# 1808 Presidential Election [[James Madison]] (Democratic-Republican), Jefferson's Secretary of State and his hand-picked successor, defeated Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney 122–47 in the [[Electoral College]]. The election continued the **Virginia Dynasty** — the run of Virginia-born Democratic-Republican presidents (Jefferson, Madison, Monroe) that dominated American politics from 1801 to 1825. The Federalists made some 1808 gains in New England in response to the unpopular Embargo Act, but the party's national irrelevance was already setting in. ## Result - **[[James Madison]]** (Democratic-Republican) — 122 electoral votes - **Charles Cotesworth Pinckney** (Federalist) — 47 electoral votes - **George Clinton** (Democratic-Republican faction) — 6 electoral votes - Total: 175 electoral votes ## Right-wing relevance The 1808 election's right-wing relevance is structural rather than ideological: it confirms the Virginia Dynasty pattern of intra-party succession-by-appointment (Secretary of State as the path to the presidency) that held into the Monroe administration. The [[Constitutional Convention]]'s principal author Madison won the election that put the Constitution's principal author in the office the Constitution had created — a piece of founding-era continuity that originalist conservative doctrine treats as canonical. ## Connections - [[James Madison]] — Winner; Constitution's principal author. - [[Thomas Jefferson]] — Outgoing president; mentor and political patron. ---