Editing William Jennings Bryan (section)

====General election====
Conservative Democrats, known as the "[[National Democratic Party (United States)|Gold Democrats]]", nominated a separate ticket. Cleveland himself did not publicly attack Bryan but privately favored the Republican candidate, [[William McKinley]], over Bryan. Many urban newspapers in the Northeast and Midwest that had supported previous Democratic tickets also opposed Bryan's candidacy.<ref>Kazin (2006), p. 63</ref> Bryan, however, won the support of the Populist Party, which nominated a ticket consisting of Bryan and [[Thomas E. Watson]] of Georgia. Though Populist leaders feared that the nomination of the Democratic candidate would damage the party in the long term, they shared many of Bryan's political views and had developed a productive working relationship with Bryan.<ref>Kazin (2006), pp. 63–65</ref>

The Republican campaign painted McKinley as the "advance agent of prosperity" and social harmony and warned of the supposed dangers of electing Bryan. McKinley and his campaign manager, [[Mark Hanna]], knew that McKinley could not match Bryan's oratorical skills. Rather than giving speeches on the campaign trail, the Republican nominee conducted a [[front porch campaign]]. Hanna, meanwhile, raised an unprecedented amount of money, dispatched campaign surrogates and organized the distribution of millions of pieces of campaign literature.<ref>Kazin (2006), pp. 65–67</ref>

[[File:ElectoralCollege1896.svg|thumb|1896 electoral vote results]]

Facing a huge campaign finance disadvantage, the Democratic campaign relied largely on Bryan's oratorical skills. Breaking with the precedent set by most major party nominees, Bryan gave some 600 speeches, primarily in the hotly-contested Midwest.<ref>{{cite book|author=William Safire|title=Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EKkO4JBxtVkC&pg=PA922|year=2004|publisher=W.W. Norton|page=922|isbn=978-0-393-05931-1}}</ref> Bryan invented the national [[stump speech (politics)|stumping tour]], reaching an audience of 5 million in 27 states.<ref>Richard J. Ellis And Mark Dedrick, "The Presidential Candidate, Then and Now" ''Perspectives on Political Science'' (1997) 26#4 pp. 208–216 [http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/ellis.htm online]</ref> He was building a coalition of the white South, poor northern farmers and industrial workers and silver miners against banks and railroads and the "money power". Free silver appealed to farmers, who would be paid more for their products, but not to industrial workers, who would not get higher wages but would pay higher prices. The industrial cities voted for McKinley, who won nearly the entire East and industrial Midwest and did well along the border and the West Coast. Bryan swept the South and Mountain states and the  wheat growing regions of the Midwest. Revivalistic Protestants cheered at Bryan's semi-religious rhetoric. Ethnic voters supported McKinley, who promised they would not be excluded from the new prosperity, as did more prosperous farmers and the fast-growing middle class.<ref>{{cite book|author=Michael Nelson|title=Guide to the Presidency|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fK_lCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA363|year=2015|publisher=Routledge|page=363|isbn=978-1-135-91462-2}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Karl Rove|title=The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q_agDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA368|year=2016|pages=367–369|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4767-5296-9}}</ref>

McKinley won the election by a fairly comfortable margin by taking 51 percent of the popular vote and 271 [[Electoral College (United States)|electoral votes]].<ref>Kazin (2006), pp. 76–79</ref> Democrats remained loyal to their champion after his defeat; many letters urged him to run again in the [[1900 United States presidential election|1900 presidential election]]. William's younger brother, [[Charles W. Bryan]], created a card file of supporters to whom the Bryans would send regular mailings to for the next thirty years.<ref>Kazin (2006), pp. 80–82</ref> The Populist Party fractured after the election; many Populists, including James Weaver, followed Bryan into the Democratic Party, and others followed [[Eugene V. Debs]] into the [[Socialist Party of America|Socialist Party]].<ref>Kazin (2006), pp. 202–203</ref>

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 95%;"
|-
! colspan="6" | 1896 United States presidential election<ref>{{cite web|author=David Leip|publisher=Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas|url=https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=1896&fips=42&f=1&off=0&elect=0&minper=0|title=1896 Presidential General Election Results – Pennsylvania|access-date=March 24, 2018}}</ref>
|-
! colspan="2" style="width: 15em" |Party
! style="width: 17em" |Candidate
! style="width: 5em" |Votes
! style="width: 7em" |Percentage
! style="width: 5em" |Electoral votes
|-
! style="background-color:#FF3333; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | '''[[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]'''
| '''[[William McKinley]]'''
| align="right" | '''7,108,480'''
| align="right" | '''50.99%'''
| align="right" | '''271'''
|-
! style="background-color:#3333FF; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]]
| ''William Jennings Bryan''
| align="right" | 5,588,462
| align="right" | 40.09%
| align="right" | 
|-
! style="background-color:#CCFFCC; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | [[Populist Party (United States)|Populist]]
| ''William Jennings Bryan''
| align="right" | 907,717
| align="right" | 6.51%
| align="right" | 
|-
! style="background-color:#777777; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | [[Silver Party|Silver]]
| ''William Jennings Bryan''
| align="right" | 12,873
| align="right" | 0.09%
| align="right" | 
|-
! style="background-color:#B2BEB5; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | Total
| William Jennings Bryan
| align="right" | 6,509,052
| align="right" | 46.69%
| align="right" | 176
|-
! style="background-color:#FFC02D; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | [[National Democratic Party (United States)|National Democratic]]
| [[John M. Palmer (politician)|John Palmer]]
| align="right" | 134,645
| align="right" | 0.97%
| align="right" | 0
|-
! style="background-color:#FF00FF; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | [[Prohibition Party|Prohibition]]
| [[Joshua Levering]]
| align="right" | 131,312	
| align="right" | 0.94%
| align="right" | 0
|-
! style="background-color:#DD051D; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | [[Socialist Labor Party of America|Socialist Labor]]
| [[Charles Matchett]]
| align="right" | 36,373
| align="right" | 0.26%
| align="right" | 0
|-
! style="background-color:#f09; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | [[Prohibition Party|National Prohibition]]
| [[Charles E. Bentley (politician)|Charles Bentley]]
| align="right" | 19,367
| align="right" | 0.14%
| align="right" | 0
|-
! style="background-color:#FFFFFF; width: 3px" |
| style="width: 130px" | ''No party''
| [[Write-in candidate|Write-ins]]
| align="right" | 1,570
| align="right" | 0.01%
| align="right" | 0
|-
|-bgcolor="#EEEEEE"
| colspan="3" align="right" | '''Totals'''
| align="right" | '''13,940,799'''
| align="right" | '''100.00%'''
| align="right" | '''447'''
|}