United States presidential election, 1788–89

United States presidential election, 1788–89

December 15, 1788 – January 10, 1789
69 electoral votes of the Electoral College 35 electoral votes needed to win
Nominee George Washington Party Independent Home state Virginia Electoral vote 69 States carried 10 Popular vote 43,782 Percentage 100%
Presidential election results map. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state. (Note: North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution, the New York legislature was deadlocked, and Vermont was operating as a de facto unrecognized state.)
President before election None (Office created by the US Constitution) Elected President George Washington Nonpartisan

The United States presidential election of 1788–89 was the first quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Monday, December 15, 1788 to Saturday, January 10, 1789. It was the first presidential election in the United States of America under the new United States Constitution, which was adopted on September 17, 1787, and the only election ever to take place partially in a year that is not a multiple of four. In this election, George Washington was unanimously elected for the first of his two terms as president, and John Adams became the first vice president.

Before this election, the United States had no chief executive. Under the previous system agreed to under Articles of Confederation, the national government was headed by the Confederation Congress, which had a ceremonial presiding officer and several executive departments, but no independent executive branch.

The enormously popular Washington essentially ran unopposed. The only real issue to be decided was who would be chosen as vice president. Under the system then in place, each elector cast votes for two persons; if a person received a vote from a majority of the electors, that person became president, and the runner-up became vice president. All 69 electors cast one vote each for Washington. Their other votes were divided among eleven other candidates; John Adams received the most, becoming vice president. The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, would change this procedure, requiring each elector to cast distinct votes for president and vice president.

Candidates

No political parties existed at the time of the 1788–89 presidential election. Candidates were either Federalists, meaning they supported the ratification of the Constitution, or Anti-Federalists, meaning they opposed ratification. These groups were not established political parties, however, and were united in supporting Washington for president.

Washington's immense popularity made the question of who would be the first president only a technical one. The real race was for the vice presidency, which was contested by nine individuals of varying prominence in the United States. However, because the voting procedure of the time did not distinguish between votes for president and vice president, all were technically candidates for president along with Washington.

Federalist candidates

• George Washington, former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army from Virginia
• John Adams, former Minister to Great Britain from Massachusetts
• John Jay, United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs from New York
• John Rutledge, former Governor of South Carolina
• John Hancock, Governor of Massachusetts
• Samuel Huntington, Governor of Connecticut
• Benjamin Lincoln, former U.S. Secretary of War from Massachusetts

• 

  Former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army
  George Washington
  from Virginia

• 

  former Minister to Great Britain
  John Adams
  from Massachusetts

• 

  Secretary of Foreign Affairs
  John Jay
  from New York

• 

  former Governor
  John Rutledge
  of South Carolina

• 

  Governor
  John Hancock
  of Massachusetts

• 

  Governor
  Samuel Huntington
  of Connecticut

• 

  Benjamin Lincoln
  from Massachusetts

Anti-Federalist candidates

• George Clinton, Governor of New York

• 

  Governor
  George Clinton
  of New York

General election

Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of yellow are for the Federalists.

In the absence of conventions, there was no formal nomination process. The framers of the Constitution had presumed that Washington would be the first president, and once he agreed to come out of retirement to accept the office, there was no opposition to him.

The real question was who would assume the office of vice president, which under the system then in place went to the runner-up in the presidential election. Because Washington was from Virginia, many assumed that a vice president would be chosen from one of the northern states to ease sectional tensions. In an August 1788 letter, U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson wrote that he considered John Adams and John Hancock to be the top contenders, with John Jay, James Madison, and John Rutledge as other possible candidates.

Electors were selected by the individual states, and each cast one vote for Washington. The electors used their second vote to cast a scattering of votes, many voting for someone besides Adams. This was due largely to a scheme perpetrated by Alexander Hamilton, who feared that Adams would tie with Washington, throwing the election to the House of Representatives and embarrassing Washington and the new Constitution. Thus, Adams received only 34 of 69 votes.

As the electors were being selected, rumors spread that there was an Anti-Federalist plot afoot to elect Richard Henry Lee or Patrick Henry president over Washington, with George Clinton as their choice for vice president. These rumors may have been encouraged by those sympathetic to the Federalists, who wished to discourage electors from voting for Clinton. If so, this strategy was effective: Clinton received only three electoral votes, possibly due to a fear within the electoral college that a vote for Clinton was effectively a vote against Washington.

Only ten states out of the original thirteen cast electoral votes in this election. North Carolina and Rhode Island were ineligible to participate as they had not yet ratified the United States Constitution. New York failed to appoint its allotment of eight electors because of a deadlock in the state legislature.

Results

Popular vote

	Popular Vote(a), (b), (c)
	Count	Percentage
Federalist electors	39,624	90.5%
Anti-Federalist electors	4,158	9.5%
Total	43,782	100.0%

Source: U.S. President National Vote. Our Campaigns. (February 11, 2006).

^(a) Only 6 of the 10 states casting electoral votes chose electors by any form of popular vote.
^(b) Less than 1.3% of the population voted: the 1790 Census would count a total population of 3.0 million with a free population of 2.4 million and 600,000 slaves in those states casting electoral votes in this election.
^(c) Those states that did choose electors by popular vote had widely varying restrictions on suffrage via property requirements.

Electoral vote

Presidential Candidate	Party	Home State	Popular Vote(a), (b), (c)		Electoral Vote(d), (e), (f)
			Count	Percentage
George Washington	Independent	Virginia	43,782	100.0%	69
John Adams	Federalist	Massachusetts	—	—	34
John Jay	Federalist	New York	—	—	9
Robert H. Harrison	Federalist	Maryland	—	—	6
John Rutledge	Federalist	South Carolina	—	—	6
John Hancock	Federalist	Massachusetts	—	—	4
George Clinton	Anti-Federalist	New York	—	—	3
Samuel Huntington	Federalist	Connecticut	—	—	2
John Milton	Federalist	Georgia	—	—	2
James Armstrong(g)	Federalist	Georgia(g)	—	—	1
Benjamin Lincoln	Federalist	Massachusetts	—	—	1
Edward Telfair	Anti-Federalist	Georgia	—	—	1
Total			43,782	100.0%	138
Needed to win					35

Source:

^(a) Only 6 of the 10 states casting electoral votes chose electors by any form of popular vote.
^(b) Less than 1.3% of the population voted: the 1790 Census would count a total population of 3.0 million with a free population of 2.4 million and 600,000 slaves in those states casting electoral votes in this election.
^(c) Those states that did choose electors by popular vote had widely varying restrictions on suffrage via property requirements.
^(d) The New York legislature failed to appoint its allotted 8 electors in time, so there were no voting electors from New York.
^(e) Two electors from Maryland did not vote.
^(f) One elector from Virginia did not vote and another elector from Virginia was not chosen because an election district failed to submit returns.
^(g) The identity of this candidate comes from The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections (Gordon DenBoer (ed.), University of Wisconsin Press, 1984, p. 441). Several respected sources, including the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and the Political Graveyard, instead show this individual to be James Armstrong of Pennsylvania. However, primary sources, such as the Senate Journal, list only Armstrong's name, not his state. Skeptics observe that Armstrong received his single vote from a Georgia elector. They find this improbable because Armstrong of Pennsylvania was not nationally famous—his public service to that date consisted of being a medical officer during the American Revolution and, at most, a single year as a Pennsylvania judge.

Results by state

		George Washington Federalist			George Washington Anti-Federalist			State Total
State	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#	%	electoral votes	#
Connecticut	7	no popular vote		7	no popular vote			-	CT
Delaware	3	685	100	3	no ballots			685	DE
Georgia	5	no popular vote		4	no popular vote		1	-	GA
Maryland	6	5,539	71.63	6	2,193	28.37	-	7,732	MD
Massachusetts	10	17,740	100	10	no ballots			17,740	MA
New Hampshire	5	5,909	100	5	no ballots			5,909	NH
New Jersey	6	no popular vote		6	no popular vote			-	NJ
New York	0	did not participate (legislature deadlocked)						-	NY
North Carolina	0	did not participate (didn't ratify Constitution)						-	NC
Pennsylvania	10	6,711	90.90	10	672	9.10	-	7,383	PA
Rhode Island	0	did not participate (didn't ratify Constitution)						-	RI
South Carolina	7	no popular vote		7	no popular vote			-	SC
Virginia	10	3,040	70.16	7	1,293	29.84	3	4,333	VA
TOTALS:	69	39,624	90.50	65	4,158	9.50	4	43,782	US
TO WIN:	35

Electoral college selection

The Constitution, in Article II, Section 1, provided that the state legislatures should decide the manner in which their Electors were chosen. Different state legislatures chose different methods:

Method of choosing Electors	State(s)
each elector appointed by the state legislature	Connecticut Georgia New Jersey New York(a) South Carolina
two electors appointed by state legislature each remaining elector chosen by state legislature from list of top two vote-getters in each congressional district	Massachusetts
each elector chosen by voters statewide; however, if no candidate wins majority, state legislature appoints elector from top two candidates	New Hampshire
state is divided into electoral districts, with one elector chosen per district by the voters of that district	Virginia(b) Delaware
electors chosen at large by voters	Maryland Pennsylvania
state had not yet ratified the Constitution, so was not eligible to choose electors	North Carolina Rhode Island

^(a) New York's legislature deadlocked, so no electors were chosen.
^(b) One electoral district failed to choose an elector.

See also

• First inauguration of George Washington
• History of the United States (1789-1849)
• First United States Congress
• United States House of Representatives elections, 1789
• United States Senate elections, 1788 and 1789

External links

• Presidential Election of 1789: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825
• Election of 1789 in Counting the Votes