The Landslide that Wasn't

A One-Vote Oddity
The Landslide that Wasn’t

The year was 1839 and Marcus Morton was running for governor of Massachusetts. In those days, governors in Massachusetts were elected to one-year terms. All indications were that the election would be close. Very close.

When the returns came in, Marcus Morton was elected governor of Massachusetts by one vote. That year, 102,066 votes were cast and Morton received exactly 51,034. Had Morton received 51,033, the election would have been thrown into the Legislature, where historians tell us, he probably would not have won—the Legislature being controlled by the opposition party. Over 102,000 people went to the polls, and the election was decided when one of them tipped the majority to Marcus Morton.

This wasn’t the only close election of Morton’s political career. In 1842, he ran for governor again. The popular vote was better this time. But in the Legislature he was approved by only one vote. Those two close calls earned him an ironic and derisive new name. He is known in Massachusetts and to history as “Marcus ‘Landslide’ Morton.”

Landslide it wasn’t, but Marcus Morton served as governor of the people of Massachusetts—twice, because of one vote.

Your vote counts. Don’t waste it by failing to cast it.