geeky
1n 1836, Martin Van Buren was elected President, succeeding his mentor, Old Hickory (Andrew Jackson), defeating four Whig opponents who had adopted an ill-fated strategy of running regional candidates in the hopes of having the election decided by the House of Representatives. The strategy didn't work. Ellis describes how the contest for the 1840 Whig nomination began early, as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and two generals, William Henry Harrison and Winfield Scott, adopted different strategies in the hope of winning the hearts and minds of a diverse political party. He also explains how President Martin Van Buren tried to meet the challenges of an economy in decline due to forces beyond his control and how both parties struggled with the question of if and when to hold a national convention. The economy initially suffered during the panic of 1837-38, but began to show recovery, only to recede again due to a worldwide fall in cotton prices, resulting in decreased state revenues, leading in an inability for states to fund internal improvement projects. Ellis explains how this roller-coaster economy effected state and local contests which in turn made up voters' minds in the subsequent presidential contest.
A central theme in the book is how Presidential fortunes were tied closely to how local candidates performed in state, gubernatorial and congressional elections. At that time these elections did not occur on the same day, but were spread out throughout the year and held in different years. In considerable detail, Ellis makes the case that the parties' presidential fortunes were largely tied to those of local candidates, and that whether Democrats succeeded or failed, depending on the state of the economy. While the Whigs did indeed get innovative in their campaign methods, so too did the Democrats, and while this factor is significant in causing an immense rise in voter turnout for the next several elections, Ellis argues that it was not the reason for the outcome.
The intense microscopic analysis of state voting patterns makes this book laborious to read at times. The portions of the book that are anecdotal, describing the actions and antics of the candidates and their supporters, make for much more interesting reading than the analytical portions. That's not to suggest that the statistical analysis of the voting patterns is uninteresting. But reading state by state repetition of numbers, percentages and comparisons to previous elections in the detail set out in this book can seem tedious at times and also hard to follow, even with the use of tables. The reader's enjoyment of this volume will depend on his or her desire for this much detail. No doubt this in a very intelligent analysis of the political sabremetrics involved in the 1840 election, and the case the author makes for explaining the results is very compelling. Readers uninterested in such things and hoping for more of a color commentary on what the candidates and their supporters said and did, what took place at the conventions and on the campaign trail, will also find what they're looking for, but will have to sift through many pages of analytical and statistical data in the course of doing so.