Write an essay comparing the election of 1828 with a recent presidential election. Include information about how people got political information then and how they get it now.
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Answer:
Jackson was the first president who was decidedly not from an elite family. His election was due in part to the fact that more and more states were introducing universal white manhood suffrage. They were removing the property qualifications for voting and making the country more democratic.
Jackson had won a plurality (but not majority) of both the electoral vote and popular vote in the 1824 election, but had lost the contingent election that was held in the House of Representatives.
The election of 1828 was arguably one of the most significant in United States history, ushering in the era of political campaigns and paving the way for the solidification of political parties. The previous election, of 1824, had seen John Quincy Adams become president although his opponent Andrew Jackson had earned the most electoral votes. Because no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote, however, that election was decided by the House of Representatives in Adams’s favour after fellow candidate and Speaker of the House Henry Clay (who finished fourth) threw his support behind Adams. Adams subsequently appointed Clay his secretary of state, giving merit to rumours of a “corrupt bargain” in the eyes of Jackson supporters. During the contested election of 1824, followers of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams began calling themselves National Republicans, and backers of Andrew Jackson emerged as Democratic Republicans. By the election of 1828, the Jacksonians had become known simply as the Democrats. Unlike previous elections, in which the parties’ congressional delegations would generally gather to nominate a candidate (this had failed to coalesce support around a single candidate among the Democratic-Republicans in 1824), this election was the first in which a majority of states held conventions to endorse a candidate.