He presided over a country whose population had doubled every twenty years since the American Revolution and which had reached demographic parity with Great Britain. People liked Polk's oratory, which earned him the nickname 'Napoleon of the Stump.' At the polls, where Polk provided alcoholic refreshments for his voters, he defeated incumbent William Yancey. Although Polk had the military prepare for war, he did not believe it would come to that; he thought Mexico would give in under duress, which proved to be a significant miscalculation.