1848 United States presidential election in Indiana
November 7, 1848
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County Results
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| Elections in Indiana |
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A presidential election was held in Indiana on November 7, 1848, as part of the 1848 United States presidential election. The Democratic ticket of the senior U.S. senator from Michigan Lewis Cass and the former U.S. representative from Kentucky's 3rd congressional district William O. Butler defeated the Whig ticket of major general Zachary Taylor and the New York state comptroller Millard Fillmore. The Free Soil ticket of the former president Martin Van Buren and the Massachusetts senator Charles F. Adams finished a distant third.[1] Taylor defeated Cass in the national election with 163 electoral votes.[2]
General election
Summary
Indiana chose 12 electors on a statewide general ticket. Nineteenth-century election laws required voters to elect each member of the Electoral College individually, rather than as a group. This sometimes resulted in small differences in the number of votes cast for electors pledged to the same presidential candidate, if some voters did not vote for all the electors nominated by a party.[3] This table compares the votes for the most popular elector pledged to each ticket, to give an approximate sense of the statewide result.[a]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Lewis Cass William O. Butler |
74,692 | 48.82 | 1.25 | |
| Whig | Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore |
70,175 | 45.87 | 2.55 | |
| Free Soil | Martin Van Buren Charles F. Adams |
8,102 | 5.30 | 5.30 | |
| Write-in | 18 | 0.01 | 0.01 | ||
| Total votes | 152,987 | 100.00 | |||
Results
| Party | Candidate | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Nathaniel Albertson | 74,692 | |
| Democratic | Cyrus L. Dunham | 74,692 | |
| Democratic | Graham N. Fitch | 74,691 | |
| Democratic | Daniel Mace | 74,691 | |
| Democratic | William McCarty | 74,691 | |
| Democratic | James Ritchey | 74,691 | |
| Democratic | Andrew J. Harlan | 74,686 | |
| Democratic | George W. Carr | 74,685 | |
| Democratic | Charles H. Test | 74,685 | |
| Democratic | E. M. Chamberlain | 74,680 | |
| Democratic | Robert Dale Owen | 74,675 | |
| Democratic | James M. Hanna | 73,912 | |
| Whig | Thomas D. Walpole | 70,175 | |
| Whig | Milton Gregg | 70,165 | |
| Whig | David P. Holloway | 70,165 | |
| Whig | John S. Davis | 70,164 | |
| Whig | Edward W. McGaughey | 70,163 | |
| Whig | Lovell Rousseau | 70,163 | |
| Whig | James F. Suit | 70,162 | |
| Whig | Daniel D. Pratt | 70,157 | |
| Whig | David Kilgore | 70,151 | |
| Whig | Joseph G. Marshall | 70,149 | |
| Whig | Godlove S. Orth | 70,145 | |
| Whig | James E. Blythe | 70,135 | |
| Free Soil | John R. Cravens[b] | 8,102 | |
| Free Soil | Milton Short | 8,100 | |
| Free Soil | Ovid Butler | 8,099 | |
| Free Soil | George W. Julian | 8,099 | |
| Free Soil | Albert G. Coffin | 8,098 | |
| Free Soil | Samuel A. Huff | 8,098 | |
| Free Soil | Joseph L. Jernegan | 8,097 | |
| Free Soil | Nathaniel Little | 8,092 | |
| Free Soil | Henry Leavitt Ellsworth | 8,090 | |
| Free Soil | John H. Bradley | 8,088 | |
| Free Soil | Daniel Worth | 7,195 | |
| Independent Democrat | Henry Secrest | 771 | |
| Independent Free Soil | Lewis Beecher | 449 | |
| Independent Free Soil | Joseph Morrow | 419 | |
| Independent Whig | John Pitcher | 76 | |
| Unpledged | A. Bassett | 14 | |
| Unpledged | E. Beach | 14 | |
| Unpledged | E. Beardsley | 14 | |
| Unpledged | H. H. Beardsley | 14 | |
| Unpledged | M. A. Brodrick | 14 | |
| Unpledged | N. F. Brodrick | 14 | |
| Unpledged | D. W. Gray | 14 | |
| Unpledged | J. Frush | 14 | |
| Unpledged | Joseph H. Leeper | 14 | |
| Unpledged | W. H. Marvin | 14 | |
| Unpledged | J. Primley | 14 | |
| Unpledged | William Proctor | 14 | |
| Unpledged | Samuel A. Taffee | 6 | |
| Unpledged | A. C. Cooper | 4 | |
| Unpledged | Samuel Ball | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Stephen S. Harding | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Jesse Lynch Holman | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Roger Ide | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Squire H. Knapp | 3 | |
| Unpledged | John M. Patrick | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Isaiah W. Robinson | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Thomas Smith | 3 | |
| Unpledged | George Walker | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Jonas Walker | 3 | |
| Unpledged | Richard Workman | 3 | |
| Unpledged | James L. Yater | 3 | |
| Unpledged | George B. Arnold | 1 | |
| Unpledged | Jonathan Blanchard | 1 | |
| Unpledged | John Bufferm | 1 | |
| Unpledged | Samuel H. Davis | 1 | |
| Unpledged | Henry B. Evans | 1 | |
| Unpledged | Thomas Hogue | 1 | |
| Unpledged | A. Hose | 1 | |
| Unpledged | William B. Ogdon | 1 | |
| Unpledged | Benjamin Dwight Sheldon | 1 | |
| Unpledged | Levi F. Torrey | 1 | |
Total
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≈152,987
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See also
Notes
- ^ Riker and Thornbrough count 18 votes for independent electoral lists in addition to the Democratic, Whig, and Free Soil tickets.[4]
- ^ Including alternate spellings.[5]
References
- ^ a b c Riker & Thornbrough 1960, pp. 53–67.
- ^ "1848 Electoral College Results". National Archives. Retrieved October 7, 2025.
- ^ Lampi n.d.; Ratcliffe 2014, p. 57.
- ^ Riker & Thornbrough 1960, p. 67.
- ^ Riker & Thornbrough 1960, p. 67n7.
Bibliography
- "1848 Electoral College Results". National Archives. Retrieved October 7, 2025.
- Lampi, Philip J. (n.d.). "Electoral College". A New Nation Votes. American Antiquarian Society. Retrieved October 5, 2025.
- Ratcliffe, Donald J. (Spring 2014). "Popular Preferences in the Presidential Election of 1824". Journal of the Early Republic. 34 (1): 45–77. JSTOR 24486931.
- Riker, Dorothy; Thornbrough, Gayle, eds. (1960). Indiana Election Returns, 1816–1851. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau.