1900 United States elections

The 1900 United States presidential election was the 29th quadrennial presidential election in the Old United States, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1900.

In what was essentially a retread of the previous 1896 election, Republican President William McKinley defeated Democratic challenger William Jennings Bryan, making McKinley the first president to be reelected while in office since Ulysses Grant in 1872. Both nominees faced little internal challenge from their own parties: Bryan quickly defeated the Bourbon Democrat attempt to nominate Admiral George Dewey, easily securing the nomination and choosing former Vice President Aldai Stevenson as his running mate, while McKinley was renominated unanimously, with Theodore Roosevelt chosen as his Vice President to appease progressives and replace Garret Hobart, McKinley's previous VP who had died the previous year.

Economic recovery after the Panic of 1893 and American victories against both Spain in the Spanish-American War and Filipino nationalists in the adjacent Filipino-American war helped McKinley score a decisive victory, while dampening support for Bryan's free silver platform, and opposition to the American occupation of the Philippines. McKinley would carry most states outside of the Solid South and win 51.6% of the popular vote, in what amounted to a repeat of the 1896 election, although McKinley would pick up several states in the West, while Bryan would flip Kentucky. McKinley's victory would ensure the continued dominance of the conservative, pro-business factions of both major parties until the late 1920s, ensure the collapse of the Populist movement, which would be soon overshadowed by the Socialist movement, the continued dominance of the Republican party over national politics until the Great Depression, and the continued growth of trusts at home and the American empire abroad.

The 1900 elections are also significant for historians in that it would be the first where the Socialist Labor Party, having absorbed Eugene Debs' Social Democracy of America, nominating him as their candidate, would achieve more than 1% of the popular vote, although it had little media coverage or effect on the outcome of the election.