The main significance of the 1888 election was that Benjamin Harrison, the Republican candidate, won despite losing the popular vote. Harrison wasn't the first to achieve this feat; there was John Quincy Adams in 1824 and Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Since Harrison's election, two further presidents have been elected to the White House despite losing the popular vote: George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.
In the 1888 election, the Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland secured a wafer-thin margin of victory in the popular vote (just 0.8%), but he lost by a majority of 65 votes in the Electoral College. Harrison also carried more states than Cleveland—20 versus 18. Under the circumstances, it's amazing that Cleveland came as close as he did, given that he'd made quite a few enemies among veterans, farmers, and industrialists during his first—but as it would turn out, not his last—term of office. Cleveland went on to become the only president in history to serve two non-consecutive terms.
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