new era of social inclusion and the recognition of women as equal citizens. Though women’s right to vote was recognized, cultural shifts toward gender equality would be an ongoing struggle, and 1920 marked just the beginning.

Media, Religion and Civil Rights 

The 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was a pivotal moment in the intersection of media, politics and culture. It was the first election to feature televised debates, and Kennedy would become the first Roman Catholic president. 

Anti-Catholic sentiment in the U.S. was a hurdle for Kennedy, and in September 1960, he told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President — should he be Catholic — how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.” 

The rising Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was another issue that dominated the election. American leaders warned that the nation was falling behind communist countries in science and technology.

According to a JFK Presidential Library article, Kennedy “declared that the United States would have the will and the strength to resist communism around the world.”

Civil rights emerged as another crucial issue. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested while participating in a protest in Atlanta, Georgia a few weeks before the election. John F. Kennedy reached out to King’s wife Coretta Scott King to express his concern. Robert Kennedy called the judge and helped secure her husband’s safe release. 

The JFK Presidential Library states, “The Kennedys’ personal intervention led to a public endorsement by Martin Luther King Sr., the influential father of the civil rights leader. The publicizing of this endorsement, combined with other campaign efforts, contributed to increased support among Black voters for Kennedy.”

This election greatly shifted the way politics and media interacted. Kennedy took advantage of televised debates, speaking directly to the cameras and the national audience and portraying a charming personality. 

This election redefined how Americans would engage with politics in the media age, emphasizing personality and communication skills as much as policy.

Smear Campaigns and the First Black President 

When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, it was much more than a political victory for the Democratic Party. It represented a monumental cultural milestone: the election of the first Black president in a nation where African Americans had endured centuries of slavery, segregation and systemic racism. 

The rise of the 24/7 news cycle and social media were pivotal to the race between Obama and Republican John McCain as both campaigns tried to control the narrative. The election would begin the practice of smear campaigns, or plans to discredit a public figure by making false or dubious accusation — something prevalent in elections today.

According to a Britannica article, “McCain’s campaign tried to paint Obama as a naive, inexperienced political lightweight who would sit down with the leaders of anti-American regimes in Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela without preconditions, claimed that he was merely a celebrity with little substance” and labeled his ideas as socialist.

Obama’s campaign attempted to disparage McCain’s maverick persona and diminish his appeal to independent voters by linking him to George W. Bush, “whose popularity was among the lowest of any modern president.” The Obama campaign also pointed to McCain’s age and portrayed him as “erratic.”

Obama won the general election by a wide electoral margin and won a number of states that had been held by the Republicans in the past two elections. Obama’s election carried immense symbolic weight, and on election night, tens of thousands gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to see him claim victory. It spoke to the progress made since the days of Jim Crow, even as it laid bare the work still to be done in addressing racial inequities.

2020 and Insurrection 

The 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was significant not only because it took place during a global pandemic but also because it was a referendum on issues of racial justice, democracy and leadership in times of crisis. 

In the summer of 2020, massive protests followed the murder of George Floyd, and widespread misinformation and unprecedented voter turnout defined the race. 

According to Pew Research Center, 25% of voters in 2020 hadn’t voted in 2016, as “both Trump and Biden were able to bring new voters into the political process in 2020.” The 19% of 2020 voters who did not vote in 2016 split roughly evenly between the two candidates.

Mail-in ballots were widely used in the 2020 election due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions. According to Drew DeSilver for Pew Research Center, roughly 67 million mail-in ballots were submitted, doubling the previous election’s 33.5 million.

For weeks after the networks had called the election for Biden, Trump refused to acknowledge the win and was the first losing candidate to never formally concede. Trump and other Republicans engaged in an aggressive attempt to overturn the election results, alleging voter fraud and corruption. 

This led to the infamous insurrection at Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, when a group of Trump supporters stormed the joint session of the United States Congress where the Electoral College ballots were being certified. 

Biden’s victory was seen by many Americans as a repudiation of the polarization and division that had grown during the Trump era. Kamala Harris’s election as the first woman, Black and South Asian vice president was another historic cultural marker in the ongoing quest for representation and equality in U.S. politics.

Elections as Cultural Mirrors 

In each of these elections, Americans were reminded that the power of the ballot box is more than political. It’s cultural and reflects the nation’s values, exposes its wounds and charts the course for its future. In many ways, the history of American elections is the history of the American struggle for a “more perfect union.”