Presidential elections were held in the United States from November 2 to December 5, 1804. Incumbent Democratic-Republican president Thomas Jefferson defeated Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina in a landslide. It was the first presidential election conducted following the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reformed procedures for electing presidents and vice presidents.
Jefferson was renominated by his party's congressional nominating caucus without opposition, and the party nominated Governor George Clinton of New York to replace Aaron Burr as Jefferson's running mate. With former president John Adams in retirement, the Federalists turned to Pinckney, a former ambassador and Revolutionary War hero who had been Adams's running mate in the 1800 election.
Though Jefferson had only narrowly defeated Adams in 1800, he was widely popular due to the Louisiana Purchase and a strong economy. He carried almost every state, including most states in the Federalist stronghold of New England.
Although the 1800 presidential election was a close one, Jefferson steadily gained popularity during his term. American trade boomed due to the temporary suspension of hostilities during the French Revolutionary Wars in Europe, and the Louisiana Purchase was heralded as a great achievement.
Jefferson faced no internal opposition to his bid for re-election; the Democratic-Republican congressional caucus nominated him unanimously on February 25. The outgoing vice president, Aaron Burr, was not a candidate in the caucus, following his controversial role in the 1801 contingent election. With Burr out of the running, the selection of the vice-presidential candidate was the caucus's main responsibility.
George Clinton and John Breckinridge were the leading contenders for the vice presidential nomination. Clinton had served as governor of New York for most of the last thirty years and was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War; he had received 50 electoral votes in the 1792 United States presidential election, and declined a place on the Democratic-Republican ticket in 1800. Although of advanced age, his political views aligned with Jefferson's, and he remained popular with Democratic-Republicans in his home state.
Breckinridge, a Kentuckian, was the choice of Western Democratic-Republicans concerned with regional representation. Other candidates included the U.S. attorney general, Levi Lincoln Sr.; the former U.S. senator from New Hampshire, John Langdon; and the U.S. postmaster general, Gideon Granger. Thomas McKean was discussed as a possible contender, but withdrew prior to the caucus.
The caucus was attended by 110 Democratic-Republican members of Congress. Clinton won the nomination with 67 votes.
Congressional Federalists did not meet formally to nominate a ticket, as they had done in the previous election. The party was ill-prepared to mount a national campaign, and few believed Jefferson could be defeated. Instead, a "semisecret caucus" in Washington proposed Pinckney and King as the party's national candidates on February 22. Although this meeting was widely reported, significant uncertainty persisted concerning the identities of the Federalist candidates throughout the campaign. In states where electors were chosen by popular vote, the Federalist electors remained formally unpledged. Pinckney's biographer states that Pinckney "had the dubious honor of being the least publicized candidate in the brief history of American presidential party elections." The nomination of the inoffensive but otherwise unremarkable southerner, who did little to appeal to voters outside his own region, amounted to a public admission of Jefferson's invincibility.
The Democratic-Republicans established a vast network of state, county, town, and ward committees to conduct the campaign. In states such as Ohio, the overriding importance of the presidential election was an agent of party unity. Democratic-Republicans organized celebrations to commemorate the anniversary of Jefferson's first inauguration on March 4 and the Louisiana Purchase on May 11. Parades, dinners, and toasting were the mainstays of such events. Democratic-Republican militia units, professional associations, benevolent societies, and partisan groups like the Young Men of Democratic Principles were visible supporters of the president's re-election campaign. The Democratic-Republicans made effective use of the partisan press. The party's national paper, the National Intelligencer, was widely circulated and supported a vast array of state and local print publications.
The Democratic-Republican campaign catered to the nation's developing white male democracy. The repeal of property requirements for voting in Maryland and New Jersey benefited Jefferson, whose economic policies were considered favorable to working people. Democratic-Republican newspapers and broadsides were written in plain language accessible to the average person. The themes of "simplicity and frugality" and equality of opportunity were central to the party's appeal to voters, contrasted against Federalist elitism.
In contrast to the Democratic-Republicans, the Federalists entered the campaign demoralized and to some degree leaderless. Pinckney displayed little interest in the election and devoted most of 1804 to a local campaign against dueling. The party lost its most influential leader in July, when Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel by the outgoing vice president, Burr. Hamilton's former deputy, Timothy Pickering, saw no hope for the presidential election and instead advocated for New England to secede from the United States. Other Federalists simply withdrew from politics rather than endure a seemingly inevitable defeat.
A few Federalists, such as James A. Bayard, advocated for the party to update its tactics. The growth of mass politics in the early nineteenth century made the Federalists' reliance on elite relationships increasingly obsolete. Federalists held celebrations on the anniversary of Washington's birthday and organized benevolent groups like the Washington Benevolent Societies. The effectiveness of the party press was hindered by the stilted, formal style of many Federalist newspapers.
Criticism of Jefferson, rather than enthusiasm for Pinckney, characterized the Federalist campaign. In states where the party nominated electors, its ticket was formally unpledged. The Federalist press generally avoided mention of Pinckney and King; the Boston Columbian Centinel denied that the Federalist electors were pledged to Pinckney. Manning J. Dauer argues that the Federalists' coyness about its national candidates cost the party the electoral vote of Massachusetts.
Congress counted the electoral results on February 12, 1805, with incumbent Vice President Aaron Burr opening and reading the votes in his role as President of the Senate. Jefferson's victory was overwhelming, and he even won four of the five New England states. Pinckney won only two states, Connecticut and Delaware; both states had their electors assigned by the state legislature, making Pinckney the only major-party presidential candidate in the countryâÂÂs history not to win the popular vote in even a single state (the Federalists also did not win the popular vote in any states in 1816, but did not run an official candidate that year, instead running unpledged electors who would eventually cast their votes for King), though he did win two electoral districts in Maryland. This was the first election where the Democratic-Republicans won in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
As of 2024, Jefferson was the first of eight presidential nominees to win a significant number of electoral votes in at least three elections, the others being Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump. Of these, Jackson, Cleveland, and Roosevelt also won the popular vote in at least three elections. Jefferson, Cleveland, Roosevelt, and Trump were also their respective party's nominees for three consecutive elections. Jefferson is also the first President to receive at least 100,000 votes.
Source (Popular Vote): A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825<br /> Source (electoral vote):
<sup>(a)</sup> Only 11 of the 17 states chose electors by popular vote.<br /> <sup>(b)</sup> Those states that did choose electors by popular vote had widely varying restrictions on suffrage via property requirements.
Nineteenth-century election laws required voters to elect the members of the Electoral College individually, rather than as a block. This sometimes resulted in small differences in the number of votes cast for electors pledged to the same presidential nominee, if some voters did not vote for all the electors nominated by a party. In most cases, this table compares the votes for the most popular elector on each ticket. In the single-member districts in Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee, the result is the sum of all votes for electors pledged to one nominee.
States where the margin of victory was under 1 percentage point (7 electoral votes; all won by Jefferson):
Districts where the margin of victory was between 1 and 5 percentage points (2 electoral votes; all won by Jefferson after the rejection of invalid returns favoring Pinckney):
States where the margin of victory was between 5 and 10 percentage points (19 electoral votes; all won by Jefferson):