1888 United States presidential election

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 1888. Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison, a former U.S. senator from Indiana, defeated incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland of New York. It was the third of five U.S. presidential elections (and second within 12 years) in which the winner did not win the national popular vote, which would not occur again until 2000. Cleveland, only the second Democratic president since the American Civil War (the first being Andrew Johnson) and the first elected as president (Johnson assumed office after Lincoln's assassination, and left at the end of the term), was unanimously renominated at the 1888 Democratic National Convention. Harrison, the grandson of former President William Henry Harrison, emerged as the Republican nominee on the eighth ballot of the 1888 Republican National Convention. He defeated other prominent party leaders such as Ohio Senator John Sherman and former Michigan Governor Russell Alger. Tariff policy was the principal issue in the election, as Cleveland had proposed a dramatic reduction in tariffs, arguing that high tariffs were unfair to consumers. Harrison took the side of industrialists and factory workers who wanted to keep tariffs high. Cleveland's opposition to American Civil War pensions and inflated currency also made enemies among veterans and farmers. On the other hand, he held a strong hand in the Southern United States and the border states, and appealed to former Republican Mugwumps. Cleveland won a narrow plurality of the popular vote, in large part due to the disenfranchisement of Black citizens (who mostly favored Harrison) in the South, but Harrison won the election with a majority in the Electoral College, marking the only time (as of 2024) that an incumbent president lost a reelection bid despite winning the popular vote. Harrison swept almost the entire North and Midwest, including narrowly carrying the swing states of New York and Indiana. This was the first time since 1856 that Democrats won the popular vote in consecutive elections. This was the first election since 1840 in which an incumbent president lost reelection. Cleveland was the last incumbent Democratic president to lose reelection until Jimmy Carter in 1980.