page_title: Grover Cleveland 1892 presidential campaign
section_title: General election
hierarchical_section_title: Grover Cleveland 1892 presidential campaign / General election
caption_attribution_description: English: Harrison portrayed as wasting the surplus gained under Cleveland
context_page_description: After losing re-election to Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and leaving office in 1889, U.S. President Grover Cleveland was initially satisfied with his return to private life. However, Cleveland's views about his retirement began to change at the time of the 1890 midterm elections, in which the Democrats won huge victories at the ballot box. In addition, Cleveland disliked what he perceived to be the frequent blunders of the Harrison administration. By the time 1891 ended, Grover Cleveland decided to re-enter American political life and run again for U.S. President in the 1892 U.S. Presidential election.
context_section_description: Not counting the anomalous 1912 election, the 1892 U.S. Presidential election was the first and only U.S. Presidential election where both an incumbent U.S. President and an ex-U.S. President both ran as the major party nominees. With the exception of the new pro-free silver Populist Party and its candidate James B. Weaver, the 1892 election was a rematch of the 1888 election, since Cleveland and Harrison competed against each other for the U.S. Presidency back then as well. Cleveland ran on a platform of lowering tariffs (especially the McKinley Tariff), supporting the gold standard (something which he made his VP nominee Adlai Stevenson do as well) and on opposing the Republican-backed Force Bill. In addition, the Democrats criticized the Republicans for causing the Homestead Strike to occur due to their protectionist policies. Breaking tradition, Cleveland delivered his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination in front of 20,000 supporters at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Cleveland did not actively campaign much (partially due to U.S. First Lady Caroline Harrison's battle with tuberculosis throughout the 1892 campaign season), but his Vice Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson of Illinois heavily campaigned for the Democratic ticket. Cleveland's campaign did spend nearly $2,350,000 (or $46,300,000 in 2002 dollars) on his campaign, a greater amount than incumbent Republican U.S. President Benjamin Harrison spent on his re-election campaign. Whitney (Cleveland's campaign manager) eventually managed to get New York Governor David B. Hill and the Tammany Hall political machine to reluctantly support Cleveland in 1892, which might have helped Cleveland narrowly win his home state of New York. Grover Cleveland won the general election by the largest popular vote margin (three percent) in twenty years. In addition, Cleveland won almost two thirds of the Electoral College vote, winning all of the states that he won in 1884 in addition to Illinois, Wisconsin, and California. Due to winning in 1892, Grover Cleveland became the first (and only, even to this day) ex-U.S. President to be elected U.S. President again.
caption: Incumbent President Harrison and the Billion-Dollar Congress are portrayed as wasting the surplus in this Puck cartoon.
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