IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/rehizz/s0363-326820190000035006.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Populists at the Polls: Economic Factors in the US Presidential Election of 1896

In: Research in Economic History

Author

Listed:
  • Barry Eichengreen
  • Michael Haines
  • Matthew Jaremski
  • David Leblang

Abstract

The 1896 presidential election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley has new salience in the wake of the 2016 presidential contest. We provide the first systematic analysis of presidential voting in 1896, combining county-level returns with economic, financial, and demographic data. We show that Bryan did well where interest rates were high, railroad penetration was low, and crop prices had declined. We show that further declines in crop prices or increases in interest rates would have been enough to tip the Electoral College in Bryan’s favor. But to change the outcome, the additional changes would have had to be large.

Suggested Citation

  • Barry Eichengreen & Michael Haines & Matthew Jaremski & David Leblang, 2019. "Populists at the Polls: Economic Factors in the US Presidential Election of 1896," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, volume 35, pages 91-131, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:rehizz:s0363-326820190000035006
    DOI: 10.1108/S0363-326820190000035006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0363-326820190000035006/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0363-326820190000035006/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1108/S0363-326820190000035006
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0363-326820190000035006/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/S0363-326820190000035006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alan de Bromhead & Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke, 2024. "Should history change the way we think about populism?," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 77(3), pages 1086-1109, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Populists; presidential election of 1896; political economy; interest rates; railways; counterfactuals; N11; D72;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N11 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:rehizz:s0363-326820190000035006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.