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 The Election Results

 


 “The End of the Circus Season”
  Cartoonist:  William Allen Rogers
  Source:  Harper's Weekly
  Date:   November 3, 1900, p. 1050

Click to see a large version of this cartoon...

Click to see a large version of this cartoon

Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
In the last issue of Harper’s Weekly published before the November 6 presidential election, Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan is pictured as a clown dejected by his impending defeat. He rides the exhausted Democratic Donkey through a driving rain storm, while carrying the symbols of his failed issues—free silver (bunco dollar), imperialism (tyrant), and antitrust (octopus). The scene evokes the literary analogy of Don Quixote, who tilted at imaginary windmills, and the body of water is probably meant to be the Salt River, a metaphor for political defeat.

William McKinley defeated Bryan by a margin of 292-155 in the Electoral College and 52%-46% in the popular vote. The Democratic nominee won the South, the Border States of Kentucky and Missouri, and four Mountain States of Colorado, Nevada, Montana, and Idaho, for a total of 17 states, five less than in 1896. The Republican president carried the other 28 states. Results of the 1900 election consolidated the realignment begun in 1896 of the GOP as the dominant party in national politics through the 1920s.

 

 

 

 
 

 

     
 

 

 
     
 

 

 
     
 

 

 

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