What are the heavy, dramatic, hard-hitting issues that define US presidential elections? From states’ representation in the electoral college to taxation to national defense, what motivates voters to go to the polls? Sometimes, both major party nominees are almost in complete agreement on the issues, but sometimes they clash intensely. Which election cycles have seen the most direct clashes in terms of ideology, and which side did voters prefer? From the early republic until the present day, here’s a look at the most fought-over issues brought up in presidential elections, from westward expansion to trickle-down economics.
Early Republic: Expansion of Federal Power
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were not in agreement over how the new republic should look. Some wanted a more urban nation with a focus on industry and commerce, trading actively with Europe and utilizing a more centralized government. Others wanted America to remain primarily rural and agrarian, with less foreign trade and a decentralized government with the most power concentrated at the local level. These two groups became the Federalists and Antifederalists, respectively—America’s first two political parties.
In early elections, voters argued about the power of the new central government created by the Constitution of 1787. Under Federalists, this power expanded, such as president John Adams signing the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In 1800, voters responded to this increase in federal power by replacing Adams with Antifederalist rival Thomas Jefferson, who pardoned those convicted of violating those laws. Expansion of federal power returned after the elections of 1808 and 1812, when Constitution-writer James Madison won the presidency.
1840-1860: Slavery
US president Andrew Jackson largely settled the debate over federal supremacy with his role in ending the Nullification Crisis. Despite being a Southerner, Jackson strongly declared that no states could reject federal laws, ending South Carolina’s hopes that the populist president would not enforce Congress’ mandates. The next nationwide debate emerged over slavery, especially as the nation expanded westward. With northern free states more heavily populated, southern slave states eagerly wanted new territory added to the US to allow slavery, such as Texas.
The annexation of Texas had been an issue in both the 1840 and 1844 elections.
Pro-slavery supporters of annexation finally got their way in 1845 when Texas became the 28th (slave) state. This led to war with Mexico the following year, which resulted in a tremendous victory that saw the northern half of Mexico ceded to the United States. The Mexican Cession
intensified debates over slavery, with both factions fighting for territory. Congress and presidents sought a balance, including the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. However, by 1860, the free states of the North had enough electoral power to elect an anti-slavery president, which they did with Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln…sparking the American Civil War the following April.
1840-1896: Westward Expansion and the Electoral College
Adding new states to the union was not universally desired, especially because it affected the balance of power in the Electoral College. After the Civil War, settlement of the West proceeded rapidly thanks to the railroad. The addition of new states during the 1870s and 1880s sometimes complicated elections. For example, Colorado became a state only three months before the 1876 presidential election, and became the last state to allocate its electors without a popular vote. Many western territories gave voting rights to women to try and bolster their number of registered voters and earn statehood sooner.
However, due to rapid immigration into the North and Northeast from Europe during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the addition of new states out West did not have major effects on presidential elections. New states only had three electors apiece—the same number as members of Congress, which would initially be only one US Representative and two US Senators. By 1896, only Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma remained territories in the continental United States. Of the post-Mexican War states, however, only California had significantly expanded beyond the initial three electoral votes.
1892-1920: Populism and Progressivism
In 1890, the US Census declared the West to be settled and that there was no longer a definite “frontier” in the United States. Now that Manifest Destiny had been achieved, many citizens refocused their energies on improving the conditions within America. The early 1890s saw mass urban poverty due to low rages and overcrowded slums, farmers struggling with low market prices for their crops, and inequitable treatment for women, children, immigrants, and minorities. Thanks to the efforts of muckraking journalists and reformers, however, lots of voters became vocal about demanding improvements. This ushered in a new era of populism and helped spark the Progressive Era.
Between 1892 and 1920, a societal shift occurred where a majority of voters demanded greater government involvement in protecting common citizens, usually from powerful corporations. Progressives were not united on all, or even many, policy areas, but they did believe that there were problems in society and that government regulation was the solution. Progressive US presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson all actively expanded the role of the federal government. They broke up monopolies, tried to reduce child labor, created new federal agencies, and significantly expanded the size and funding of the nation’s central government—with solid voter support.
1896-1916: America’s Militarism Abroad
Simultaneous with the Progressive Era was an imperial era where the US exercised its growing military might to assist with international trade. Westward expansion did not end at the California coastline, but continued into the Pacific Ocean. By the 1890s, the United States wanted to protect trade routes to China and Japan. This included growing bases of operation in islands like Hawaii, where US commercial interests came to dominate. When the Spanish-American War erupted in 1898, the US swiftly seized Spain’s Pacific colonies. Two years later, America formalized its power in China by assisting European powers and Japan in putting down the Boxer Rebellion against foreigners.
After the Boxer Rebellion, the US focused its military might closer to home by proclaiming the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904. European powers with disputes in Latin America and the Caribbean would have to work with the United States first. The US then intimidated Colombia into granting Panama its independence…which resulted in the US receiving the contract to build the Panama Canal. Ten years later, the US military found itself in action again, this time returning to Mexico with the Veracruz intervention. With tensions high between the US and Mexico over Veracruz, the US sent more troops to northern Mexico two years later, in 1916, to catch cross-border rebel Pancho Villa, who had raided American towns.
Meanwhile, a major war was raging in Europe—would America be drawn in?
1932-1936: Economic Policy and Social Welfare
The Great Depression hit like a sledgehammer after the happy days of the Roaring Twenties. World War I had been good to America, especially in terms of arms sales to the Allies. While Europe struggled through a post-war malaise, including political upheavals, the United States enjoyed an economic boom. Republicans cut taxes after the war, raising consumer and business incomes and opening the first “decade of consumerism” in America. Unfortunately, the unregulated boom led to a bubble that burst in 1929 with the stock market crash. As the nation descended into an economic depression between 1930 and 1932, most Americans changed their minds about laissez-faire economics.
Republican US president Herbert Hoover did not advocate for direct federal government aid to the millions of unemployed, leading to a landslide loss in 1932 to Democratic challenger Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt initiated the practice of peacetime deficit spending to put people back to work and provide aid to the poor. This part of his New Deal was tremendously popular and led to easy re-elections in 1936 and 1940, breaking George Washington’s precedent of only serving two terms as the nation’s chief executive. Conservative beliefs that the government should avoid economic intervention were largely banished from popular discourse.
1980-Present: Supply-Side Economics
Forty years after the end of the New Deal, the US was mired in high inflation and persistently high unemployment. Conservative ideas from the 1920s were resurrected as a solution, and new US president Ronald Reagan proposed significant tax cuts to encourage business investment. The 1981 Reagan tax cuts slashed income tax rates on high earners and corporations. Simultaneously, Reagan increased government spending on national defense. By 1984, the US economy had improved, with both inflation and unemployment down, and Reagan won re-election by a landslide.
The apparent success of Reaganomics began a periodic debate about the benefit of tax cuts in improving economic performance. Supporters argued that tax cuts “pay for themselves” by spurring increases in production and consumption, which would generate the same tax revenue by taxing a larger volume at a lower rate. Since 1980, Republicans have usually argued in favor of tax cuts and the belief that such cuts pay for themselves. Democrats, by contrast, have usually argued that such tax cuts do not pay for themselves and lead to a loss in government revenue, forcing spending cuts on important programs. Later Republican presidents cut taxes in 2001, 2003, and 2017.
1992-1996, 2008: Honoring the Past Versus Entering the Future
The end of the Cold War in 1991 opened up a new sociopolitical era for the United States. In 1992, the economy was relatively strong, the world was at peace, and a new political era was dawning. Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton was a young Southerner who had been a governor of Arkansas rather than a Washington-dwelling Cold Warrior. Incumbent Republican president George Bush, Sr. had been vice president under Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan and director of the CIA in the late 1970s. The two men were a stark contrast, with World War II veteran Bush seen as an homage to America’s past and Clinton portraying himself as America’s future.
Clinton won the 1992 election, though pundits debated whether the presence of strong independent candidate Ross Perot had sunk Bush’s re-election by taking almost 19 percent of the popular vote. In 1996, Clinton ran a similar campaign against a similar Republican: Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole was a decorated World War II veteran with decades of experience in Washington. Again, Clinton portrayed himself as a candidate focused on the future, while Dole represented an homage to the past. Clinton won re-election in 1996 relatively easily.
A similar dynamic re-emerged in 2008, when young Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a first-term US Senator, ran against much older Vietnam veteran Republican nominee John McCain, an experienced Washington insider.
2016: Trusting Political Versus Business Experience
A new sociopolitical clash emerged twenty years later. While Clinton had triumphed in 1992 and 1996 as the young, Baby Boomer candidate defeating World War II veterans with future-focused messaging, his wife now faced a rival of similar age. Hillary Clinton had gone from First Lady to US Senator (D-NY) to US Secretary of State, developing an impressive resume as a Democratic presidential candidate. After bruising primaries for both parties, she faced the Republican nominee: billionaire real estate tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump.
As a new political candidate with no public service history, Trump touted his business experience as a benefit for voters. The real estate tycoon, having been a public figure since the 1980s, argued that he would be able to make excellent deals as president using his business negotiation acumen. Career politicians like Hillary Clinton, he argued, were less effective because they were mired in the traditions of Washington. Trump popularized the phrase “drain the swamp” to suggest that career politicians were part of a system of stagnant corruption based on conflicts of interest. In a major upset, Trump won a victory in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote to Clinton.
2020-2024: Allegations of Massive Voter Fraud
The 2020 US presidential election re-introduced widespread debates about voter fraud and voter suppression for the first time in decades. Incumbent US President Donald Trump alleged that his Democratic rivals would attempt to steal or rig the election, beginning his vocal concerns about ballot security in April 2020. Many Republicans and conservatives accepted the argument and repeated claims that Democrats frequently had, and would again, use voter fraud to rig elections. In November 2020, Trump lost his re-election bid to Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden.
Allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election remained in the news cycle after the election due to the events of January 6, 2021 and Trump’s continued allegations of fraud upon returning to the campaign trail in late 2022. Democrats have denied any organized fraud in the 2020 presidential election, and many insist that Trump is continuing to make such allegations to provoke his supporters to action. The accusation that Trump’s continued insistence on 2020 election voter fraud has led to criminal charges for insurrection, claiming that the president knowingly incited the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in hopes of retaining power.
