Populist Party: Omaha Platform

The Omaha Platform energized the Populist Party, but its appeal, and the appeal of the Populists, could not compete with the more established parties. In the 1892 election, Democrat Grover Cleveland gained 46 percent of the vote and 277 electoral votes, defeating Republican incumbent Benjamin Harrison, who secured 46 percent of the vote and 145 electoral votes. The Populist presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, was third with 8.5 percent of the vote and twenty-two electoral votes. Concurrently, the party secured eleven seats in the U.S. House and three U.S. Senate seats, along with the governorships of Colorado and Kansas. The Social Labor Party candidate, Simon Wing, won just 0.2 percent of the vote.

The results were far short of what the party founders had hoped for but were very good for a third party. In the prelude to the 1896 election, William Jennings Bryan was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate. He backed many of the policies of the Populists, and that party ultimately decided to back the Democrat instead of nominating their own candidate. The Populists hoped that by combining with the Democrats, they could elect a staunch progressive who would enact most of their policies. Bryan was defeated by Republican William McKinley, who secured 51 percent of the vote to the Democrat's 46.7 percent. Bryan went on to run for the presidency two more times, in 1900 and 1908, but was defeated on both occasions. Instead, Republicans would control the White House from 1897 to 1913.

Although the Populist Party dissolved in 1908, many of the policies and recommendations of the Populists were adopted during the Progressive era of the early twentieth century, incorporated into the later party platforms of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Ideas that were considered radical in the 1890s became mainstream by the early 1900s. For instance, the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913, legalizing the federal income tax. As noted, the Seventeenth Amendment, also ratified in 1913, mandated the direct election of senators. In 1916, the Adamson Act became the first federal legislation to establish the eight-hour workday (although it applied only to railroad workers).

A central component of the Republican success during this period was the emergence of a progressive wing of the party led by Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who served as president from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt oversaw the breakup of monopolies and the expansion of the role of government through actions such as the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), often considered the first of a series of laws that helped protect consumers. The New Deal enacted in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s also featured progressive ideas. Although the Omaha Platform failed to provide the Populist Party with electoral success, it would remain an influential collection of ideas well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the nation continues to debate issues such as fair taxation, political corruption, and immigration. Populism remains a vibrant strain in American politics.