The Songs Knew Before the Polls Did

What popular music may reveal about politics, national mood, and the failure of modern polling

In the summer of 1840, the Whig party ran a presidential candidate named William Henry Harrison against the sitting Democratic president, Martin Van Buren. Van Buren had won in 1836. He had Andrew Jackson’s blessing. He had the Democratic Party machine. He had four years of incumbency.

The Whigs had Harrison, an aging general with a reputation for living in a log cabin, and they had a campaign tune called “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”

That tune is what people sang at every rally, every barbecue, every cider party from Maine to Mississippi. It named the candidates. It mocked the opposition. It had a chorus you could remember after one hearing and shout while drunk. The Whigs handed it out in pamphlets and got it picked up by traveling fiddlers.

Van Buren had no song.

Harrison won 234 electoral votes to 60.