The United States has had 60 presidential elections starting in 1789. New parties have come and gone, while new states expanded the electoral map. Maps show us how each state has voted over time — and who have been the winners and losers along the way.
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00:00You've seen this map before.
00:02The edges are usually blue, and for the most part, the middle is red.
00:07But it hasn't always been that way.
00:09New parties have come and gone, new states expanded the map, then shifted from left to
00:14right and back again.
00:16And who is allowed to vote has transformed this map over the centuries.
00:22Here's how the U.S. has voted in every presidential election since 1789.
00:29Ten years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, George Washington is elected
00:33the first President of the Union in 1789.
00:36He easily wins a second term.
00:39But only about 1.3% of the country's population casts a ballot.
00:44In most states, only white men who own property can vote, with some exceptions.
00:48Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, all allowed free people of color
00:55to vote on exactly the same basis as their white neighbors, and without property requirements.
01:01The birth of our two-party system includes the Federalists, who favor financial interests,
01:07and the Democratic-Republicans, who favor farmers.
01:10The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 initiates more than 20 years of Democratic-Republican
01:16presidential dominance.
01:18In 1824, four Democratic-Republicans run against each other in a race so close it's decided
01:24by the House of Representatives, which chooses John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson.
01:29Four years later, Jackson runs again.
01:32By then, many states have eliminated property requirements, and voter participation almost
01:36doubles.
01:38Jackson rallies white working-class voters to fight Washington elitism.
01:43He wins with nearly two-thirds of the electoral vote.
01:46And some of it is on the basis of economic populism, some of it is on the basis of inveterate
01:53racist policies towards Native American nations, some of it is on the basis of a kind of friendliness
01:59and accommodation to slavery.
02:01Jackson wins again in 1832, and a new, business-friendly opposition party comes together.
02:07They call themselves the Whigs, and one of their major issues is fighting the expansion
02:11of slavery into new territories.
02:14Slavery is the one issue that is most likely to determine which way someone votes throughout
02:19the first half of the 19th century, with conservatives and liberals on both sides.
02:25In 1836, four Whig candidates run, but Democrat Martin Van Buren wins the most states, and
02:31power shifts back and forth between the two parties for the next four elections.
02:36New states like Florida, Texas, and Iowa expand the electoral map.
02:40By 1856, after a string of defeats and infighting over slavery, the Whig party collapses.
02:47A new Republican party emerges, opposing slavery and calling for economic reform.
02:53So at this point, we have both major parties that exist today, even though their platforms
02:57have changed drastically since then.
02:59The Republicans gain popularity in the North and try to win over free Black voters in the South.
03:05It's not as if Republicans are not racially discriminatory or they're not racist.
03:10It's going to benefit them to have Black people become a part of the franchise and begin to vote.
03:16And ideally be Republican.
03:18Meanwhile, the Democratic party unifies the pro-slavery vote and cements their hold on the South.
03:25That divide deepens, and in 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln wins on an anti-slavery platform.
03:31It's really two separate elections, one in the North and one in the South.
03:36Lincoln isn't even on the ballot in most of the slave states.
03:39We might as well already be in two distinct republics by the summer and fall of 1860.
03:45Starting with South Carolina, 11 Southern states secede from the Union to form the Confederacy,
03:51and the Civil War begins in 1861.
03:54In the midst of the war, Lincoln wins a second term.
03:56That's also the first election where we had absentee balloting.
04:00Lincoln wanted to make it possible for soldiers in the field to vote because he assumed they
04:05would vote overwhelmingly Republican, which in fact is what they did.
04:10In early 1865, the Confederacy falls.
04:13Lincoln is assassinated in April, and Vice President Andrew Johnson takes over.
04:18Over the next four years, the Southern states begin to rejoin the Union.
04:22Republicans hang on to power when Ulysses S. Grant wins in 1868.
04:26And the only reason Grant won a popular majority was because there were sufficient numbers
04:31of blacks voting.
04:32In some Southern states, 90% of African Americans voted.
04:36Grant signs the 15th Amendment, giving all male citizens the right to vote regardless
04:40of color or race, with the exception of Native Americans.
04:45Grant wins again in 1872.
04:47In 1876, it wasn't clear which candidate won the election.
04:52So Congress makes a deal.
04:54Republicans get the presidency, with Rutherford B. Hayes taking office.
04:58And Democrats in the South get something they've wanted since the end of the war—the removal
05:02of federal troops that have been protecting the civil rights of newly freed black people.
05:07People can vote.
05:08People can run for office.
05:09They can purchase property.
05:11And essentially, the Hayes-Tilden Compromise in 1877 ends Reconstruction.
05:18And we begin to move towards what we later come to know as Jim Crow.
05:23State and local governments pass laws designed to keep African Americans from voting.
05:28Democrats ride a wave of anti-Reconstruction sentiment and dominate the South for the next
05:32century or so.
05:34In 1896, Republican William McKinley wins by the largest margin his party has seen in
05:3920 years.
05:40The Republican Party basically had become the presumptive majority party.
05:44I mean, it was a contest basically over kind of rural agrarianism and urban capitalism,
05:51and the country favored Republicans.
05:53In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt runs as a progressive in what he dubs the Bull Moose Party.
05:59It splits the Republican vote, handing the win to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
06:04Still, Roosevelt's Progressive Party is the first with an agenda designed to attract women
06:09suffragists.
06:10So the agenda of progressives was things like food and drug legislation, child labor legislation,
06:17factory legislation, better education, those sorts of things.
06:23And those are traditionally seen as women's issues.
06:25And the progressives understood that if they enfranchised women, they would win more votes.
06:30The women's rights movement gains momentum through the 1910s.
06:34And states like Washington, Oregon, and California give women the vote.
06:38The 19th Amendment grants women the right to vote nationwide in 1920.
06:43But over four decades pass before they turn out at the same rate as men and form a significant
06:47voting bloc.
06:49Women maybe turned out at two-thirds of male voters.
06:52They weren't changing the electorate in that way.
06:55They weren't going to change it until they started voting differently for men.
07:00After Wilson, three Republicans win in a row, ending with Herbert Hoover in 1928.
07:07The economy crashes in 1929, and public outrage over the Great Depression helps Franklin D.
07:12Roosevelt win in 1932.
07:16World War II collides with the end of his second term, and the nation decides to stick
07:19with him for an unprecedented third term, and then a fourth term to get them through
07:24the other side of the war.
07:26Voter demographics and party alignment shift during his 12-year presidency in ways that
07:31can still be felt today.
07:33Democrats consolidate the support of recent immigrants and younger working-class whites
07:38who had previously voted Republican.
07:40New Deal Democrats begin winning over the millions of black people migrating north to
07:44escape Jim Crow terror in the south.
07:47When Roosevelt first ran in 1932 when he was first elected, 80% of African Americans were
07:52still voting for Herbert Hoover.
07:54The first time significant numbers of blacks voted Democratic was in Franklin Roosevelt's
07:59re-election in 1936, and that's because the New Deal anti-poverty programs extended to
08:06African Americans.
08:08FDR dies in 1945.
08:11Vice President Harry S. Truman takes over, then wins the election of 1948.
08:15If you were a Truman voter in 1948, what you thought you would be voting for is in
08:22effect a third stage of the New Deal.
08:25But in 1952, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower ends 20 years of Democratic rule with two
08:31landslide elections in which he only loses the South.
08:37A TV-savvy campaign leads John F. Kennedy to victory in 1960.
08:42The newly popular medium forces him and the nation to confront rampant discrimination
08:47against black people.
08:49Civil rights activity in the 1960s is being aired on television globally.
08:55By the mid-1960s, we're involved in Vietnam.
08:58Mass draft card burning was urged.
09:00The globe is seeing us every day on television, not standing by the same kinds of principles
09:05that we argue we are bringing to other countries.
09:09And our path, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change.
09:14Civil rights bills had been passed in 1957 and 1960, but neither fully enfranchised blacks
09:21in the South.
09:22At 125, the Marquette moves into the downtown area.
09:26Death is six minutes away.
09:28JFK's assassinated in late 1963.
09:32Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president and wins outright in 1964.
09:37If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what
09:48we are.
09:49He passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, meant to keep
09:55states from changing voting laws the way they had during the Jim Crow era.
09:59You never actually achieve equity between the black vote in terms of its percentage
10:04share and the white vote.
10:06The improvements are substantial.
10:08The Democrats' strong civil rights push alienates many white Southerners who throw their support
10:13behind Republicans.
10:14In 1968, a year of social upheaval, Republicans pick up support in the West and Midwest as
10:21the country shifts right.
10:23Richard Nixon wins the election, running on law and order.
10:27What Nixon is essentially telling people is that civil rights has gone too far.
10:31If you elect me, you know, I'll bring us back to a more stable system.
10:36Nixon wins in a landslide in 1972.
10:39Two years later, amid the Watergate scandal, Nixon becomes the only president to ever resign.
10:45Therefore, I shall resign the presidency a festees that noon tomorrow.
10:52Then in 1976, Jimmy Carter secures a win for the Democrats.
10:57Actor-turned-governor Ronald Reagan beats Carter in 1980, revitalizing the conservative
11:02movement.
11:04This every four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.
11:09It's hard to overstate how devastating a defeat the 1980 election was for the Democrats.
11:17Because if you compare 1980 to 1984, they actually get worse.
11:21Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, wins in 1988 as the clear frontrunner with
11:25a promise to continue Reagan's policies.
11:28But in 1992, Bill Clinton, a Southern Democratic governor, revitalizes his party by successfully
11:34appealing to moderate voters.
11:38And Clinton is elected on this platform of a kind of young, new Democrat.
11:43Al Gore is his running mate.
11:45The idea is that this will symbolize a new generation of Democrats.
11:50In 2000, Republicans rally behind the younger George Bush, George W., then the governor
11:55of Texas.
11:57Al Gore wins the popular vote, but a controversial Supreme Court decision gives Bush Florida,
12:02handing him the election.
12:04In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, Bush wins again in 2004, coming close to rebuilding
12:10Reagan's red wall.
12:12But in 2008, during a devastating financial crisis, Democrat Barack Obama wins in a landslide,
12:18picking up solidly Republican states like Virginia, and becomes the first Black president.
12:24But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the
12:33cynics said we couldn't do.
12:36The Obama approach is to energize the young and essentially to appease and soothe suburban
12:43voters who had been reliant Republican voters in the 80s and 90s because basically the Democrats
12:50would drive the country off the cliffs economically.
12:53After Obama wins a second term in 2012 with the same diverse coalition of voters, Republicans
12:59do what they call an autopsy on their party.
13:01Post-Wharton said, we need to reach out to Latino voters, we need to reach out to Asian
13:06voters.
13:07But four years later, they nominate a famed real estate baron and reality TV star not
13:12known for appealing to a diverse array of voters.
13:15Donald Trump doesn't intend to build a wall.
13:19Believe me, folks, we're building the wall.
13:21And instead, what Trump realized was, maybe I could double down on the racially resentful
13:28white people who in each election are voting slightly more and more Republican.
13:32In 2016, Hillary Clinton is the odds-on favorite to become the first female president.
13:38Democrats point to the blue wall of states that had voted Democratic over the past six
13:42elections, but that was not to be.
13:46Very similar to the Voting Rights Act itself, the election of Obama created a significant
13:52backlash.
13:53I mean, the American history is defined to some degree by civil rights movement forward,
13:59backlash white supremacy back.
14:02Clinton does win the popular vote, but Trump charges through the blue wall, winning the
14:07Electoral College with a campaign that, by and large, ignored the 2012 autopsy.
14:12Trump's populist campaign captures swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
14:17that could have gone either way.
14:18I don't know if Trump's a political genius or not, but he intuited something that you
14:23actually could squeeze another presidential victory or two out of a racially disaffected
14:30white elect.
14:31Today, experts say the American political system is the most polarized it's ever been.
14:37Trump benefited from the fact that 90% of Republicans are going to support him.
14:42There's this phenomenon called negative partisanship, where even if you don't love your party, you
14:47know you hate the other side.
14:49In the 2020 election, in the middle of a global pandemic, Democrat and former Vice President
14:54Joe Biden secures a convincing win over Trump with 306 electoral votes.
14:59And Biden wins back the five swing states Trump took in the previous election—Michigan,
15:03Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona.
15:09Trump and his supporters refuse to accept the result of the vote and repeat the baseless
15:13claim that the election had been stolen.
15:15I've been in two elections.
15:16I won them both.
15:17And the second one, I won much bigger than the first, okay?
15:20The bad blood culminates in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters on January
15:256, 2021.
15:26U.S.A.!
15:27U.S.A.!
15:28U.S.A.!
15:29U.S.A.!
15:30Which puts an end to America's streak of peaceful transfers of power.
15:33Who's out?
15:34The powerhouse!
15:35Who's out?
15:36The powerhouse!
15:37Election year 2024 is also punctuated by drama.
15:41In May, Trump is the first ex-president to become a convicted felon.
15:45Trump is guilty!
15:47In June, President Biden falters during the pair's televised presidential debate.
15:52In July, Trump is shot and injured during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
16:01And later that month, Biden withdraws from the race.
16:04I've decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.
16:09Clearing the road for Kamala Harris, his vice president, to take the Democratic nomination.
16:14In the run-up to Election Day, pollsters everywhere labeled the race a toss-up.
16:19But in the end, Trump secures an unlikely return to the White House with a convincing
16:22win over Harris.
16:25He even takes the popular vote — 312 electoral college votes — and Republicans take the
16:30Senate.
16:31At 78, Trump becomes the oldest person elected to the office, the second person to win non-consecutive
16:38terms, and the first convicted criminal to serve as president.