1880 United States presidential election
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Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1880. Republican nominee James A. Garfield defeated Winfield Scott Hancock of the Democratic Party. Incumbent President Rutherford B. Hayes did not seek reelection. After the longest convention in the party's history, the factionalized Republicans chose Representative Garfield of Ohio as their standard-bearer. The Democratic Party chose General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania as their nominee. The dominance of the two major parties began to fray as an upstart left-wing party, the Greenback Party, nominated another Civil War general for president, Iowa Congressman James B. Weaver. In a campaign fought mainly over issues of Civil War loyalties, tariffs, and Chinese immigration, Garfield narrowly won both the electoral and popular vote. He and Hancock each took just over 48 percent of the popular vote, while Weaver and two other minor candidates, Neal Dow and John W. Phelps, together made up the remainder. In the end, the popular vote totals of the two main candidates were separated by 1,898 votes (0.11%), the smallest victory in the national popular vote ever recorded. In the electoral college, however, Garfield's victory was much larger; he won the tipping point state of New York by 21,033 votes (1.91%). Hancock's sweep of the Southern states was not enough for victory, but it cemented his party's dominance of the region for generations. This was the first election in which people in every state were able to vote directly for presidential electors, and the voter turnout rate was one of the highest in the nation's history. This was the last of six consecutive presidential election victories for the Republican Party. Garfield was assassinated during his first year in office, and he was succeeded by his vice president, Chester A. Arthur.