Presidential elections in the United States have been dominated by two parties throughout most of their history. The Democratic Party became the most powerful political party with Andrew Jackson's victory in the 1828 election, and the Republican Party emerged as their main opponents following Abraham Lincoln's victory in 1860. Since these years, Democratic candidates have won 23 U.S. presidential elections, while Republicans have won 24. The longest winning streaks of ether party came between 1860 and 1880, where Republican candidates won six elections in a row, while the Democrats won five in a row between 1932 and 1948 (four of which were won by Franklin D. Roosevelt).

Longest streaks

Although the nation's longest streak is just six elections in a row, the longest streaks of any individual state lasted for 27 consecutive elections. These belonged to Vermont, who voted Republican in all elections between 1856 and 1960, and Georgia, who voted Democrat in all elections between 1852 and 1960 (except in 1864, when it had seceded from the union). The longest current streak belongs to the District of Columbia, which has voted for the Democratic candidate in all 15 presidential elections in which it has taken part. Illinois and West Virginia are the only states with streaks for both the Democratic and Republican parties, while Kentucky's longest streaks are for both the Democratic-Republican and Democratic parties respectively.

Changing ideologies When looking at streaks that took place over 15 or more elections, most states were voting for the party that is not the most dominant there today. For example, from around the time of the American Civil War until after the Second World War, many southern states voted exclusively for the Democratic Party's nominee, whereas many northern states voted Republican between 1856 and 1908; in contrast, most of these states have voted for the opposite party's candidate in the past six or more elections. Historically, the Democratic Party was the more conservative of the two major parties, but gradually became more fiscally liberal during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, while it became more socially liberal following the Second World War. In doing this, the Democratic Party grew more appealing to voters in urban centers and in the northeast, however this transition alienated many conservative voters in the south, who became disenfranchised by the party's policies regarding civil rights. Because of this, the Republican Party then launched its "Southern strategy" during the 1960s, moving further to the right and capitalizing on racial polarization in the south by proposing policies that enforced segregation and protected Jim Crow laws. Since this time, the Republican Party has generally been the strongest in the south, although growing Hispanic and (sub)urban populations are weakening their dominance (such as in Georgia in 2020).

The U.S. manufacturing sector plays a central role in the economy, accounting for 20% of U.S. capital investment, 60% of the nation's exports and 70% of business R&D. Overall, the sector's market size, measured in terms of revenue is worth roughly $6 trillion, making it a major industry to do business with. So which U.S. states are the biggest for manufacturing? This article will explore the nation's top manufacturing states, measured by number of employees, based on MNI's database of 400,000 U.S. manufacturing companies.

The United States has had 46 presidents since George Washington's election in 1789. While Washington himself was not affiliated with any political party, and even argued against partisanship (something that the other Founding Fathers agreed with), political differences and personal rivalries between the Founding Fathers eventually led to the founding of the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson. Washington's successor, John Adams, was the only Federalist president, before the Democratic-Republicans occupied the White House from 1801 until 1829.

Formation of the Democratic and Republican parties

The 1820s again saw political and personal rivalries lead to a split among the country's leadership, and the Democratic-Republican Party made way for the formation of the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party. The Democratic Party was formed by Andrew Jackson and his supporters, and was traditionally the more conservative of the major political parties in the U.S. until the mid-twentieth century. The National Republican Party was short lived, and eventually amalgamated with the Whig Party in the 1830s, who would go on to be the main opposition to the Democratic Party for the subsequent two decades. Four U.S. presidents belonged to the Whig Party, although it may be important to note that these four men only served a combined eight years in office, as two of them died a short while into their tenure. The issue of slavery was the most dominant and divisive issue in U.S. politics in the mid-nineteenth century, and regional splits emerged in both parties; the rifts did not break apart the Democratic Party, who favored state sovereignty on the issue, whereas the divide in the Whig Party saw it splinter into the right-wing Know Nothing Party in the south, and anti-slavery Republican Party in the north. The 1856 election was the first to feature candidates of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, marking the beginning of the major political rivalry that has dominated U.S. politics for the past 160 years.

Realignment

Abraham Lincoln became the U.S.' first Republican president with his victory in the 1860 election. From then until 1933, twelve of the U.S.' 16 presidents belonged to the Republican Party, while just four* were from the Democratic Party. Due to the legacy left by the American Civil War, the southern, former-Confederate states were a political stronghold for the Democratic Party, and rarely voted for Republican candidates in presidential elections; in contrast to this, the north, west and newly-admitted states tended to vote Republican. In the 1910s, the Republican Party transitioned into the more ideologically conservative option of the two major parties, and more fiscally conservative following the Great Depression; however, it was not until the Johnson administration in the 1960s, particularly due to matters regarding African-American civil rights, where the core voter bases switched into what is typically expected today. In the past century, there have been ten Republican and nine Democratic presidents (including Joe Biden), with Democrats occupying the White House for roughly 52 of these years. Republican voters in the twenty-first century are generally more conservative and right-leaning in regards to both economic and social issues, whereas Democratic voters tend to be the opposite. There are also strong correlations between political parties and their voters, based on issues such as location, ethnicity, wealth, education and age.

Illinois has taken part in 51 U.S. presidential elections since 1820, and has correctly voted for the winning candidate on 42 occasions, giving a success rate of 82 percent. The Prairie State has always voted for a major party candidate, choosing the Democratic-Republican Party's nominees in its first two elections, before voting for the Democratic Party's candidate 25 times, and the Republican candidate 24 times since 1832. After joining the union in 1818, Illinois has generally voted for each party in phases, and has been considered a safe Democrat state for the past three decades. In the 2020 election, the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, won the popular vote in Illinois by a 17 percent margin. The Land of Lincoln Since 1955, Illinois' state slogan has been "The Land of Lincoln", as a tribute to President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was born in Kentucky, but moved to Illinois in his early 20s, where he emerged as a prominent politician and lawyer before ascending to the presidency in 1861. Lincoln is not the only U.S. President to have resided in Illinois when taking office; his successor, Ulysses S. Grant, was an official Illinois resident when he took office in 1869 (although he had not lived there since before the Civil War), and Barack Obama began his legal career in Chicago in the 1980s, before eventually becoming a State Senator in 1997, and a U.S. Senator from Illinois in 2005. Ronald Reagan is the only president to have been born in Illinois, although he moved to California in his twenties and held public office there. A number of losing candidates also resided in or were born in Illinois, including 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who was born in Chicago. Electoral votes In the nineteenth century, Illinois' population boomed as Chicago grew to be one of the largest and most industrialized cities on the continent, and the early twentieth century saw over half a million black Americans move to Illinois during the Great Migration. With this population boom, Illinois' designation of electoral votes grew from just three in the 1820s, to 29 between 1912 and 1940; this was the third highest in the country after New York and Pennsylvania. Since the Second World War, changes in the U.S. population distribution has meant that Illinois' share of electoral votes has gradually decreased, standing at twenty votes since 2012, and expected to drop to 18 in the 2024 election.

According to a 2023 survey, Americans between 18 and 29 years of age were more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than any other surveyed age group. While 39 percent identified as Democrats, only 14 percent identified ad Republicans. However, those 50 and older identified more with the Republican Party.

As of March 10, 2023, the death rate from COVID-19 in the state of New York was 397 per 100,000 people. New York is one of the states with the highest number of COVID-19 cases.

The U.S. presidential election has been contested in Arkansas on 46 occasions, and the Natural State has correctly voted for the winning candidate 27 times (not including in 1872**), giving it a success rate of 59 percent. Arkansas has voted for the Democratic candidate in 33 elections, the Republican candidate in 12**, and the 1968 election was the only time when a third-party candidate won Arkansas' electoral votes in a presidential election. Arkansas has generally voted for the more conservative candidate from the two major parties, making the transition from Democrat to Republican during the civil rights era in the 1960s. Exceptions Despite exhibiting generally conservative tendencies, Arkansas has voted for the more liberal option on a few occasions. The most recent examples of this were in the 1992 and 1996 elections, where Arkansas native, Bill Clinton, carried the state with around 53 percent of the popular vote each time. The only other election where Arkansas voted Democrat since 1964 was when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald R. Ford in 1976, winning almost two thirds of Arkansas' votes. Between 1836 and 1964, Arkansas voted Democrat on all but three occasions; between 1864 and 1872. The reasons for this were due to Arkansas' secession during the American Civil War (where they did not participate in the 1864 election), before stringent Reconstruction policies, black suffrage, and white voter disenfranchisement gave Grant the victory in Arkansas in 1868 and 1872 (although Arkansas' 1872 electoral votes were rejected by Congress due to irregularities). Arkansas gave its electoral votes to a third-party candidate on just one occasion, voting for the American Independent Party's George Wallace in 1968; Wallace carried five southern states on a segregationist, anti-civil rights platform, which saw many white, southern voters move away from the increasingly liberal Democratic Party. Arkansas natives Since its admission to the union in 1836, it would take over 150 years before an Arkansan would appear as a presidential candidate on a major party's ticket; as of the 2024 election, Bill Clinton remains the only U.S. president, and the only major party candidate, to come from Arkansas. Between 1836 and 1904, Arkansas' designated number of electoral votes grew from three to nine, and it remained at this number until 1948. From 1952 to 1960 it was reduced to eight, before falling again to just six electoral votes since 1964.

The 1860 election cemented the Republican Party's position as one of the two major parties in U.S. politics, along with the already-established Democratic Party. Since this time, all U.S. presidents have been affiliated with these two parties, and their candidates have generally performed the best in each presidential election. In spite of this two-party dominance, there have always been third-party or independent candidates running on the ballot, either on a nationwide, regional or state level. No third-party candidate has ever won a U.S. election, although there have been several occasions where they have carried states or split the vote with major party candidates. Today, the largest third-party in U.S. politics is the Libertarian Party, who are considered to be socially liberal, but economically conservative; in the 2016 election, their nominee, Gary Johnson, secured just over three percent of the popular vote, while their latest candidate, Jo Jorgenson, received just over one percent of the vote in the 2020 election.

Theodore Roosevelt The most successful third-party nominee was Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election, who was the only third-party candidate to come second in a U.S. election. The former president had become disillusioned with his successor's growing conservatism, and challenged the incumbent President Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912. Roosevelt proved to be the most popular candidate in the primaries, however Taft had already secured enough Republican delegates in the south to seal the nomination. Roosevelt then used this split in the Republican Party to form his own, Progressive Party, and challenged both major party candidates for the presidency (even taking a bullet in the process). In the end, Roosevelt carried six states, and won over 27 percent of the popular vote, while Taft carried just two states with 23 percent of the vote; this split in the Republican Party allowed the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, to win 82 percent of the electoral votes despite only winning 42 percent of the popular vote.

Other notable performances The last third-party candidate to win electoral votes was George Wallace* in the 1968 election. The Democratic Party had been the most popular party in the south since before the Civil War, however their increasingly progressive policies in the civil rights era alienated many of their southern voters. Wallace ran on a white supremacist and pro-segregationist platform and won the popular vote in five states. This was a similar story to that of Storm Thurmond, twenty years earlier.

In the 1992 election, Independent candidate Ross Perot received almost one fifth of the popular vote. Although he did not win any electoral votes, Perot split the vote so much that he prevented either Clinton or Bush Sr. from winning a majority in any state except Arkansas (Clinton's home state). Perot ran again in 1996, but with less than half the share of votes he received four years previously; subsequent studies and polls have shown that Perot took an equal number of votes from both of the major party candidates in each election.

According to a survey conducted in June 2024, U.S. adults were divided on whether it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns or if it was more important to limit gun ownership. 48 percent of respondents said that it was more important to limit gun ownership, while 51 percent felt it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns. However, views differed drastically by party, with Democrats much more likely to support limiting gun ownership compared to Republicans. Demographics of gun ownership Gun ownership varies among many demographics such as age, political party affiliation, and educational attainment. A majority of Republican respondents in 2022 said that they either owned a gun or lived in a gun household, while less than a third of Democrats said they owned a gun or lived in a gun household. Furthermore, it was those with some college, but no degree, and those between the ages of 35 and 54 years old who were more likely to own a gun compared to other education levels and ages. Politics of gun ownership Gun ownership is a highly partisan issue in the United States, with Democrats typically in favor of strong gun control laws, while Republicans are in favor of looser laws. The Second Amendment of the Constitution states that citizens have the right to bear arms, however, the interpretation of that has been highly contested across the country, largely in part due to the number of mass shootings that happen yearly. Those in favor of stricter gun control laws claim that fewer mass shootings would happen, while those opposed to these laws claim that the violence would just happen in another manner, anyway. Despite the high number of shootings, Congress has been unable to come up with federal bipartisan legislation to stop mass shootings.

With Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election, the Republican Party cemented its position as one of the two major political parties in the United States. Since 1860, candidates from both parties have faced one another in 41 elections, with the Republican candidate winning 24 elections, to the Democrats' 17. The share of electoral college votes is often very different from the share of the popular vote received by each candidate in the elections, as the popular vote differences tend to be much smaller. Electoral college system In the U.S., the electoral college system is used to elect the president. For most states, this means that the most popular candidate in each state then receives that state's allocation of electoral votes (which is determined by the state's population). In the majority of elections, the margin of electoral votes has been over thirty percent between the two major party candidates, and there were even some cases where the winner received over ninety percent more electoral votes than the runner-up. Biggest winners The largest margins for the Republican Party occurred in the aftermath of the American Civil War, in the pre-Depression era of the 1920s, with Eisenhower after the Second World War, and then again with the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush campaigns in the 1970s and 80s. For the Democratic Party, the largest victories occurred during the First and Second World Wars, and for Lindon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton in the second half of the 20th century. In the past six elections, the results of the electoral college vote have been relatively close, compared with the preceding hundred years; George W. Bush's victories were by less than seven percent, Obama's victories were larger (by around thirty percent), and in the most recent elections involving Donald Trump he both won and lost by roughly 14 percent.

The support for same-sex marriage in the United States increased overall between 2016 and 2024. However, there was a decrease in support across both parties in 2024. According to a survey conducted across the years, this increase was particularly relevant among Republicans. This was consistently the party group least in favor of gay marriage, but in 2021, for the first time, a slight majority of Republicans showed support for it. In 2024, 83 percent of the Democrats' electorate thought that same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid.

To estimate national trends of crime, the FBI collects crime reports from law enforcement agencies across the country. In 2022, Delaware, the District of Columbia, and Oklahoma had perfect participation rates, with 100 percent of law enforcement agencies reporting crime data to the FBI in those states. In contrast, the state of Florida had the lowest share of law enforcement agencies who reported crime data to the FBI in the United States, at *** percent. An unreliable source? Along with being the principal investigative agency of the U.S. federal government, the FBI is also in charge of tracking crimes committed in the United States. In recent years, however, the FBI made significant changes to their crime reporting system, requiring a more detailed input on how agencies report their data. Consequently, less crime data has been reported and the FBI has come under criticism as an unreliable source on crime in the United States. In 2022, the FBI was found to rank low on trustworthiness for Americans when compared to other government agencies, further demonstrating the need for transparent and accurate data. Importance of crime rates As crime and policing data can help to analyze emerging issues and policy responses, the inaccuracy of the FBI’s crime reporting system may lead to misinformation which could be used to impact elections and the beliefs of the American public. In addition, the lack of crime data from Republican states such as Florida may prove problematic as 78 percent of Republicans said that crime was a very important issue for them in midterm elections.

In the United States in 2023, ** percent of Republicans reported that they owned at least one gun, and ** percent said that they lived in a household with a gun. In comparison, only ** percent of Democrats owned at least one gun, and ** percent lived in a gun household. Who are gun owners? In 2022, significantly more Democrats were in favor of limiting gun ownership in comparison to Republicans. On the other hand, more Republicans were in favor of protecting the right to own guns in comparison to Democrats. When examined by education level, respondents who said they only had some college, but no degree were the most likely to have said that there is at least one gun in their household. However, nearly a ******* of Americans over 18 years old said that they rarely carry a gun on their person. Republicans vs Democrats Debate The gun control debate in the United States has been a highly contested one. In light of frequent mass shootings, gun control laws have become the center of policy discussions. Democratic politicians tend to put significant emphasis on their gun control policies and are overall more in favor of stricter gun control laws and want more background checks for those who want to purchase a gun. However, Republicans tend to work in favor of gun rights.

The 1972 US presidential election was contested between incumbent President Richard Nixon of the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party's George S. McGovern. Nixon won the Republican nomination easily, and was the firm favorite to win the election, due to his foreign policy (particularly when dealing with China and the Soviet Union) and the healthy state of the US economy. The early favorite in the Democratic Primary was Ed Muskie, although a forged letter (later revealed to have come from Nixon's campaign) claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks against French-Canadians, and this damaged his reputation in New England. When the press attacked Muskie's wife's character, the candidate made a statement refuting their claims, however the press used it as another opportunity to attack him, effectively ending his campaign. McGovern then became the frontrunner, although a significant challenge from Arthur Bremer was cut short when he was shot five times and paralyzed from the waist down. McGovern then went on to win easily, however notable other candidates were Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to run for either of the major party's nominations, and Patsy Mink, the first Asian American to run for the Democratic nomination. The only major third party candidate was John Hospers of the American Independent Party, while this was also the first time the Libertarian Party, which is the third largest political party in the US as of 2020, featured on the ballot. Campaign and Results Nixon's popularity grew as the campaign went on, while the press labelled McGovern a radical, left-wing extremist, who stood for "amnesty, abortion and acid". When it emerged that McGovern's running mate, Thomas Eagleton, had undergone shock-therapy for depression, some of the press claimed that this endangered the national security of the country should Eagleton become President. Despite the majority of public agreeing that Eagleton's depression would not affect their vote, McGovern asked him to step down, just three days after backing him "1000 percent". This lack of conviction damaged McGovern's reputation even further, and he dropped to just 24 percent in the polls. Eventually, Nixon won re-election, taking a majority in 49 states, ending up with 97 percent of the electoral vote. He also took over sixty percent of the popular vote, just shy of Johnson's share in 1964. This was the first election where a Republican took every state in the south. The only two areas where McGovern won were Massachusetts and Washington DC. One faithless elector voted for John Hospers of the Libertarian Party, making his running mate, Theodora Nathan, the first woman to ever receive an electoral vote in a US presidential election. Schmitz took almost 1.5 percent of the popular vote, but was unable to convert this into any electoral votes. Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal took place between 1972 and 1974 in the United States. It is arguably the largest political scandal in US history, and culminated in the only ever resignation of a standing US President. On June 17, 1972 (five months before the election) five men broke into the Democratic National Convention and wiretapped the then-President's political opponents. After the perpetrators were arrested, a link was subsequently found between the culprits and Nixon's re-election campaign, and further investigations (after Nixon was re-elected) uncovered evidence that directly implicated the President in the scandal and its attempted cover-up. Because of the attempted cover-up, Nixon lost practically all of his political support, and resigned as President before he would have undoubtedly been impeached and removed from office. Nixon was succeeded by his Vice President, Gerald R. Ford, who controversially granted a "full, free and absolute" presidential pardon to the former-President, clearing him of any wrongdoing in the Watergate scandal.