Mapping Early American Elections

3rd Congress: Massachusetts 1793

Massachusetts elected eleven Federalists and three Anti-Federalists to the Third Congress.

The election to the Third Congress in Massachusetts is almost certainly the most complicated election in the political history of the early republic. Besides the fact that 114 individuals were named in the ballots, Massachusetts had a very complex system for voting for this election:

The Massachusetts law provided for a complex method of voting. The voters of Districts One and Two each could vote for four candidates, but the votes had to be distributed as follows: one vote for a candidate from each of the three counties in the district and one additional vote for any candidate from any part of the district. In the Third District each voter had two votes; one had to be cast for a candidate from Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket counties and the other for a candidate from Bristol and Plymouth. In addition all voters in the above three districts cast one additional vote for any candidate from anywhere in the three districts, listed in the returns as at-large. Voters of the Fourth District had three votes, one for a candidate from York, another from Cumberland and the other from any of the remaining counties of this district. (Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Elections, 1788–1997: The Official Results of the Elections of the 1st through 105th Congresses [McFarland and Company, 1998], 9.)

The maps shows votes by parties. In the table of leading candidates below, the percentage is shown based on all the votes cast in each district. A sign of how complicated this election was is that the candidate with far and away the most votes, Samuel Lyman, whose total vote approached 10 percent of all votes cast in the state, was not elected to any seat. He received many votes in a number of districts, but not enough to win in any of them. For all the complexities of the election, the state voted by and large for Federalist candidates.

District	Candidate	Party	Vote	Percentage	Elected
At-large	Lyman, Samuel	Federalist	5,754	9.9%
At-large	Cobb, David	Federalist	4,553	7.8%	✓
At-large	Holten, Samuel	Anti-Federalist	4,544	7.8%	✓
At-large	Foster, Dwight	Federalist	3,640	6.3%	✓
At-large	Lyman, William	Anti-Federalist	3,283	5.7%	✓
At-large	Austin, Benjamin, Jr.		3,004	5.2%
At-large	Sedgwick, Theodore	Federalist	2,922	5%	✓
At-large	Other candidates		2,872	4.5%
At-large	Goodhue, Benjamin	Federalist	2,785	4.8%	✓
At-large	Ward, Artemas	Federalist	2,728	4.7%	✓
At-large	Wadsworth, Peleg	Federalist	2,558	4.4%	✓
At-large	Davis, Daniel		1,854	3.2%
At-large	Ames, Fisher	Federalist	1,772	3.1%	✓
At-large	Dexter, Samuel	Federalist	1,756	3%	✓
At-large	Bourne, Shearjashub	Federalist	1,585	2.7%	✓
At-large	Thacher, George	Federalist	1,319	2.3%	✓
At-large	Davis, John	Federalist	1,231	2.1%
At-large	Skinner, Thompson J.	Anti-Federalist	1,154	2%
At-large	Dearborn, Henry	Anti-Federalist	1,110	1.9%	✓
At-large	Coffin, Peleg, Jr.	Federalist	1,059	1.8%	✓
At-large	Grout, Jonathan	Anti-Federalist	1,054	1.8%
At-large	Jarvis, Charles	Anti-Federalist	893	1.5%
At-large	Wells, Nathaniel	Federalist	808	1.4%
At-large	Lithgow, William, Jr.		765	1.3%
At-large	Varnum, Joseph B.		743	1.3%
At-large	Leonard, George	Federalist	691	1.2%
At-large	Heath, William		634	1.1%
At-large	Gerry, Elbridge	Anti-Federalist	532	0.9%
At-large	Warren, James		468	0.8%

In most cases, only candidates who received more than 5 percent of the vote in a district are reported. Other candidates are reported as a group, but only if they in aggregate received more than 5 percent of the vote. In addition, percentages for each district may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. The term Dissenting Republican includes various breakaway factions of the Democratic-Republican party.

Mapping Early American Elections

3rd Congress: Massachusetts 1793

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