Why did Jefferson win the election of 1800?

Answer 1

It is commonly accepted that Alexander Hamilton's eventual support of Thomas Jefferson led to his election. Aaron Burr courted the Federalist controlled Congress, but Hamilton despised him so much that he threw all of his support and persuasion behind Jefferson.

Answer 2

Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied with 73 votes, which meant it was up to the house of representatives to determine who would win. After 36 ballots, Jefferson won. Alexander hamilton strongly opposed Burr and although he opposed Jefferson on some political issues in the past, on this occasion he used his influence to help Jefferson win people over on their votes.

Answer 3

For those who don't know, the 1800 U.S. Presidential Election was the only one in which two candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, were tied for the win. Two candidates tieing for the win AND receiving enough electoral votes was only possible before the 1804 ratification of the 12th Amendment, which mainly changed the way the Vice President is elected.

The procedure that the House of Representatives followed was the same as the procedure still in place for when no candidate receives enough electoral votes, except, of course, that they are choosing from between two instead of from among three. All the Representatives from one state make up one state delegation, and each state delegation has one vote. Just like with the electoral college, someone must receive more than half of all available votes (must have an absolute majority of votes) to win. Today that would be a minimum of 26 votes since there are 50 states. In 1800, when there were 16 states, at least nine votes were required. When nobody gets enough votes, the House votes again, as often as it takes to get a clear winner.

The Federalists of the House were very stubborn in their attempts to make Burr the winner. They didn't want Burr in as much as the wanted Jefferson out, due to the way he had been working against them for years. You would think it would be easy for one candidate to get more than half of the votes with only two candidates. However, when a state coalition consists of an even number of Representatives and their vote is split 50/50, that coalition submits a blank vote. The vote was 8 for Jefferson, 6 for Burr, and 2 null votes. The results were the same on all of the first 35 ballots! It took seven days to redo the voting 35 times! Finally Alexander Hamilton appealed to his fellow Federalists, telling them that Jefferson was definately the lesser of two evils, "by far not so dangerous" as Burr. He made the point that it is much better to have someone with wrong principles than to have someone devoid of any principles. After that, on the 36th ballot, all of the Burr supporters from the two state coalitions where the vote had been repeatedly split 50/50 changed their votes to blanks, thereby giving Jefferson the win with ten votes.